Why London?
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by Behbigben15
Can someone please tell me why the Giants and Dolphins have to travel all the way to facking London to play their regular season game this Sunday? In case you didn't know, and are confused, the NY Giants and Miami Dolphins are playing their week 8 regular season game in LONDON this Sunday at Wembley Stadium at 1 P.M. ET. It was supposed to be a home game for the Dolphins, but instead the 0-7 Dolphins get hurt even more by having to play one of their eight scheduled home games across the ocean in London.
I am not saying I don't want the NFL to try and spread the NFL excitement, and wealth across the country, but all that does to Commissioner Goodell is make the Giants, and Dolphins organizations hate him. The Dolphins only have 7 home games this year, instead of the 8 that the 31 other NFL teams have. This hurts Miami, and NY. They have to fly across the Atlantic ocean, and then take a four hour bus ride to London. Then the coaches expect them to get right off the bus and get to work. Like that will happen, the two teams will be so tired of sitting around on a bus, and eating the horrible food from London (according to ESPN's Mark Schlereth), that they won't be in any mood to play football. Well, maybe that won't happen, but I really don't think that many people in London will buy tickets, and many people probably won't even know it's going on. I am not to sure, but I think that people in London don't give a rat's ass about the NFL (except maybe Alex). I understand that Roger Goodell just wants to spread the NFL around the world, and gain fan support, but this isn't Baseball, it's American Football. How about making it an exhibition game instead, Roger? NFL teams will like that a whole lot better, although the games won't be as good, because players won't give it their all, but that's a better idea than wasting the Dolphins home game to travel to London, don't ya think?
I just think that this whole thing is bull shit, but I do know that this is not the only time the NFL has gone World-wide.
NFL International Games
- This marks the second regular-season game played outside of the U.S. (the first was in Mexico City in 2005; Cardinals defeated 49ers)
- It's the first regular season game outside of North America
- This will be the 10th NFL game played in London.
- It will be the 19th NFL game played in Europe (1 in Sweden; 1 in Ireland; 2 in Spain; 5 in Germany)
- This marks the 58th NFL game played on foreign soil (including 6 NFL-CFL games and 1 AFL-CFL game played in Canada).
- The breakdown of non-European countries: Canada - 16 games, Japan - 14, Mexico - 8, Australia - 1
- The first NFL game played outside of North America was on Aug. 16, 1976 in Tokyo, Japan (St. Louis Cardinals defeated Chargers, 20-10)
- The first game played in London (Wembley Stadium) and Europe was Aug. 6, 1983 (Vikings defeated St. Louis Cardinals, 28-10)
