That's misleading. 32 teams play 16 fixtures over 17 weeks (one is a bye week).

There are no plans to expand it to mirror an RL model or anything close to that i.e. Premier League.

There are tentative plans to expand the NFL outside the US with new teams though, such has been the success of the business model.

(And even with a big collegiate base the professional game took a long time to grow from it's corner using the more traditional models)

NFL teams seem to do ok with a 16 game schedule

Seriously couldn't care less about internationals, they bore me.


As for games maybe, in SL, they could spread the games out more, so each team plays once every 2 weeks...

But the interest in the NFL wasn't there from the start and therefore neither was the mega money or mega tv deals - they had to make changes.

Try a book called 'America's game'. There are some interesting parallels and it's difficult to argue that the way they developed the game didn't work.

Both Baseball and College sports provided equally tough competition for them over there.

I agree totally with your point on the dull defensive battles in Australia.

The NRL by 2020 will be a 20 team league with 20 rounds and an 8 team playoff imo. SOO and the Anzac test will be stand alone weekend games with no NRL games on and the season will run from March to 1st weekend in October.

The World 9's will be reintroduced for Feb and an improved International schedule for Oct/Nov each year.

Well we can live in hope!

like we smash the dross for the last 30 years