Report: Bon Jovi, MLSE planning bid for NFL team in Toronto

32 teams, 16 games, 8 divisions of 4, doesn't get any symmetrical than that. Don't suspect King Roger I will screw with the order of the universe anytime soon.

 

If you expand, you have to do one of two things:

1. Expand by eight teams, which would take 40 years to happen and water down the product even further.

2. Expand by two teams, ditch divisions, have two 17-team conferences and do a round-robin in each.

I don't know which one I like least.

 

Toronto would be a huge market for the NFL, several million people living within a couple of hours drive, huge corporate presence and massive interest in the league.

But as the city's lukewarm interest in the massively overpriced and dreadfully sterile Bills in Toronto series shows, NFL fans aren't interested in having a team show up for a week and go home. Give Toronto fans their own team, an outdoor stadium and allow tailgating (I have said it before, drunkest people at any Bills game are usually Canadians) and you'll have a massive success.

 

As long as the teevee markets will bear it, taxpayers can be fucked into paying for stadiums and prospective owners will pay nine-figure expansion fees, expansion will remain inevitable.

 

I absolutely believe that given different circumstances than the ones they're currently asked to respond to, the people of Toronto would support an NFL team. But I'm torn on whether they'd require an outdoor stadium. I get that football's an outdoor sport and there's something to be said for the outdoor experience, but Torontonians (to be fair, GTA'ers in general) are largely pussies when compared to prairie folk or the fucking crazy Frenchmen. I think they'd need a roof over their heads. And I don't mean to cast aspersions - I'd need one too.

 

I hear the golden goose is 30% cheaper these days, anyways.