The NFL has not been talking about expansion.
A few weeks ago, prior to the United Football League’s championship game, the UFL’s co-owner Mike Repole said something rather interesting and somewhat strange. The co-owner of what really is a minor league football operation may or may not have some inside knowledge of what the NFL is doing in the future but he casually mentioned that the NFL is “talking about two more expansion teams.” There is no documentation that the National Football League is adding new teams although NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell has mentioned that London, England could eventually be part of the NFL. In 2022, Goodell talked about the series of games that the NFL scheduled in Europe as sort of a test run. “That’s part of what we’re doing, right?” Goodell said. “We’re trying to sort of see, could you have multiple locations in Europe where you could have an NFL franchise? Because it would be easier as a division.”
It doesn’t appear that any of the NFL’s 31 franchise owners and the Green Bay Packers Board of Directors are ready to close up shop in any NFL markets and head to London. The NFL is not going to just put a team in London as a stand-alone franchise. Goodell is right about needing multiple franchises in Europe. There are cities that once housed NFL franchises and if the NFL was serious about adding teams, politicians from Oakland, St. Louis and San Diego might be clamoring to find public money to build an NFL state-of-the-art franchise. In the past San Antonio politicians have made some noise about landing an NFL franchise. San Antonio and Bexar County, Texas politicians would like to renovate the city’s Alamodome but that is taking a back seat to the construction of a San Antonio Spurs’ basketball arena. Repole’s words, for now, should be taken with a grain of salt.
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