NFL Owners to Discuss Longer Regular Season, but Vote Unlikely

A proposal to lengthen the regular season and another that would change anti-tampering rules are among the issues that NFL owners are expected to discuss in a two-day meeting that begins today in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.

Whether they'll vote on either is another matter.

Several owners have said in recent days they don't expect a vote on the proposal to expand the regular season from 16 to 17 or 18 games per team, and reduce the preseason by a corresponding number of games. But Commissioner Roger Goodell apparently is leaving open the possibility of a vote.

Either way, Goodell and the owners have said the league will address the issue with the players' union during the upcoming labor negotiations.

The measure had strong support among owners at the annual league meeting in Dana Point, Calif., in March. New York Giants co-owner John Mara said then that he opposed a longer regular season but he might have been alone in his opposition.

Some owners favor a longer regular season as a possible means of increasing television revenue. This meeting comes with the NFL in the process of negotiating two-year extensions of its TV deals with Fox and CBS, according to sources. Those contracts currently run through the 2011 season.

The owners also could vote at this meeting on a proposal by the league's competition committee to create a window, perhaps five to seven days long, before the opening of the free-agent market in which a player eligible for free agency could negotiate with all teams through his agent.

Under the current rule, a player eligible for free agency can negotiate only with his current team before the opening of the free agent market. Some people within the league believe the rule is widely ignored despite stepped-up enforcement efforts by the NFL office as part of Goodell's crackdown on cheating in the aftermath of the videotaping scandal involving the New England Patriots.

The competition committee is attempting to create a rule that could be more easily enforced. The committee wrote in its report to the owners in March that the implementation of a negotiating window before free agency "would create a more level playing field," adding that "teams that are in compliance with the rule for negotiating with free agents will not be at a competitive disadvantage."

DeMaurice Smith, the executive director of the NFL Players Association, is scheduled to address the owners today about the upcoming labor negotiations.

The owners will also award the 2013 Super Bowl to either New Orleans, Miami or Phoenix.