Passport please…

This morning while I was doing my daily internet surfing waiting for an idea for today’s post to jump out and smack my brain, I came across some breaking news about a plan Major League Baseball has to move a regular season series between the Mets and the Marlins from New York to San Juan, Puerto Rico.  Needless to say, while reading this my brain was smacked.

This is a frighting trend that seems to be sweeping all of the major US professional sports.  The NBA has opened the regular season in Asia on more than one occasion.  The NHL opened this year’s regular season in Europe,  Major League baseball is planning this move and it has done similar things in years past.  And the NFL is doing more of this than any other league.  This past season the NFL played a regular season game in London for the third consecutive year, and there is now serious talk about adding a second game there next season.  Even scarier, there have been discussions of having the Super Bowl in London sometime within the next decade and even forming a franchise in London somewhere down the line.

Now I can understand the NHL, MLB, and even the NBA wanting to do something like this.  These sports are all played in dozens of countries all over the world and a good percentage of these leagues’ players were born outside of the US.  But the NFL?  There is no sport more American than football and no league has a higher percentage of American born players than the NFL.   Not to mention, the NFL tried this with NFL Europe and it was a complete disaster.

I can even understand doing it with preseason games.  The games don’t count so the atmosphere is a little more relaxed and its a good opportunity for these leagues to spread a little good will, but I have to draw the line when it comes to regular season games.

For starters, the length of the travel  and crossing different time zones only to jump on a plane and do it all again a couple days later seems unnecessarily hard on these athletes.  Think about it, they have to spend 8 to 10 hours or more on a plane flying across at least a half dozen times zones and then have the leagues counting on them to perform at their very best for an international audience after only a day or two to recover.  Ohh by the way, after the game you have to fly back to the States and go through all of that again.  Its extremely hard on athletes and there have been multiple reports come out stating that the players would rather not do it.

And perhaps most important, these teams that are chosen to play in other countries lose home games during the regular season.  The NFL teams in that play in London only have 7 home games during the season instead of the normal 8.  That hardly seems fair to the loyal fans of these franchises.  You are limiting their chances to see the team in person, which is especially important in the NFL with the limited number of home games.

In an effort to make these league’s more global, the big wigs are forgetting about who made them successful in the first place, the fans in the cities these teams are based.  Taking home games away from loyal fans after all the money and time we invest into the teams and giving them to people of other countries who have done nothing to deserve it is a slap in the face.  And taking the Super Bowl, holy crap.  There is no single sporting event more American than the Super Bowl and taking that away would be the ultimate sign of disrespect to the American sports fan.  I’m not saying people from other countries don’t have the right to enjoy our professional sports, because they do, but there are plenty of preseason and televised games to accomplish that without taking the games that count away from the fans who deserve them.

Now I know the reasons for moving these games is strictly financial, but is that extra money worth alienating the people who built the foundation for your success?