NFL in London? Be careful what you wish for

The NFL announced Thursday it will not schedule a 2006 regular season game in London, scuttling plans for a contest in the new Wembley Stadium. The extended time it took for owners and players to reach a collective bargaining deal, and perhaps the delay on the Wembley Stadium construction, may have prompted the league to ixnay its plans for this season. You can bet the mortgage, however, that a game will be played in England or some European city in 2007. It's inevitable as the NFL looks to expand American football globally. Playing games outside U.S. borders seems like a fantastic idea. And, for now, it is a great idea to spread our country's new national pastime to other lands. However, the league's plans today may not look so good in, say, the year 2055. That, perhaps, is when some wise guy NFL commissioner has a brilliant idea for a World American Football Classic, and the U.S. team promptly gets it butt kicked and eliminated in the first round because the rest of the world has gotten so frickin' good at our game. I can see it now. Prior to the first contest, FIFA, the governing body of soccer – the other game the rest of the world calls football – will propose a bet to NFL Commissioner Wiseguy that will call for us Americans, if we lose the WAFC, to change the name of our game and let the rest of the world keep the name football. Then, Germany, after numerous years of observing NFL Europe games (Who knew they were watching?), eliminates the U.S. team in round one. Now, upon losing, we Americans have to change the name of the most popular game in the U.S. "You shall change your game's name to Turdball," the then FIFA president will say to Americans in a live news conference from London's William Jefferson Clinton Stadium. "We chose that name because your game's ball looks like a giant rat turd." Can you imagine 50 years from now seeing John Madden's severed head on a robotic body announcing games for the National Turdball League?