Originally posted by sherrane:
Originally posted by RU4Real:
Originally posted by PhilaPhans:
Why was NFL Europe shut down if the NFL really wants to push the sport and put a team in London?
Were the teams just hemorrhaging money at the time? Were they just not getting good enough second tier players? Different commish with a different focus?
NFLE was about a $10 million drain on the bottom line when I left the League in '05. Roger didn't like NFLE - which is another reason why Roger is a dick and nobody likes him - and the assumption was always that it wouldn't survive past Tagliabue's tenure.
Goodell's thinking was that it's not just about the money (which wasn't much), but rather more about the belief that NFLE wasn't critical to the core mission. It was, in essence, a distraction.
Exactly. One of the goals of NFL Europe was to help grow the game outside the US. The problem is that at the end of its existence, NFL Europe was pretty much NFL Germany (plus Amsterdam) and a significant percentage of those attending the games were American military.
Another one of the goals was to develop players, and specifically QBs. There were only a handful of players who ended up making the NFL because of their participation in Europe. Teams had preseason roster exceptions for players who played in Europe (the didn't count against the training camp roster until the final cuts) and few players made the team. Kurt Warner, Jon Kitna, Scott Mitchell, Brad Johnson, Jake Delhomme, David Archer, and Danny Wuerful are the only QBs who attempted more passes in the NFL than they did in NFL Europe.