The NFL and the Arizona Cardinals won’t be playing any international games in 2020. For fans, that is a very good thing and should continue well into the future.
The NFL, in an effort to maintain a “business as usual” posture, has made it official that the league won’t be doing business internationally as they prepare to release their schedule. For local fans, and frankly, for fans as a whole, this is a good thing. The NFL outside of the United States is not a fan favorite where it counts, and the Arizona Cardinals staying home is a very good thing.
The National Football League in its quest to be an international game isn’t going away. Commissioner Roger Goodell, who has been absolutely brilliant these last two months keeping the league on a timeline, longs for a team not in this country. The Jacksonville Jaguars, and of late the Los Angeles Chargers, have both been rumored for placement in the United Kingdom.
The Cardinals, who were due to play a game in Mexico City, get a beneficial reprieve this season. While certainly closer than traveling across the Atlantic, it still costs Arizona a home gate and deprives the local fan of a home game. The games internationally may be valuable to the league, but it’s a bad deal for fans.
As this country and the sports world try to crawl out of its collective safe space and back to some element of “normal”, the NFL should consider abandoning the international series and the relocation of a team anywhere but here. Globalism, a niche concept to those elites who advocate it, is a death-blow to the rank and file NFL fans who have made the league the phenomenon it is. Meaning, if there was ever a time to protect the national product, now is that time.
The Cardinals maintaining an eighth home game is good news for the local fanbase and the league as a whole. While it’s completely logical for the NFL to want to revive their international series in years to come, fans should hope the commissioner and the powers that be reconsider, and keep the games right where they need to be. Home fans deserve that now more than anything else.