The National Football League is doing its best to undermine our international relations with Great Britain, sending the woeful 0-7 Miami Dolphins to London to play a regular season game on Sunday against the New York Giants. For most Floridians, that's not far enough! Perhaps playing the game in Beijing, 13 time zones ahead and starting at 2 a.m., would be better. Then there would be less chance of turning on the television and accidentally seeing the game.
I don't understand the logic of playing a regular season game that actually counts in a foreign country. Preseason exhibition games? Fine, no problem. But there are only eight regular season home games during an NFL season, and the Dolphins gave up one of them for this game to be played in London. Sure, they suck this year, but there's a principle here: You don't stiff your home fans by taking away a regular season game and traveling a few thousand miles to play it on the road.
Sure, Major League Baseball does it too. They've had some teams open up with a three-game series in Japan in recent years, but still, that's only about 1/27th of a team's home schedule. Each game in the NFL is far more important because they only play 1/10th as many games as MLB does.
You know that the stadium in London will probably be only half-full at best; after all, what they call "football" in England is played with a round, black-and-white ball. A third-tier soccer game would probably draw a larger crowd.
