The NBA, NHL and MLB all have franchises in a country outside the United States. All of these leagues have superstars like Yao Ming, David Ortiz and Alexander Ovechkin who aren’t from America. All of these sports have a strong international presence abroad with professional leagues on different continents. It’s easy to see that traditional American sports are becoming increasingly less American.

While the globalization of sport is a great way to bring different cultures and people together through athletics, the one sport that should not try to expand internationally is football.

I’m all for the NFL trying to spread exposure of the game internationally through television, preseason games and even a few regular season games. In fact, last season’s game in Mexico City – the first regular season NFL game held outside the United States – drew the league’s largest crowd for any game. This season’s regular season game on Oct. 28 in London between the Dolphins and Giants looks to put up similar numbers.

While that’s great for the league, the game and fans everywhere, a line over international expansion has to be drawn.

Earlier this week, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell commented on the possibility of a future Super Bowl being held in London, saying, “There’s a great deal of interest in holding a Super Bowl in London … So we’ll be looking at that.”

Besides the inherent problems with having a cold weather Super Bowl, how can the NFL justify having arguably the biggest American sporting event of the year with two American teams with mostly American athletes playing in a different country? Try explaining that one to the NFL fan base and American advertisers.

After sending games abroad, the next logical step for the NFL seems to be creating a franchise in another country, which has been discussed. At this point, Canada or Mexico seem to be the most likely places. If there’s one thing that baseball and basketball have taught us, though, it is that international expansion is easier said than done.

While teams in Toronto have traditionally enjoyed success, both the NBA and MLB have had to move failing franchises out of Canada. Why would an NFL franchise do any better there? The Canadian Football League has already experienced success, and if the NFL put a team in Canada, it would have to battle an established league for fans and advertising money. While the NFL has destroyed several other leagues that have challenged it, could it take down a popular league with its own strong national identity?

As for Mexico, football takes a backseat to soccer and baseball, neither of which has a team in a professional American league. With NFL teams in cities like San Diego, Dallas, Phoenix and Houston, which have traditionally high Hispanic populations, the NFL would be better off placing a team in Los Angeles and making broadcast deals with TV networks to show more games in Mexico and South America in order to bolster its appeal and exposure in the Latino community.

As for other places around the world, establishing football teams or international leagues would be a recipe for failure at this point because the game has no roots in the cultures.

An example of this is the failed NFL Europa. Most of the players in NFLE were Americans who wanted to get into the NFL, but how can football leagues in other nations expect to survive and grow if the game is being played mostly by Americans who are trying to get out of there?

In order for professional football leagues to be successful internationally, countries would have to develop youth programs to get children involved at an early age. By doing this, they could develop an interest and passion in younger players that would create a generation that wants to play professional football at home.

Of course, the downside to this is the money. Football, unlike many other games, is extremely expensive to play. Pads and other protection need to be purchased and maintained, rosters that can exceed 50 players need to be filled and coaching staffs that handle the aspects of this complicated game need to be hired. Why would other countries and investors want to contribute so much money to a sport that is already unpopular in their culture?

The NFL can try to spread the game internationally but it should not try to impose it on anyone. If other nations want to develop leagues then that’s great, and the NFL should give them full support, but I believe any attempt by the NFL to expand outside the United States will result in failure.

Baseball may be America’s pastime, but football is America’s obsession. You’ve got a good thing going here Mr. Goodell, why try and fix what isn’t broken?

Kyle Betts is a senior in Communications. He can be reached at [email protected].