Paul Revere wouldn’t have had a chance against the Tartan Army.
The recent Scottish takeover of Boston — they drained the city of its beer — left a significant impression on Patriots owner Robert Kraft.
Via Nicole Yang of the Boston Globe, Kraft has informed NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell that the Patriots are interested in playing a regular-season game in Scotland.
Scotland had not previously been mentioned as a potential site of an NFL game.
It’s another example of the overall impact of the ongoing World Cup. America is getting an extended glimpse of the intense passion that fans from other countries have for soccer. That’s the feeling into which the NFL is hoping to tap through its ongoing global experiment.
And while a certain amount of that vibe can be captured by exporting domestic teams to foreign soil for one-off games, the deeper message is unmistakable. To truly attract the intensity that soccer fans from other countries have brought to the United States, the NFL needs to put franchises in other countries.
The pie-in-the-sky outcome would entail dropping eight new teams beyond our borders. A four-team Atlantic division could be put in one conference, and a four-team Pacific division could be added to the other. Forty total teams. Ten four-team divisions.
That would be a big swing for Big Shield. It also could be exactly what the NFL needs to give American football the kind of international lift the league craves.
And, if/when an NFL team from another country has a big game in the U.S., thousands of fans from that country could do what thousands of fans from other countries are currently doing.
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