16 games is enough. I don't like change in general but I really don't like change when it means that my favorite football players have to get one more game "beat up" than they should.
My gut tells me that I'd rather see them have two preseason games and add the other two to the regular season (to keep it in even numbers) but my head tells me two more games is just unreasonable. True the USFL played 18 game seasons and many playoff teams do it already but it just seems like an unnecessary stress on the players bodies.
Leave it at 16. It works just fine and despite what the owners think they don't have to have every single dollar ever printed. They can do without some of the money. So can the players for that matter.
This whole issue seems to revolve around the CBA the owners voted out of a couple of weeks ago.
The players get 60% of the revenues off the top which is causing profit concerns for the owners. The players are paid very well and this isn't just evil team owners trying to line their pockets.
It seems the owners are doing this proposal so the players can keep the 60% of gross revenues. If the players don't agree with the extra game proposal, the owners will say they need a decrease in the percentage to the Union.
Regular season games make more money the preseason games. The bigger the gross, the more is left over of the 40% for the owners to cover all of their costs and ROI.
Bob McNair paid $1 billion dollars for the Texans, so obvisously he needs to make a very good profit to justify his ROI. Same goes for the Cowboys and their $1 billion stadium.
My point is, don't blame the owners here. Labor has their hand in this too because they are the most significant cost in the entire business venture anyway.
By the way, I don't like the idea of adding an extra game. I like the 16 game season, how it work with scheduling, and it's probably not too healthy to add that extra game for the players anyway. But, money and emotions drive things in this world more than logic and sensibility.