NFL Games in London and Mexico City

Starting in 2005 when Arizona played San Francisco in an October regular season game in Mexico City, the National Football League has been staging regular season games abroad, most of them in London, England and a few in Mexico City.  Apart from this project, the Buffalo Bills as a franchise decided to hold some games a few years ago in Toronto...that's a separate issue since all of those games were the Bills' home games.  One of the two main problems I see with this international promotion on the part of the NFL is that it interferes with the fairness of regular season team competition by regularly taking away a scheduled home game from one team while taking away an away contest from another.  This wouldn't be important were it not for the fact that home teams by and large do much better than the visitors...and some teams, like the Jacksonville Jaguars and Miami Dolphins, have too often had to bear the burden of giving up one of those precious home games during the year just to suit the league office's fancies.  This year, for example, both Jacksonville and Miami had "home" games in London while the Dolphins' chief divisional rival, New England gets a break with their ongoing "away" game against Oakland, the game taking place at the neutral site Mexico City.  I honestly don't know why the schedule makers go to so much trouble to ensure that every team in each division plays the same teams in other divisions in order to make it "fair" while at the same time pulling this grossly unfair stunt on some teams and their fans...

The other objection I have to staging NFL games in countries like England and Mexico is that the sport simply isn't played there.  When I was growing up, we were constantly starting up football games at the bus stop or during free time...in other countries like Mexico or England the kids would be doing the same with soccer, which is their version of football.  There is no way that American football will ever take hold over soccer in those countries, and the National Football League is very shortsighted for not seeing this.  But instead of cutting back, they keep expanding the schedule to hold more games abroad, penalizing certain franchises while favoring others.  Really bad idea, dudes...