NFL Wider Field

[Matt-MI]

I think most of the new NFL stadiums would be hard pressed to give up 35' from the sidelines

[jTheUmp]

Originally Posted by Matt-MI

I think most of the new NFL stadiums would be hard pressed to give up 35' from the sidelines

And that, right there, is why this will never happen. If you widen the inbounds area of the playing field, you have to narrow the OOB/sideline areas. In the few NFL stadiums I've been in, there's not a lot of extra space on the sidelines right now anyway.

The other option would be to remove the first few rows of seats, which would A) be rather expensive on the construction side, although it's a one-time expense, and B) result in fewer high-priced seats available for paying customers (and no owner would go for this).

[Robert Goodman]

Originally Posted by jTheUmp

And that, right there, is why this will never happen. If you widen the inbounds area of the playing field, you have to narrow the OOB/sideline areas.

Or they grandfather the old fields in effect by adopting the same types of field dimension rules most other large-field games have, i.e. minimum & maximum, rather than exact, dimensions. And just build the new stadiums bigger.

[Robert Goodman]

Originally Posted by Matt-MI

I think most of the new NFL stadiums would be hard pressed to give up 35' from the sidelines

That's why this didn't happen a century ago. The Intercollegiate Football Rules Committee was looking at ways to open up the game, and a leading proposal (promoted by Walter Camp, among others) was to widen the field. However, the cement had just been poured for what became Harvard's Soldier Field, which didn't have any more room, so it didn't pass. Instead we got the forward pass.