Fútbol is international, why not Football?

Many football games have been played overseas, with fans living in countries like England, Germany and Brazil getting to enjoy games yearly. 16 games were played internationally this past season, and 7 more are already scheduled for the next in at least 5 different countries. These games almost always sell out and are beloved by NFL fans in continents like Europe and South America, and with such support, why can’t they have their own team too? Well, the reality is it just simply isn’t physically possible right now, for a surprising reason. When most people think of what’s needed to play a football game, they think of a team, players, coaches, equipment, a field. The last thing on a person’s mind is travel. Even inside of the United States, traveling can often play a substantial role in a team’s success, as a team like the Seattle Seahawks must travel thousands of miles more than a team like the New England Patriots every year just due to their geographic location and the location of teams they play frequently. While putting a franchise in a country like Ireland would receive tons of support, and would immediately have a stable economic, location and fan base to build off of, their location would give them a huge advantage playing against teams that had to travel around 4,000 miles to get to that location alone, but would also be a huge disadvantage when playing away games as they could have to travel up to 100,000 miles in a season, which would negatively affect the physical wellbeing of the players and coaches, and cause their bodies to be much more tired than players of other teams. While an international team is a good idea in theory, unless there are drastic improvements in the field of aviation that could allow teams to travel a thousand miles per hour, it just simply isn’t realistically possible for the near future. However, there will still be many games being played overseas by current franchises, and the international fanbase will hopefully grow to one day be able to accommodate an NFL team when it’s more realistic.