This article was written by Matt Foley and published on Sport & State, a new media company founded by Clay Travis that is built around sports, culture, original voices, and live conversation.
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Aaron Rodgers has spent two decades in professional football, won four MVP awards, and spent more time irritating NFL executives with his willingness to speak his mind than just about any active player.
So, it was a bit surprising to hear Rodgers sound like such a company man when discussing his Steelers’ trip to Paris last week.
Following Pittsburgh’s 16-10 win over the Saints, the 42-year-old spoke glowingly about the NFL’s potential to grow the game abroad, while suggesting that the league take on a more immersive approach to growing the game on foreign soil.
“I think [the NFL] should mandate every team coming over Sunday or Monday to really enjoy the culture of the place you’re going,” said Rodgers. “You can do events in those cities and community outreach.”
Rodgers went on to claim that, during the 2020 CBA negotiations, an entire “international week” that would have put 16 games in 16 foreign cities across the globe was on the table. Ultimately, he says, the idea was scrapped in favor of adding a 17th game.
Incredible: Aaron Rodgers peels back curtain on NFL. Said a decade ago plan was for a full week of international games. Mentions Dubai as destination. But greedy owners wanted 17th game instead. Would have added extra bye for player health. He also rips owners for being cheap 😂 https://t.co/nI6dkTmWlM
— Andrew Fillipponi (@ThePoniExpress) October 25, 2026
The league’s current international plans aren’t quite that ambitious, but all signs point to Rodgers’ reveal becoming reality as the NFL carries out its manifest destiny marketing approach.
This season, the NFL is playing a record nine international games across seven countries, with trips to Madrid (Nov. 8), Munich (Nov. 15), and Mexico City (Nov. 22) still to come. They’ve played in Australia, Brazil, France, and the Jaguars’ second home: England.
Last week, the league shrugged off nationwide political riots in France, continuing the Parisian leg of its global tour without a hitch.
Meanwhile, NFL executive Peter O’Reilly says the league is considering increasing to 10 international games in 2027, the maximum permitted under its current CBA, and commissioner Roger Goodell is already eyeing Tokyo for 2027 or 2028. Goodell has publicly confirmed the long-term plan to put permanent franchises abroad.
The league has become the undisputed king of American sports, but now, it’s officially running out of America — both in terms of eyeballs and suitable markets for expansion.
In a business where constant growth is the only answer, the NFL has its hungry eyes set on the rest of the world.
But what happens to the game in our backyard when American football stops being… American?
The business of world domination
The NFL’s international ambitions make perfect business sense.
“Domestically, the NFL is nearing revenue saturation,” sports business attorney Warren Zolatold Sport & State. “Domestic media rights and stadium pricing are near peak efficiency.”
“To justify franchise valuations, ownership needs new growth runways.”
With its Global Markets Program, all 32 franchises now have access to marketing and commercial partnerships in 22 international markets, helping these corporations inject their brand awareness into the willing and unwilling brains of foreign consumers.
It’s an ambitious operation, and it’s working.
More than 100,000 fans packed the Melbourne Cricket Ground for the 49ers-Rams season opener in September. The Cowboys –Ravens game in Rio de Janeiro drew 24.9 million viewers, making it the most-watched international game in NFL history.
Dallas left reeling as the Ravens walk it off in Rio.
Is Cowboys coach Brian Schottenheimer to blame? Fans are pointing to two puzzling late-game decisions…
✍️: @mattyfoles
https://t.co/WveeFKm59R— Sport & State (@SportNState) September 28, 2026
Zola believes that’s the real business opportunity. “Expanding to London, Munich, São Paulo, and Madrid lets the NFL capture massive untapped audiences for future global streaming deals… and sponsorship revenue for the next 20–30 years,” he said.
But expanding a business and developing a sport are two different tasks.</strong
In new markets with no cultural attachment to football, it’s reasonable to believe the sport will never be more than a niche entertainment product.
Maybe NFL owners are content with that. But as the league invests tremendous resources into its global future, it’s worth considering whether growing the business has become more important than nurturing the sport at home.
For football to thrive, equal attention should be paid to the communities keeping the game alive.
Friday night lights burn bright
Drive through almost any American town on a Friday evening in October, and you’ll find a scene that no media contract can properly value.
Pickup trucks lining the perimeter of a high school football field. Parents bundled in blankets, packed into aluminum bleachers. A marching band warming up behind the end zone as young kids play catch in their Pee Wee jerseys. The smell of a charcoal grill working overtime at the concession stand wafts across the parking lot.
It could be a packed stadium in West Texas, a Catholic League rivalry game in Chicago, or a tiny public school in central Pennsylvania where four generations of the same family have worn the same uniform.
The Chicago Catholic League is NO JOKE. 😳
This entrance by St. Patrick ahead of their matchup vs. No. 2 Mt. Carmel 🔥 https://t.co/DDbRyae3Qz
— SLOCHE (@sloche_o) September 19, 2026
The stakes are smaller than an NFL Sunday, but this is the foundation of American football culture.
Before the scholarships and paychecks, youth football fields are where children learn to love the sport, where communities develop traditions, and where athletes discover their mettle.
And despite the persistent claims of football’s impending demise, the domestic game is in remarkably good shape.
According to the National Federation of State High School Associations (NFHS), 1,043,716 boys played 11-player football last season, an increase of 1.4% and the highest participation figure since 2016–17.
Including the smaller tackle-football formats and girls’ participation, that number climbs to more than 1.08 million.
According to NFHS spokesperson Jordan Morey, high school football remains “healthy and resilient… Participation numbers show that football is still an important part of the high school experience and communities across the country,” Morey told Sport & State.
But national participation figures can also conceal some major differences in the quality of the experience.
A teenage quarterback at an elite private school in Tennessee has access to professional trainers, sophisticated equipment, and coaches with decades of NFL experience.
A kid with comparable talent in rural Kansas might be learning the position from a volunteer whose primary qualification is part-time employment as the local PE teacher.
Both are playing football, but they hardly have the same opportunity to develop.
The best and worst of American football
Trent Dilfer played 14 seasons in the NFL, won Super Bowl XXXV with the Baltimore Ravensin 2001, became a television analyst, the lead talent evaluator for Elite 11, and has coached both high school and Division 1 college football.
After three seasons as the head coach at UAB (2023-2025), he returned to Lipscomb Academy in Nashville, where he rediscovered his enthusiasm for developing young athletes.
“I lived the nightmare for three years,” Dilfer told Sport & State, reflecting on the transactional nature of coaching college coaching. “There were no guardrails at UAB. It was brutal.”
The college ranks left Dilfer disillusioned, but as a high school coach, he can devote more attention to developing players rather than navigating the transfer portal and managing an NIL payroll.
“College football broke me.” – @DilfersDimes
Trent Dilfer returns to high school football after coaching just 30 games as UAB’s HC. He coached and won two championships in four seasons at Lipscomb Academy, a school he says is more invested in building a winner compared to his brief stop in Birmingham.
— Jonathan Hutton (@HuttOnAir) January 8, 2026
Dilfer is a thoughtful guy, and like most of his musings, his assessment of the state of American football development is nuanced. He says the current American football landscape is both encouraging and alarming.
“There are so many good developers in the space right now,” he said, pointing to specialized trainers like Jeremy Holt, who works with professional athletes while also coaching young players in Nashville.
Former Vanderbilt star-turned-NFL receiver Jordan Matthews is on Dilfer’s staff at Lipscomb. According to Dilfer, Matthews turned down three NFL coaching jobs to continue coaching high school ball.
“Every day our wide receivers are getting NFL-quality teaching,” Dilfer said. “The coaching that kids at top programs are getting is better than I got in the NFL.”
But then there’s the other end of the spectrum.
“Probably half of what we see is just horrific.”
Dilfer describes a youth football ecosystem increasingly influenced by private trainers, recruiting services, and handlers whose financial interests don’t align with the athletes they’re supposed to be helping.
“There are so many unqualified trainers trying to gain a following… and street agents capitalizing on families, teaching them the wrong things so it looks good on Twitter,” he said.
Youth programs that prioritize recruiting rankings and winning tournaments over fundamentals are easy to spot, says Dilfer, with young athletes encouraged to chase exposure and scholarship offers before developing the tools to succeed in college.
“You can win at a very high level and you can truly, truly develop your entire roster,” said Dilfer. “But it’s really hard, and it takes a lot of resources.”
In an era when the NFL is willing to spend decades spawning football fans in foreign countries, it’s fair to wonder if the league is equally invested in ensuring that American children have the resources to develop into athletes that can play the game at the highest level.
After all, the Tokyo Tigers in 2040 will have a roster full of American kids in middle school today.
Growing football means more than growing an audience
None of this is to say that the NFL has abandoned grassroots football.
Through the NFL Foundation, USA Football, and a variety of youth development initiatives, the league provides coaching education, equipment grants, player safety programs, and opportunities for children to participate in the sport.
At the youth level, flag football has become a key component of that strategy.
More than 102,000 girls participated in high school flag football last year, up nearly 49% from 2024, and more than 4.1 million children in total played youth flag in 2025.
Clearly, flag football is an example of how the league’s domestic and international interests can support each other.
“Flag football lowers domestic barriers to entry, especially for girls, while providing a low-cost, easily exportable model for international expansion,” he told Sport & State.
Growing football overseas doesn’t inherently mean neglecting the sport at home, and Zola doesn’t believe the NFL’s international ambitions will necessarily come at the expense of domestic development.
But growing the number of people who watch football isn’t the same as growing the game itself.
One strategy yields new television audiences and merchandise sales. The other requires vast infrastructure and countless individuals willing to dedicate enormous amounts of time to teaching children a game.
The NFL has transcended excellence when it comes to the former. Its challenge is making sure the latter doesn’t totally devolve.
And if you’re looking for evidence of what happens when player development takes a backseat to immediate results, look no further than the NFL’s most important position.
Despite an incredibly deep pool of exceptional athletes, there’s a growing concern that high school and college programs are producing quarterbacks who can’t make it at the next level.
SEC Network analyst Chris Doering told Sport & State that amateur coaches often put their best athlete at quarterback because it gives them the best chance to win quickly. But relying purely on athleticism doesn’t prepare a quarterback to succeed against better competition.
Michigan’s $12 million quarterback experiment has taken a detour.
Enter Tommy Carr.
Now, the Wolverines have to see if their next answer under center can deliver.
✍️: @markjburns88
https://t.co/xunz2SbcQS
— Sport & State (@SportNState) October 21, 2026
Former NFL QB Jeff Garcia agrees. “The quarterback position, especially, is not being coached up and taught the right fundamentals,” he told Jonathan Hutton and Chad Withrow on Outkick’s Hot Mic earlier this year.
Nick Saban has echoed those concerns, pointing to spread offenses and RPO systems in college that solve problems for the quarterbacks, rather than requiring them to develop the mental side of the game.
According to Pro Football Focus, total NFL passing yardage fell to its lowest level in 16 seasons in 2025, nearly 8% below its 2021 mark. Only six quarterbacks threw for more than 4,000 passing yards, the fewest in 15 seasons. While increasingly sophisticated defenses and shifting offensive strategies share responsibility, the numbers suggest that NFL offenses are feeling the effect of a less prolific generation of passers.
The NFL can’t be expected to solve every developmental deficiency in American football, but if we’re pocket-watching, the league certainly has the means to make a difference. And unlike an overseas marketing campaign, investing in better domestic player development could directly improve the product the league puts on the field every Sunday.
That means expanding access to quality coaching and training in communities across the country, and creating more opportunities for former players to mentor young athletes.
“You just need more good coaches,” he said. “You need more good men who are expert teachers and believe in what sport can do for these kids.”
That’s a simple prescription, but it requires more than a check from the NFL Foundation or another celebrity appearance at a youth football camp.
America’s game is worth protecting
Let’s be clear here: there’s nothing inherently wrong with a German teenager becoming a Detroit Lions fan.
A packed stadium in Melbourne doesn’t diminish the atmosphere at Soldier Field, and a football-curious crowd in Madrid doesn’t make Friday night in Buford, Georgia, any less meaningful.
Across generations, football has become woven into the fabric of American communities. The sport’s significance has never been limited to the number of people watching it, and a few extra viewers abroad won’t change that.
“Football is no more important than bowling,” said Dilfer. “It’s no more important than the orchestra. It’s no more important than fourth-period chemistry.”
“But it is exponentially more impactful than all of them.”
The influence a football program can have on an entire school and town is unmatched, which is exactly why the parts of the sport that don’t impact a balance sheet should be the NFL’s focus for domestic youth development.
Discipline, teamwork, accountability, sacrifice.
In this modern age of ultra-capitalism, those culture-first nouns are alarmingly easy for corporations to ignore. But as football becomes increasingly commodified, they’re also the attributes that keep the game on solid footing.
The NFL is rapidly growing its global empire, but that globalization shouldn’t become an excuse to take the domestic game for granted. Whether Goodell realizes it or not, American football culture is an asset far more valuable than any Japanese television rights.
The NFL can have the rest of the world. Just make sure to tend the roots.
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