If the CEO of Florida Citrus Sports has his way, Orlando could have two NFL teams play in the city in 2017. Before you get your hopes up, Steve Hogan was talking about having two NFL teams play at the Citrus Bowl, and not about the city having its own NFL team, so don’t expect to see an Orlando team in the NFL power rankings any time soon.
In an interview with the Orlando Sentinel, Hogan said he plans on having two teams play an NFL regular season game at the Citrus Bowl in 2017. While some people might think it is a pipe dream, you have to remember that the league already plays regular season games overseas, so a game in Orlando doesn’t seem so crazy.
Hogan told the Sentinel that he was focused on being back in the NFL business.
In the past, preseason games have been played in Orlando. To be exact, there have been five games played at the Citrus Bowl, but none since 1997, when the New York Jets defeated the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
Hogan said he would likely settle for preseason games to be played there, but his main goal is to have regular season games played at the stadium.
While Orlando has a reputation in the sports community for being fickle fans, an NFL game being played at the Citrus Bowl is a big deal that even casual sports fans would love to see. In the past, the Citrus Bowl wasn’t considered an ideal location to play an NFL game because the stadium is 80 years old, which is ancient by normal standards and pre historic in today’s sports landscape where teams seemingly have new stadiums built almost every decade.
In order to attract more business for the Citrus Bowl, the stadium underwent a $207 million renovation that brought it up to NFL standards. Unfortunately, that was the easy part, now, Hogan and the city have to convince the NFL and commissioner Roger Goodell to allow them to host an NFL game in 2017.
Another obstacle Hogan and the city of Orlando have to deal with is the fact that NFL teams like to schedule things like teams playing at neutral sites in advance, which allows both the league and the venue to make arrangements to ensure everything goes well.
Instead of waiting on the NFL, Hogan decided to be proactive about getting NFL teams to play a game in Orlando. According to Hogan, he has been in contact with the Miami Dolphins, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, and the Jacksonville Jaguars about the possibility of playing a game in Orlando.
The Dolphins and Buccaneers are the only two Florida teams with a realistic chance of playing in Orlando because the Jaguars already agreed to play one home game in London for the next five seasons, and won’t be willing to give up another home game, especially to another city in their state.
Despite the Jaguars likely not being receptive towards playing a game in Orlando, the league can still make it happen if they can get both the Dolphins and Buccaneers to agree to play each other in Orlando. According to the NFL schedule, both teams are scheduled to play each other in 2017, so all the NFL has to do is schedule the game to be played in Orlando.
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