NFL In Oregon? Yes, Please

Last Saturday, Roger Goodell made his annual state of the NFL address. In it he said that while the NFL has no plans for expansion right now they wouldn’t expand by less than two teams. Now everyone knows that the most likely landing spot for a new NFL team is Los Angeles. I’m not even going to try to argue against that, there is no point. My argument is for where the other team should be placed. Call me biased but I’m going to argue that the NFL should strongly consider placing one right here in Oregon.

I recently found out that the number one most viewed team on Oregon Sports News last month was the Seattle Seahawks. Not the Portland Trail Blazers or any other Oregon based team and the margin between the number one and two teams wasn’t even close.  You know what that tells me? It tells me that Oregon sports fans are hungry for some football. If Oregon fans want something they are going to support it. It’s a Northwest thing.

Fans from the northwest have a long history of being incredible. Just look at the fans of that football team to the north. They’re so loud that they have a palpable impact on the game and opposing teams come into the stadium knowing it. There’s another group of fans who have been known to have a palpable impact on their teams success: the fans of the Portland Trail Blazers. Blazers fans hold the consecutive sellout streak record for the NBA at over 800 games, and on January 23, had sold out over 160 straight. You have to ask yourself if you really believe that these people won’t come out for an Oregon based football team.

Now I realize there are a few problems with putting a team in Oregon but I think they can be overcome. The first problem would be finding an owner who would want to bring a team here. The first person you would look towards would be Paul Allen, but he already owns a NFL team and it seems unlikely that he would choose to own two teams or even be allowed to do so. The next person to look to would be Phil Knight, the man clearly needs something to do with his money and he’s shown an interest in being involved with the NFL, Nike currently owns the NFL uniform license. Of course the fact that Nike has that license might be an issue in trying to own a team. Maybe Oregon fans could pull a Green Bay and create a fan owned team.  Another issue would be trying to find a place to find a place to put a brand new football stadium. While I’m neither an architect nor a city planner, I’m sure there is a way to make Hillsboro Stadium work. There would need to be some major renovations but I’m sure it could be done.  The biggest issue in trying to bring a team to Oregon though is trying to figure out what to name it.  So what do you guys think is a professional football team in Oregon a good idea and, more importantly, what would you name it?