Imagining an expanded NFL with overseas presence

	Arizona's Robert Griffith waves a Mexican flag before the beginning of last season's regular-season contest between the Cardinals and the 49ers in Mexico City. AP
	MAILBAG Peter King will answer your questions each week in Monday Morning Quarterback: Tuesday Edition. Your name: Your e-mail address: Your home town: Enter your question:

A lot of you have expressed an opinion on how many teams there should be in Los Angeles. And some of you, which surprises me, think there should be more teams in the league, period ... regardless of locale. Let's look into that.

WHY NOT 36 TEAMS? WHY NOT 40? From Joe Wilck of Farmville, Va.: "I know this will just add to the madness, but why doesn't the NFL just add a few more teams over the next decade or so? The popularity of the sport is at an all-time high, sellouts at nearly all the venues. Obviously, adding a franchise from scratch is a lot harder than picking up a team and moving it, but it can be done.''

Very interesting. Let me throw a wet blanket on this immediately by saying that NFL owners don't want to add more teams because it would reduce their cut of the money the league gets from the networks. The network pot would be a bit bigger, to be sure, with more teams, because there would be more games. But it wouldn't be a gargantuan increase, because advertisers are near their breaking point right now. And if you have Coors Light as the official beer sponsor of the NFL, what can you have Miller Lite and Bud Light be? It's a tricky balancing act.

But for fun, let's play the new board game "Let's Expand the NFL.'' I'll give you two new divisions -- the NFC International and the AFC Americas.

The NFC International: London, Germany (maybe Hamburg, Berlin or Rhein), Toronto, Vancouver

The AFC Americas: Los Angeles, Anaheim, San Antonio, Mexico City

I can see the money being minted in Mexico right now. That country loves the NFL, and with its ties to Southern California and Texas, rivalries would be born instantaneously. The other thing this would do, and I thank my Virginia e-mailer for prompting this thought, is ensure that for the foreseeable future the Saints would stay in New Orleans, since the L.A. and San Antonio markets would be taken.

Re: the NFC International, the NFL would have to do a few things to make this workable. Like schedule two-game European road trips for five or six U.S. teams every season. There'd be a rotation. Let's say every five years your franchise would have to travel to Europe for a two-game road swing. Very doable.

I would not object to a franchise in the Far East, but that's just going too far afield, in many ways. Can you imagine how much a 17-hour flight from Boston to Beijing would sap players? Bill Belichick would love that.