There was "plenty of talk" about London's NFL prospects at last month's owners' meeting in Charlotte, and the movement to place a team there is "still alive and well," according to Jason La Canfora of CBSSPORTS.com. NFL Exec VP/Int'l Mark Waller gave a "detailed progress report and presentation to the owners at that meeting that led many teams to come away more convinced than ever that this is something" the league "very much wants to happen." Sources said that there "was discussion of some of the obvious potential ongoing hurdles -- how players will be compensated, the ability to recruit players and coaches there -- but those seem like labor issues that can be fairly easily mined." Sources added that the NFL "continues to fine tune how it will approach these quandaries, but they are not considered to be deal-breakers to any degree." What the league is "most concerned about sorting out lately is how it would handle a London franchise once it inevitably reached a playoff round and faced a team from beyond the Midwest." It also "remains a riddle how to handle scheduling and broadcasting should a London team hypothetically have to go to somewhere" like San Diego or S.F. for the playoffs. La Canfora: "How can you accommodate both clubs in terms of rest and travel during a period of the season in which no bye is possible? Do you build in buffers to play games on a Tuesday or Thursday, say, if the two teams involved prefer that?" (CBSSPORTS.com, 6/3).
