As the NFL kicks off its 94th season on Thursday night in Denver, one thing is self-evident: There is nothing bigger in American popular culture.

The league has television contracts with four major networks: NBC, ABC, CBS and FOX, which run through 2022 and are worth a hair below $40 billion. Thirteen NFL franchises, at more than $1 billion, are worth more than the gross domestic product of at least one United Nations-recognized sovereign state.

Commissioner Roger Goodell’s empire provides the most ideal opportunity to do something no professional sports league has ever done: Put a team on another continent.

There are two conditions a professional sports league must satisfy to make this unprecedented conquest. The league must be dynamic on television and the sport must be played ubiquitously across the globe. Football satisfies the former, but not the latter.

Football has been a favorite American pastime for two decades. With the NFL Network, Monday Night Football and the rapid evolution of the passing game and fantasy sports, football has become the biggest ongoing phenomenon in television history. The 21 most watched events in American television history are Super Bowls.

It seems logical to think that with a little bit of exposure, Europe could catch onto this nirvana for couch potatoes.

But there are basic, inherent reasons why football has not already expanded in droves beyond our borders.

Firstly, it shares a name with Europe’s most popular sport. It is also a more organized twin of rugby, Europe’s second most popular sport.

Without a global presence, football will never be featured in an international competition. It will never be able to use an Olympics or World Cup to build a worldwide ecosystem.

Basketball proliferated after the 1992 Summer Olympics when NBA players were allowed to participate for the first time. Youth soccer blew up in the United States after we hosted the 1994 Men’s World Cup.

So, the NFL is left with an unfavorable option: Expand its brand to the international market before the sport itself expands. The league is actively doing this, with misleading success.

In 2005, the NFL kicked off its International Series, which features an annual game played outside the United States. Since 2007, the game has been played at London’s famous Wembley Stadium.

While the game has never drawn fewer than 76,000 fans, it is popular for the same reason the NHL’s Winter Classic is popular: It happens once a year.

Without a grassroots base, European fans will not stay interested for a five-month NFL season. NFL Europe, a developmental league based in Europe from 1991-2007, folded after losing $30 million per season, according to NFL.com.

By globalizing its brand, the NFL is trying to emulate the English Premier League. With no teams outside of the United Kingdom, the EPL is the most watched sports league in the world, broadcasting in 212 countries to 643 million homes, according to PremierLeague.com.

But unlike football, futbόl is the world’s most popular sport. The EPL already had a worldwide fan base before it became a globetrotting television product.

In the near future, a professional league will become a cross-continental enterprise. The NFL might be the richest entity, but the EPL is the most robust combination of television and grassroots ubiquity.

As Americans, we will hate and love it when the EPL beats our NFL in the race to globalize. We will hate losing to Europe, but we will love keeping football to ourselves.

Somewhere along the way, we came to share baseball, our pastime, with Asia and the Caribbean. Football became our present time. For now, at least, it’s going to stay that way.

Jarrad Saffren is a senior political science major. His column appears weekly. He can be reached at jdsaffre@syr.edu.

Published on September 4, 2013 at 1:52 am