If you’re a fan of professional football, you’re not alone.
According to the National Association of Sports Organizations (NASO), the NFL has had a tough year, losing three of its top-three franchises in the last three seasons.
It also lost a number of high-profile players, like defensive lineman Ray Lewis, who have also lost their jobs over the last two years.
Now, the NFL is hoping to add a new sport, the “competitive organization sports” (COTS) leagues, to help it better compete with its larger rivals, the NBA and MLB.
In a memo sent out by the league on Wednesday, commissioner Roger Goodell called the new sport “a new way for teams to compete.”
That means, in essence, that the league is planning to add new teams, teams that will compete with the NBA, MLB and other major sports leagues in the future.
The new sport will be a league that can “bring together the best athletes, coaches, and business leaders in the world, and will serve as a model for the next generation of competitive organizations sports.”
The league has been working on the proposal for years.
It has been in talks with the NCAA, the NCAA’s governing body, since 2012, and the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) since 2015.
The NFL’s proposed COTS rules for the upcoming season include an emphasis on the “quality of competition and team quality.”
The rules will require teams to play four games a season, starting in 2020, and to have a minimum of four full-time staff members and seven full-year scholarships for their full- and part-time athletes.
In addition, the COTS teams will have to “play on a high-quality, nationally televised platform,” according to the memo.
“The teams will be judged on their overall record, team performance, and attendance, with an emphasis being placed on the ‘most consistent’ performance on a given night,” it said.
The league hopes to have the COTs in place by the 2019-20 season.
The memo also says the Cots would be based in cities where fans have been able to access “the game” before the NFL opened its season.
“We have seen how successful this approach has been for the NFL,” the memo said.
“Our goal is to build upon this successful model by creating an open-access, high-performance, and professional league for COTS players and fans in a number, if not most, cities.”
While it seems like a lot of work for the league, the memo also said it would help the league grow its fan base.
“This proposal is an opportunity for the CTS to continue to grow the sport in an era when its fans are not yet fully accustomed to the experience of playing football on a professional level,” the league said.
In 2015, the New York Times reported that the NFL had been considering a similar proposal to establish a COTS league in 2020.
“For the first time in decades, the game of football could be played on a national stage, with professional teams competing in front of a national audience and a significant amount of local participation,” the Times reported.
“And because the sport is growing so rapidly, the league could provide the sport with an economic boost for its owners.”
The COTS leagues have been around for a few years, but only recently have they started to take off.
They are being proposed by several sports leagues, including Major League Baseball, the National Basketball Association, the World Baseball Classic and the Women’s World Series.
In January, MLB announced it was adding one of its own, the American League.
That move comes just a few months after the NFL announced that it would add two of its COTS franchises to the league.
In 2019, the leagues’ respective owners approved a rule that allowed players from any team, even if they are from outside the league’s borders, to participate in the games.
The leagues’ leagues have since expanded their rosters and added new teams and players.
“It’s clear that the CTOs of today have the ability to expand and build on the legacy of the NFL and create a great league for fans to enjoy,” the MLB said in a statement at the time.
“There is no better way to do that than to work with our owners to develop a COT league that will help us do just that.”
In the memo sent Wednesday, Goodell also said that the “new COTS competition will be different from the current COTS structure, which relies on a series of teams playing in a single league to determine its top eight teams.”
“We recognize that the sport has grown in popularity in recent years and it has provided great opportunities for the players, coaches and owners of our leagues to have success on a weekly basis,” Goodell said.
But the Cottons memo does note that “this new model will provide for greater competition for the top teams.” The memo
