Draft / Draft 2024 / NFL
By Matt Stuart | Published | 1 Comment
The NFL is taking heat, at least from some online bloggers, over it’s decision to fly some players, that were scheduled for a return trip to Indianapolis this week, in coach rather than first class.
Mike Florio of profootballtalk.com was perhaps the loudest of those voices as he typed his displeasure online on his NBC affiliated blog site.
Florio complained that this decision to fly players in coach was a bad look for the NFL and that the league should have paid to place the players in first class.
Florio stated that he had heard of at least one report where a player of quite substantial size, around 6’05” and 275 pounds was forced to sit in the middle seat of some row back in coach.
“The NFL is being cheap on this because it can be,” Florio wrote on his blog. “Because the prospects will take it. Because it’s an honor and a privilege to be expected to deal with everything that goes into the process of ultimately being told where they’ll be required to spend the first four or five or six or even seven years of their careers.”
The NFL has not commented on the backlash. It is possible that the NFL may have put the players in whatever seats were left available, since these flights are commercial flights and seats can fill up fast.
Also on most domestic flights there are only a small number of first class seats to begin with. It’s possible that the NFL, wanted to avoid an even messier backlash and not have a situation where some players were booked in first class while other were forced to ride in coach.
So the league may have just elected to fly everyone in coach where the majority of open seats could be found on each flight.
In any event, I am sure for most of these prospects, that their days of flying coach, will soon be coming to an end.
[…] Last month several players that had a return trip scheduled to back to the NFL Combine in Indy, whined publicly that they had to fly coach. I know the horror. […]