Roger Goodell speaks with Seahawks fans

Roger Goodell

710Sports.com staff

NFL commissioner Roger Goodell spoke with Seahawks season-ticket holders, suite holders and corporate partners for about 30 minutes in a conference call Friday.

Many of the questions focused on the NFL’s ongoing labor impasse, but here are two tidbits specifically related to the Seahawks and their fans:

• While he made no guarantee, Goodell said it’s possible that Seattle could at some point host the Super Bowl, which has traditionally been played in either domed stadiums or outdoor venues in warm-weather cities.

“Seattle is a great community and they have a great stadium now which I think would be fantastic. And it is a great place to watch a football game,” Goodell said. “The infrastructure that’s required for a Super Bowl, though, has gotten pretty significant. Right now I think our minimum requirement of hotel rooms (in a host city) is 30,000. As long as you can meet those requirements, then you get into a bid process and you bid against other cities. It’s become an event that’s in great demand around the country. There are other great communities with great stadiums and it’s a pretty competitive process.

“But I’m a big fan of the Seattle area and the passion of the fans up there.”

• The league is looking into ways to eliminate the disadvantage that West Coast teams have when playing road games outside the Pacific time zone. 10 a.m. start times have been a bugaboo for the Seahawks, who are scheduled to play five such games in 2011. Goodell said “numerous coaches” from teams on the West Coast have raised the issue with the league, including Pete Carroll.

“It’s something that we tried to address as best we can in the scheduling format. It’s difficult to do because we have a lot of factors that go into that scheduling, including the broadcast patterns,” Goodell said. “But it is something we’ve got to try to find a way to deal with.”

You can listen to audio of the conference call on the Seahawks’ website.