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Goodell's state of the NFL Feb. 1: NFL commissioner talks about action he took regarding Spygate and issues facing league.

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Though Spygate was the main topic, Goodell also said:

• The New Orleans Saints will host the San Diego Chargers at Wembley Stadium in London on Oct. 26 in the latest international game, part of a three-year commitment to play at least one game in the United Kingdom. He noted that many franchises were interested in playing in this year’s game.

“Maybe part of it was because the Giants went last year and now they’re in the Super Bowl, so maybe they think there’s a connection,” Goodell said, prompting laughter.

• The league approved the Buffalo Bills’ plan to play a regular-season game in Toronto in each of the next five seasons, plus a preseason game in Canada every other year.
• For the first time in years, the league is considering revamping seedings in the playoffs to assure that more late-season games are meaningful. That could lead to a wild-card team actually hosting a first-round game if it has a better record than the division winner it is meeting.

Goodell admitted concern that some teams had virtually nothing to play for toward the end of the schedule.

“The incentive should be for every team to win as many games as possible,” he said. “We are going to look into the potential of seeding our teams differently after they qualify for the playoffs, so that you could potentially make more of the regular-season games have significance for the postseason.”

• There is no timetable for testing of human growth hormone in the NFL. The league has given anti-doping researcher Don Catlin $500,000 to look into an HGH urine test, and also invested $3 million with the USOC to be used for anti-doping research.

“It’s not at a point where there’s a valid test that is widely distributed that we can use, that we can be comfortable with,” Goodell said. “I don’t think there’s a significant amount of HGH use, but I have no factual basis for saying that.”

• He was confident owners and the NFL Players Association can make progress toward extending or revamping the collective bargaining agreement, which runs through 2010. Both sides can opt out of the deal in November, which would lead to no salary cap for the 2010 season.
• Violations of the player conduct policy decreased by 20 percent, including a large reduction among rookies. He also emphasized that the league, in the wake of the death of Sean Taylor and three other 24-year-old players, is doing “everything we can to educate players on simple things they can do to protect themselves and their families. They are celebrities.”