updated 7:44 p.m. ET Nov. 21, 2008

NEW YORK - As much as NFL teams are feeling a financial squeeze already, commissioner Roger Goodell fears the economic downturn really could hit the league in early 2009, when tickets for next season go on sale.

“There’s no secret on sponsorship, advertising, licensing — those numbers are going to be impacted by the current climate. We’re aware of that,” Goodell said in an interview with The Associated Press on Friday.

“We’re still, unfortunately, in the beginning stages of this. And most of our tickets are sold in the spring. And so ’09 is going to be more of a barometer of how impactful the economic environment’s going to be on the NFL.”

Asked if individual clubs already were having problems, Goodell replied: “Sure. Absolutely. For (a variety of) factors: What’s happening to sponsorship. What’s happening to licensees. What’s happening to our ticket holders, club seat holders, suite holders. This affects all of us.”

He would not identify particular teams or go into other financial specifics.

Goodell did note, however, that stadiums are still filling up on game days, and that the billions of dollars in TV rights fees — the main source of NFL revenue — continue to come in from long-term deals negotiated in 2005.

The downturn is starting to hit much of the sports world.

Major League Baseball attendance was down slightly this season, for example, and the LPGA Tour schedule will have three fewer events in 2009. With the problems faced by American automakers, NASCAR is finding sponsors harder to come by, has taken steps to cut costs by millions of dollars, and a couple of major teams merged.

“I don’t know if anyone of us felt it was going to be this bad,” Goodell said during a half-hour discussion in his office at the NFL’s Park Avenue headquarters.

Goodell addressed a variety of other topics, including:

• An 18-game regular season. Goodell wants to extend the NFL’s year but said it “clearly is not going to happen” in 2009, and probably no sooner than 2011. Adding two regular-season games would mean cutting the preseason to two games and could lead to other changes, Goodell said, such as expanding rosters, allowing players put on injured reserve to return during the season, and creating a developmental league.
• The Pro Bowl. He expects to try shifting the Pro Bowl to the week between the conference championship games and the Super Bowl. “Having it the week after the Super Bowl, it’s somewhat anticlimactic,” Goodell said, adding the all-star game could rotate between Hawaii and the U.S. mainland.
• Regular-season ties. There are no plans to change overtime to avoid results such as last weekend’s 13-13 finish between the Eagles and Bengals. “I do like our overtime rules,” Goodell said.
• Officiating. “Is the game harder to officiate because the players are faster? Yeah, maybe,” Goodell said. “But our officials are better.”
• Fines. Asked if the league has become too strict in punishing players for hard hits, Goodell said: “We don’t fine for hard hits; we fine for illegal hits.”
• Labor negotiations. The contract with the players’ union is due to expire after the 2011 season, and no serious bargaining has taken place. Goodell noted that most labor negotiations don’t heat up until a deadline nears; in this case, that would be February 2010, to avoid a season without a salary cap.

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