Mexico Game Inaugurates a New Era

Besides the material he needs as communications director for the Arizona Cardinals, Luis Zendejas packed something extra last week for his trip to Mexico City: his kicking shoes.

Yes, his five-year NFL career ended 15 years ago, but Zendejas has dreamed since childhood of playing at Estadia Azteca, and he wasn’t about to let this opportunity pass him by. No kicker could resist the urge to boom the ball through the thin air of a city with an elevation of 7,200 feet, a third of a mile higher than Denver.

“The chance to kick there? Are you kidding me?” said Zendejas, 43, who was born in a town three hours east of Mexico City. “I know I might get fined, but I just want to kick a few in a walk-through practice.”

The NFL, meanwhile, is kicking off what it hopes will be an annual affair. This will be the first time the league has played a regular-season game on foreign soil but almost certainly not the last. The NFL is in the planning stages for a game next season at Wembley Stadium in London, one likely involving the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Playing a regular-season game in China or Japan also has been discussed.

“We obviously recognize the geographical challenges when you go to Japan or to someplace in the Far East,” said Roger Goodell, the league’s chief operating officer. “On the other hand, teams are becoming better at dealing with those issues. The travel from an East Coast site to London is not that much more significant from an East Coast site to Seattle, quite frankly.”

The NFL has played seven exhibition games in Mexico since 1978, six in Mexico City and one in Monterrey. Tonight’s game features two of the worst teams in the league and might not have taken place had the 0-3 Cardinals not been willing to give up a home game. But playing in Mexico City probably will be more lucrative than playing at Sun Devil Stadium for the Cardinals, who since 2000 have had the league’s worst attendance.

Although Estadia Azteca has a capacity of more than 100,000 -- in 1994, a reported crowd of 112,376 watched the Houston Oilers play the Dallas Cowboys there -- the capacity for this game has been reduced to 85,000. The league said it eliminated the first 10 rows of seats because of poor sight lines.

The tickets-sold number as of Friday was 40,470, according to the Arizona Republic, but the NFL is expecting thousands more will be sold before kickoff. Ticket prices range from $23 to $78, whereas the cheap seats at Sun Devil Stadium go for about $40 each if bought through the club.

“This is what I would call a walk-up culture, for lack of a better term,” league spokesman Pete Abitante said in a Wednesday conference call. “It’s not uncommon to have 30,000 fans walk up to a game the day of the event. And because of that, we have probably 20,000 general admission seats available. That’s where we stand, and we’re very comfortable that the stadium will be packed.”

The league says its research shows there are 20 million pro football fans in Mexico, and 25 million more Mexican Americans who follow the NFL.

At least one player can speak to that popularity. Rolando Cantu, a 6-foot-5, 360-pound guard on Arizona’s practice squad, is the first Mexican-born position player -- that is, not a kicker -- to make an NFL roster. He was born and raised in Monterrey, and is widely recognized in Mexico, even though he’s all but anonymous in the United States. Zendejas said Cantu would vastly outdraw New England quarterback Tom Brady if the two had a side-by-side autograph session in Mexico.

But the Cardinals don’t plan to add Cantu to the roster today.

“Hey, this is a regular-season game,” Zendejas said. “This is real.”