What about having an international Sunday midseason, 16 games around the globe, followed by a league wide bye week, sort of a celebration of the league and eliminate the monstrosity that is the Probowl. That would eliminate any complaints from teams having to face an unequal number of teams with bye week advantages that would come up with spread out additional bye weeks.
A week off of football in the middle of the season? That is terrible.
How about back to back international weeks with :
1. 16 games with 8 of them being international the first of the international weeks
2. 8 international games the 2nd week of international play with the teams who played internationally the week before all have a bye week
3. 8 regular games where the 2nd group of teams get a bye week
This would allow for 18 weeks of football (would still have a normal bye week), 16 international games, less preseason games while adding only one game to the season. You can get rid of the probowl at any time, be it 16, 17 or 18 games with 2, 3 or 4 preseason games.
One thing that can happen is that the 16 games are played at only 8 locations. Logistics would be much better to deal with 2 weeks at the same stadiums than to deal with 16 different stadiums. Of course, depending on the demands of international fans, it could be 8 stadiums or 16.
