More of the good stuff and less of the lame. Now there's a concept everybody ought to be able to get behind, especially if it means slicing the NFL's ponderous exhibition season in half. We're talking about going from 16 regular-season games to 18 in the next season or two, a Roger Goodell initiative and a certain talking point in the crucial 2011 CBA negotiations to come. The players will want more money for doing more, and that's fair. The owners will resist the loss of even one penny in stadium receipts, and that's how they came to be owners in the first place. Put it all together and the most logical compromise is a revamped version of the current 20-game run to the playoffs. Instead of four exhibitions and 16 regular games, why not two exhibitions and 18 of the real deal? Anybody got a problem with that? Well, coaches, for one. Tony Sparano had close to 80 guys running around in the practice bubble Thursday evening and there isn't parking space for all of them at training camp, much less room on the team plane to Buffalo next month. 'I have four pre-season games right now and as I look at them, I can't find enough time for some of the players that I have to see,' said Sparano, whose first Dolphins dress rehearsal comes Saturday night with a Sun Life Stadium exhibition against Tampa Bay. 'There's some guys that you really have to see a lot of and then you start counting quarters with what your first group needs. When you start taking that time away, you start looking at what's left, and there's not much left if you use that third pre-season game to get most of the first group's work.' Legitimate concerns, from an evaluation process, but it figures that Don Shula and all the other head coaches of old made the same points in 1978, when the NFL went from six exhibitions and 14 regular-season games to the more popular combination of four and 16. The guys with the whistles always adjust, and remarkably well, from chalkboards to PowerPoint, from screaming plays in from the sideline to jabbering into helmet microphones, from whatever was to whatever is. Ask a player in the heart of two-a-day workouts for a grittier assessment. For them, bumping the regular season from 16 games to 18 is nothing less than adding a few miles to the end of a marathoner's trauma. 'That ain't as easy as it sounds,' said cornerback Vontae Davis, who broke a wrist Jan. 3 in the final game of his rookie year. 'This game right here ain't like no other sport.' Linebacker Channing Crowder sounded more interested in the idea, but only if there's something significant in it for the players. 'It's fine if they pay us for two more games,' said Crowder, who missed two games last November with a shoulder injury and ended the season on injured reserve. 'It's not fine if they just take out two pre-season games, add on two regular games and divide (salaries) by 18 instead of 16. 'It's going to be tough getting through a season that long. A lot of guys get beat up. If they do that, they're going to have to add more roster spots, plus health care has to be improved or something, because guys are going to get hurt with two extra games. It's inevitable.' Ronnie Brown was among the AFC's leading rushers last season until a November foot injury shut him down. He advocates adding a second bye week to future seasons if 18 games are played, and that, too, will be discussed in negotiations for a new collective-bargaining agreement. Of course, any kind of football schedule would be be better than none at all. The salary cap squabble matters most in determining whether the NFL is up and running next fall, with all other issues falling in as bargaining chips. Fans have a tougher time relating to all the labor issues, though, than they do the injustice of a month of puny pre-season games. Really, it takes a lot of nerve requiring customers to pay full-price seating and parking for the half-hearted competition of four practice games. I don't care how many Gloria Estefan and Serena Williams sightings there are on an August night at the stadium, that's a bad deal. Dave George writes for The Palm Beach Post. E-mail: dave(underscore)george@pbpost.com. 