The NFL will conduct its Spring meeting next Tuesday and Wednesday in Fort Lauderdale where the agenda will include a vote on which city to award the 2013 Super Bowl.

But there will be more to talk about than where to play a football game four years from now.

The owners, facing an un-capped season in 2010 after opting out of the Collective Bargaining Agreement, no doubt will be planning their strategy on negotiating with new NFLPA executive director DeMaurice Smith.

On one hand, the owners, like so many in the current economy, are crying hardship by laying off employees and even curtailing pension benefits for assistant coaches and staffers, but at the same time, lavished tens of millions of dollars on players in free agency and will do the same for draft picks.

They’ve got to get their stories straight before asking for fans to pony up $80 for tickets and $30 for parking.

And they’ll likely discuss Commissioner Roger Goodell’s suggestion of adding a regular-season game or two to the schedule and adding a second regular-season game in Europe.

The only redeeming value in a 17th regular-season game is it would reduce the exhibition season. But adding to the regular season has its price.

Look at the litany of injuries suffered by players on a weekly basis during the regular season. Just how much more of a pounding can the knees, ankles, hamstrings and shoulders take? Sure, that means an extra game check or two for the players, but they seem to be getting by all right on their average salaries of more than $1 million a year.

And come playoff time, rosters could be decimated, and the post-season games will be diluted because so many top players will be unavailable or hampered by injuries.

If the league added another game to the regular season, it probably would insert a second bye week to the schedule, but then you’d be talking about playing the Super Bowl in mid-February, something the networks like becaue it's a ratings period.

But the season is long enough as it is. One game a year in London, too, is one too many. Teams that have had to make that trip abroad have trouble recovering from it, even with a bye week following that game, and making clubs giving up home games hurts the integrity of the regular-season standings.

No doubt the added game(s) will be part of the contract negotiations with the players, as will a pay scale for rookies, much like the NBA’s.

As for Super Bowl XLVII, the candidates are Arizona, New Orleans and South Florida. I’m betting the favorite will be New Orleans. It would be the first Super Bowl there since 2002 and first one since Hurricane Katrina hit.

Saints owner Tom Benson recently made a 25-year commitment to New Orleans, and this is one way the league honors such acts.