Greed Reigns With NFL's Blackout Policy

Today, I am going to embarrass the National Football League. I just wanted Roger Goodell and the boys to know that. Start with this: Through 2011, the NFL will be paid a combined $11.6 billion by CBS, NBC and FOX for television rights fees. Through 2013, the league will be paid an additional $8.8 billion by ESPN. That's $20.4 billion coming in, a staggering figure reflective of how pro football reigns supreme in American sports.

So why would Goodell and the owners continue to black out telecasts -- the longstanding penalty for teams that don't sell out home games within 72 hours of kickoff -- when the economy is crippling fans who no longer can afford tickets? Isn't it stinkingly greedy of the league to demand packed stadiums when many people don't have the scratch to afford ticket prices that averaged $75 last year? This would be a perfect time to lift the blackout rule, if only temporarily, as a way of thanking the customers for making the NFL a monumentally thriving enterprise. By televising all home games, no matter how many seats are empty, Goodell not only would extend a goodwill gesture but foster civic unity in tough times when folks need pride and entertainment.

But the commissioner isn't budging, even amid reports that the Jacksonville Jaguars, San Diego Chargers and at least 10 other franchises are facing potential blackouts this season. It's possible the Jaguars, caught in the teeth of a poor economy in northern Florida, won't sell out any of their home games, which might jeopardize the local future of a team that always has been rumored to be headed elsewhere. That would be eight games the people won't see, distancing the city from its team and primary national identity. The reason the NFL has a blackout rule is to spike ticket sales, but in a financial crisis, it's Goodell's duty to ease up on the consumer blackmail. So far, he remains blind to it all, even with trouble spots all over his map: Minnesota, Oakland, San Francisco, Detroit, St. Louis and Cincinnati among them. Imagine if the Vikings and Chargers play in the Super Bowl next February, not beyond possibility, after a season in which games were blacked out in their towns.

"The blackout policy is a longstanding policy in the NFL,'' Goodell said recently. "It has served us well. It has served the public well, and I do not anticipate any changes with our blackout policy.''

He was asked Tuesday in Ashburn, Va., where he was visiting the training facility of the Washington Redskins, if the Jaguars are an endangered species. "It's one of the markets where we're seeing some challenges from ticket sales coming into the 2009 season,'' he said, knowing that the team's season-ticket foundation has shrunk from 42,000 to 25,000 in one year. "And we'll have other markets that'll have those challenges. It's all part of the challenges that we're seeing in the economy, and what our clubs are going through.''

In times like these, we find out which leagues and franchises are human and which are cold. I'm certainly not saying Goodell is an ogre -- his attempt to clean up the league's criminal element represents the best work by any commissioner, in any sport, in recent memory. But he is forgetting the fans, the ones who buy the tickets, purchase the jerseys, launch the fantasy leagues and drive up the TV ratings high enough to create the $20.4 billion golden goose. It's nice to know that 24 of the league's 32 teams didn't raise ticket prices from last year. Now, take the deed one step further and keep the games on TV every week.

"People are having it tough down here," Jaguars business executive Tim Connolly told USA Today. "People are watching their dollars and they're being tighter than ever."


Pro football is so wildly prosperous, we take sellouts for granted. Last year, merely nine of 256 regular-season games were subjected to blackouts, five in Detroit, a devastated city that should have the option of watching the Lions even when they're, um, winless. Don't be surprised if that number is over 30 this year. For every bigger-market situation such as New England, Washington and the New York Giants, where stadiums are sold out for the season, or every phenomenon city such as Denver and Pittsburgh, where sellout streaks have lasted decades, you have several red alerts.

All of which continues to remind us that sport isn't immune from the crash. And why the NFL and the players union would be pulling one of the all-time acts of idiocy by allowing a lockout after the 2010 season, a lingering possibility. Now more than ever, people need their sports. In particular, they need the NFL, which is concluding a compelling preseason in which several stories -- Brett Favre, Michael Vick, Tom Brady, Jay Cutler and Mark Sanchez among them -- reduced baseball's regular season to an afterthought. Under Goodell's predecessor, Paul Tagliabue, the NFL avoided work stoppages in an era when baseball could not, which, along with baseball's ongoing steroids problem, contributed to the surge of football as America's overwhelming sporting pastime. Goodell, dealing with new NFLPA executive director DeMaurice Smith, can't afford to drop the ball just because Jerry Jones, he of the $1.2 billion stadium, is squawking about the players getting too big a slice of the revenue pie.

"Anytime you're negotiating, you take a step forward and maybe a step back," Goodell said. "We're communicating, we're trying to get information to the union leadership, make sure they understand the challenges we're facing as a system and as a business and make sure they understand that so we can design a system that addresses the issues for the players and the coaches and the game."

To hear a disgruntled NFLPA employee named Mary Moran, the union may have tried to collude with the NFL. Moran told federal investigators that the former NFLPA president, Troy Vincent, had a meeting with Goodell and tried to provide him with confidential union information. That has resulted in a federal investigation of the union, which won't help the timetable for a new collective bargaining agreement. "Listen, I think everybody in the NFL wants to play," Goodell said. "The owners want to play, the players want to play. It's our job to get a deal done. That's why I keep saying a lockout is not a strategy, nor an objective. What we want to do is get an agreement that works for the players and the coaches and the game and allows to continue to grow it."

The NFL has $8 billion in annual revenue. Total costs for players this season will near $5 billion. The system works for everyone.

But as in all labor disputes, greed rules.

And no one thinks of the fans.

Goodell can do himself an early favor in the public-relations game that surrounds labor impasses and lift the blackout rule. Every sports organization has had to grin and bear it, including the New York Yankees, who reluctantly reduced the price of premium seats in the new stadium. Several leagues are troubled by financial issues, such as the WNBA and women's golf, and arena football died a predictable death. The NFL has no such worries, which is why fans should be allowed to see the product every week.

It's called good business.