Rupert Murdoch's News Corp scandal could mean trouble for U.S. sports partners

Monday, 18 July 2011 11:33



http://www.newjerseynewsroom.com/professional/rupert-murdochs-news-corp-scandal-could-mean-trouble-for-us-sports-partners

BY EVAN WEINER

NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM

THE BUSINESS AND POLITICS OF SPORTS

The National Football League lockout may be winding down but NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, the 31 franchise owners and the Green Bay Packers Board of Directors may be facing a much bigger problem in the very near future if Rupert Murdoch's media business problems in England spread across the Atlantic and hit News Corp properties in the United States.

Murdoch has taken a financial hit which has forced him to buy back a significant share of his company's stock. In the case of the National Football League and Major League Baseball, he doesn't have cable subscriber fees to help pay off the licensing fees to show games on over-the-air television. His cable TV properties have no such problems in that most of the ones that pay huge rights fees to teams are on the basic expanded tier which means all of the people who get basic expanded are paying for what a few watch. It is cable TV socialism that makes Rupert Murdoch's business work, a cable TV socialism bill in the form of a 1984 piece of Congressional legislation signed into law by President Ronald Reagan allows the bundling of cable channels to be sold as one to consumers.

The 1984 cable television legislation seems to be at complete odds with the free market principles espoused by Murdoch's news and financial channels but Murdoch is all about money, not ideology.

In 1993, Murdoch gave the NFL a huge amount of money after his company won bidding rights for National Football Conference telecasts and the marriage seems to have been a happy one for both sides. So much so that Murdoch agreed to help underwrite the 2011 NFL Lockout and provide the owners with money (along with General Electric's NBC, the Walt Disney Company's ESPN, Sumner Redstone's CBS and DirecTV) to get along if there was no 2011 NFL season.

That seems like gratitude but the NFL made that demand of over-the-air, cable and satellite TV networks in the last television negotiations and got the five TV partners to agree to their demands.

Back in 1993, the NFL got billions and Rupert Murdoch was able to get his FOX over-the-air television network (although technically FOX is a syndication arm) off the ground. The NFL gave Murdoch and FOX credibility and once Murdoch got that street cred, he was able to work on other United States projects including the launch of the FOX News Channel.

There has never been any hint of impropriety in Murdoch's sports businesses whether it was with over-the-air network contracts with the National Football League, National Hockey League, Major League Baseball, NASCAR and other properties including the Bowl Championship Series or his relatively brief ownership of the Los Angeles Dodgers at the turn of the century.

(Murdoch's FOX Los Angeles regional cable sports network recently worked a deal with embattled Dodgers owner Frank McCourt, some of the money would come out of subscribers' pockets would have gone to help pay the divorce settlement between Frank McCourt and his soon to be former wife Jamie. The deal was stopped by Selig but someone will eventually get big money for Dodgers TV rights from someone whether that someone is Murdoch or some other Los Angeles cable TV entity)

But make no mistake, Rupert Murdoch and News Corp is heavily invested in American sports and given his seemingly significant problems in London that include the folding of the News of the World newspaper, numerous arrests of News International employees, the resignation of the top cop at Scotland Yard in conjunction phone hacking scandal that is engulfing Murdoch's empire that could be a problem for Goodell, Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig and others.

Do sports leagues want to be associated anymore with Murdoch and what happens if there are complaints about Murdoch's suitability to own TV stations in the United States? What happens to the rights deals that Murdoch's people have worked out with sports leagues and teams?



That may be an issue facing Goodell, Selig and others down the road depending on just how large the News of the World and other Murdoch properties in the UK, US and Australia scandal become. Murdoch has shut down the paper and has seen one of his closest associates arrested. That is not good on the resume for TV station license renewals.

Before the NFL, Murdoch's FOX network was a weak collection of UHF stations with the exception of a few cities like New York, Washington, and Los Angeles. Before the NFL, FOX had a few shows that drew some attention, the It's Gary Shandling's Show, the Tracy Ullman Show and Married With Children. Out of the Ullman show came The Simpsons, Shandling's show originally ran on Showtime and then went to FOX. Ullman's show was canceled in 1990. FOX could not establish a late night talk show, the Joan Rivers experiment was a disaster and a 1993 Chevy Chase late night show as a bomb. Not much worked for Murdoch.

Neither Al Bundy nor Bart Simpson, as popular as the characters would become, could bolster FOX. Murdoch's team was buying TV stations and became the biggest owner of over-the-air stations in the United States but by 1993, it was still the fourth network in a three horse race for ratings behind CBS, NBC and ABC.

The NFL changed all of that. Actually, it was Jerry Jones, the owner of the Dallas Cowboys that put Murdoch on the map as Jones and Murdoch negotiated the TV deal that would change everything. The NFL had been prospering from TV rights fees since the 1961 Sports Broadcast Act which allowed the league commissioner, who is also the league's chief negotiator and lobbyist in all things NFL, to bundle the 14 member franchises into one entity in order to negotiate a TV deal. Three decades later, the NFL was a 30 franchise entity with four separate and distinct elements. CBS had the National Football Conference contests and paid slightly more money for the NFC than NBC did for American Football Conference games because the NFC had more major markets. ABC had Monday Night Football and ESPN and Turner Sports split a Sunday night package.

The NFL was being paid $3.6 million over a four year period between 1990 and 1993.

Murdoch's fourth place network was desperate for a game changer and the NFL provided him with an opening. The NFL and Jones were knocked over by Murdoch's bid for the NFC games. Murdoch was willing to fork over $1.58 billion over four years to get the NFC package along with the Super Bowl. Murdoch had a syndication arm but no news division, no sports division, none of the apparatus that CBS, ABC and NBC had. Murdoch knew that the NFL deals with an old philosophy, cash on the barrel head gets serious consideration and because he blew CBS out of the water with his bid, the NFL and Jones knew they would be getting a new partner with a patchwork of big city VHF and small area UHF stations and both sides would have to make it work.

In December 1993, The NFL took the money. In retrospect, it was the right decision but at the time it looked like just a money grab.

In early 1994, Murdoch started to prepare for the 1994 season by quickly established a sports department by giving John Madden an enormous contact and hiring his sidekick Pat Summerall. Murdoch also took Madden's CBS support team and made John feel right at home. Madden would become the face of FOX sports and with the NFL in tow, Murdoch was able to steal VHF stations in Detroit and Milwaukee away from CBS. Murdoch had one of TV's crown jewels, the NFL, and FOX would now be in a position to become a serious player in American TV.

It can be suggested that the success of the NFL and Madden on FOX led to Murdoch to start the FOX News Channel. The over-the-air network, still technically a syndication arm, started producing hits like the X-Files along with Beverly Hills 90210, Melrose Place, In Living Color to go along with The Simpsons and Married With Children. Murdoch didn't have blockbuster ratings but the network was doing okay business and he already had a satellite news network in Europe, Murdoch turned to creating a United States cable TV news channel.

There are no what if questions. The NFL changed the fortunes of both Murdoch and Lawrence Tisch's CBS. In 1993, CBS completed the TV hat trick; it won daytime, prime time and late night ratings. David Letterman had just moved over to the network and things were looking good. But Tisch's CBS did not invest in cable TV, lost the NFL and Madden, football's top star both on and off the field, lost affiliates and would start a downward spiral. Murdoch's FOX Sports added the National Hockey League and Major League Baseball soon after the NFL deal. Eventually Murdoch would gain NASCAR and the Bowl Championship Series. On the cable TV side, Murdoch's regional sports cable networks are still strong despite being challenged by upstarts in the past few years. FOX either owns or has agreements with 24 regionals. There is also a partnership with The Big Ten Network and another with the Pac12 conference.

Murdoch's Fox Soccer Channel has the UEFA Champions League, Premier League, and Serie A among other competitions. Fox Soccer Plus has soccer and rugby programming from around the world. Murdoch's Speed Channel provides NASCAR and F-1 coverage,

Murdoch's Fuel TV presents action sports such as skateboarding, surfing, snowboarding, BMX and FMX.

Murdoch's Fox Deportes provides Spanish-language coverage of UEFA Champions League, Premiere League, and Serie A as well as Beach Soccer and the F.A. Cup. It also presents the Spanish-language Major League Baseball Game of the Week, the All Star Game, and the World Series, as well as division and league playoffs. Fox Deportes probably would not play well with FOX News Channel viewers but Murdoch doesn't really have an ideology except identifying an audience to exploit to make money. FOX Deportes is aimed at Spanish speakers in the United States, some illegal aliens more than likely, not at FOX News Channel watchers.

That's Murdoch.

Rupert Murdoch built over-the-air viable network thanks to throwing money at the NFL, he had built a strong regional sports cable network, he had his news channel and became an American citizen because non American citizens could not own TV networks. Murdoch, the Australian, should not have owned FOX but American President Bill Clinton's Federal Communication Commission in 1995 allowed Murdoch to run FOX because it was "in the best interest of the public."

Murdoch has invested billions in American sports. So far the leagues and teams have said nothing about the events in London. FOX Sports has been above board according to those in the know but league and team operators have to be keeping a close eye on what is going on with the News of the World unraveling because it could have a real impact on their businesses.

Evan Weiner, the winner of the United States Sports Academy's 2010 Ronald Reagan Media Award, is an author, radio-TV commentator and speaker on "The Politics of Sports Business." His book, "The Business and Politics of Sports, Second Edition" is available at bickley.com, Barnes and Noble or amazonkindle.

A sports FAQ guide to NFL and NBA lockouts

FRIDAY, 08 JULY 2011 07:52
http://www.newjerseynewsroom.com/professional/a-sports-faq-guide-to-nfl-and-nba-lockouts
BY EVAN WEINER
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
THE BUSINESS AND POLITICS OF SPORTS
Sports lockouts should come with a frequently asked questions guide for the sports media and sports fans. You see whether it is the National Football League lockout or the National Basketball Association lockout they is a small impact on virtually every American taxpayer and those who a cable TV basic expanded tier subscribers.
There are some questions that need to be answered for everyone. For instance, why are cable TV subscribers underwriting sports owners lockout? The Walt Disney Company plans to pay the National Football League a rights fee whether the NFL plans a full schedule or misses some games. Will cable TV subscribers get any refunds or rebates from ESPN? The answer is no.
National and regional cable TV sports networks have a long history of not refunding subscribers for missed sports programming including the 1998-1999 National Basketball Association lockout. Don't expect any refunds from ESPN, Cablevision's Madison Square Garden Network for missed Knicks games or Comcast for missed Philadelphia 76ers games. Cablevision owns the Knicks and Comcast owns the 76ers.
There are numerous sports owners who either own regional cable TV networks outright like Comcast or pieces of cable TV regional sports networks. In Chicago, Comcast is partners with Jerry Reinsdorf's Chicago Bulls, Reinsdorf's White Sox, the Chicago Cubs ownership and Rocky Wirtz's Chicago Blackhawks in the city's regional sports network.
What kind of economic impact will the lockouts have?
Not as much as people think. A National Football League team has 10 home dates (Buffalo has eight or nine with one regular season game in Toronto depending on the season) while an NBA team might host on average about six games a month between the beginning of November and mid-April to complete a 41 game home schedule. There may be a couple of pre-season games and playoff games. But the overall economic impact is minimal.
Visiting teams don't bring a lot of fans with them to attend NBA games and a typical NBA team sends players, coaches, equipment guys and trainers along with broadcasters on the road. It is not a big traveling party and that means not many hotel rooms are needed and restaurants aren't making a living off of having NBA teams come through.
In 1998-99, Golden State Warriors owner Charles Cohan didn't want to pay rent at the Oakland Arena for missed games during the NBA lockout. The municipally owned arena operators took Cohan to arbitration where he lost. How many owners in both the NFL and NBA will attempt to withhold rent payments?
That should be a FAQ.
Some municipalities will lose some sales tax monies from ticket sales and concessions but municipalities have decided not to collect property taxes on arenas throughout the country. In New York, Philadelphia and in California, municipalities will be denied of the "Michael Jordan tax" and collect taxes from players who are in for a day playing.
Some businesses around arenas and stadiums will lose money and that has caught the attention of the Attorney General of the State of New York. Eric T. Schneiderman claims he is taking action acting on behalf of a handful of businesses and workers whose incomes are threatened if there are no Bills games in Orchard Park.
The Florham Park, N.J.-based New York Jets franchise, which plays games in East Rutherford, will not be holding training camp at Cortland State in central New York.
Schneiderman's office sent NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell a letter informing him that the state plans to investigate the NFL to see if the league, the 31 owners and Green Bay, has violated New York antitrust laws.
The letter overstates the real impact the NFL lockout has on businesses but Schneiderman is the first politician seeking to involve himself in the lockout. Schneider is looking out for hotels, retailers, the New York transportation system of buses and trains and cars and the per diem workers who could lose between nine and 12 days worth of work in Orchard Park and the couple of weeks of pre-season workouts a New York State universities in Cortland, Albany and Fredonia training facilities.
To quote Donald Trump, the economic impact is small potatoes. A few people will get hurt but the jobs Schneiderman is protecting are part time minimum wage positions at the stadiums and training camps.
Sports teams’ economic impact on a given area is always overstated. Also people are going to spend money on entertainment, they will just shift that football or basketball dollars elsewhere.
"The expected blow to the state's economy will be tremendous," wrote Assistant Attorney general Richard L. Schwartz. "Many New York public and private institutions depend heavily on the NFL training camp and regular season games to generate revenue."
A note to the assistant attorney general, Cortland State, doesn’t depend on whether the New York Jets training camp takes place at the campus’ main stadium. Mr. Schwartz might want to check the books of the college to see just how profitable or unprofitable having an NFL team on the premises is for the school. It might startle him and others in the Attorney General’s office to see the books at Cortland.
Ralph Wilson's Buffalo Bills gets about $7 million in subsidies for stadium maintenance and day of game operations.
The entity formally known as the National Football League Players Association put out a paper that contended that if there was no 2011 NFL season, that $160 million in local spending in each league city and 3,000 jobs would be wiped out. The NFLPA stance seems absolutely ludicrous given the fact that the league plays just 10 home games except in East Rutherford where the stadium houses two teams and stadium jobs are dead end per diem positions which would supplement someone's income.
The real money losers are the players and cable TV subscribers underwriting labor actions and not even knowing it.

If Schneiderman really wanted to conduct a thorough investigation, he would start with the television networks, Sumner Redstone's CBS, General Electric's NBC (now majority owned by Comcast), Rupert Murdoch's News Corp (FOX), the Walt Disney Company (ESPN) and DirecTV and ask why those entities are underwriting the owners costs in the lockout. Schneider can also check in with the NBA and see if Time Warner's Turner Sports and the Walt Disney Company's ESPN are underwriting the NBA lockout and investigate the Dolan family's Cablevision and ask if any fees that are being collected are going to the Knicks from the Madison Square Garden Network. He can also ask Goldman-Sachs and the New York Yankees owned YES Network about fees going to the New Jersey Nets.
That would just be a New York investigation. Similar inquiries could take place around the country.
Those are just a few FAQs that should be asked and answered. In the toy store of media, the sports department-writers, TV talking heads and radio talk show hosts are infuriated that their world has collided with the real world sort of - after all they want to be entertained with games and want no part of how sports really operates. If Schneiderman was truly serious about probing sports, there is a lot out there but his inquiry will be forgotten once the two sides in the NFL battle call a truce and reach an agreement.
Evan Weiner, the winner of the United States Sports Academy's 2010 Ronald Reagan Media Award, is an author, radio-TV commentator and speaker on "The Politics of Sports Business." His book, "The Business and Politics of Sports, Second Edition" is available at bickley.com, Barnes and Noble or amazonkindle.

Handouts to NFL owners have been an absolute failure

Wednesday, 29 June 2011 08:14



http://www.newjerseynewsroom.com/professional/handouts-to-nfl-owners-have-been-an-absolute-failure

BY EVAN WEINER

NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM

THE BUSINESS AND POLITICS OF SPORTS

Cory Booker wants a National Basketball Association team in Newark. Tim Leiweke is working the room in Los Angeles trying to get government money to help his company, the Anschutz Entertainment Group, to build a football stadium in downtown Los Angeles. While Leiweke works the room and tries to entice the owners of various football teams—the Jacksonville Jaguars, the St. Louis Rams, the Minnesota Vikings, the Oakland Raiders and the San Diego Chargers—to move to the planned stadium.

Leiweke is going after a football team despite the fact that the National Football League owners have locked out their employees – the players.

Booker wants a new franchise even though the NBA plans to shut down on Thursday night if there is no new collective bargaining agreement between owners and players.

The National Football League business goes on despite the fact that the main product is not available—football games—and could conceivable not be available to consumers this fall. That doesn’t seem to bother Los Angeles politicians who are talking to Leiweke about funding a downtown facility or Minnesota politicians who are trying to figure out a way to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to satisfy New Jersey’s Zygi Wilf and his want for a new stadium for his Minnesota Vikings franchise.

Sports fans probably don’t want to read this, but the team you love or hate doesn’t belong to you. The team belongs to an owner and that owner is looking for government handouts and if he or she doesn’t get a handout from the local government, he or she will look elsewhere and probably find it.

It is about time that people understand that government support of big time sports has been an absolute failure since the 1986 tax reform that changed the way stadium and arena debt were paid. In 1986, President Ronald Reagan signed the tax reform that created a new formula for paying off municipally funded stadiums and arenas and placed the onus on local taxpayers to pay down the debt and gave the owners as much as 92 cents on every dollar generated within a stadium or arena and left just as little as eight cents on every dollar to pay off hundreds of millions of dollars worth of debt.

Despite sweetheart deals, the National Football League owners shutdown the business in March.

What is the real reason for labor strife?

Owners with older stadium such as Wilf’s Vikings and Al Davis’s Oakland Raiders have to invest more and more money into player’s salaries to meet the salary cap and salary floor NFL rules with the proliferation of municipally built facilities since 1986. Since the last National Football League owners and players collective bargaining agreement in 2006, new stadiums came online at the Meadowlands in East Rutherford, New Jersey, Arlington, Texas and Indianapolis and that forced up the salary cap and floor as more revenues flowed into the league.

Apparently the alleged new agreement that is being breathlessly reported by football insiders at a worldwide cable TV sports leader indicates that the very reason that triggered the lockout is not being addressed.

But life goes on in Los Angeles and in the legislative chambers in St. Paul, Minnesota and in Santa Clara, California where local officials are trying to cobble together a money deal to get the Santa Clara football stadium off the ground for the York family’s San Francisco 49ers.

The Santa Clara stadium is also a sore point for the owners. The Yorks have to throw money into the place and the NFL owners want the players to assume some of the costs for the Santa Clara building. The NFL owners basically have told the Yorks don’t seek any funding from the banks to cover their costs and they would try to extract that money from the players.

Meanwhile Booker wants a replacement for the departing Nets in Newark even though the NBA owners are on the verge of closing down the National Basketball Association business.

If the owners and players don’t come up with an agreement by Thursday night, the NBA owners will lockout the players.

Just how important is government as a sports partner? That is easy to answer. NBA Commissioner David Stern will tell you there are three major aspects in running a successful franchise. You need government to supply funding for arenas, you need government to continue the current cable TV rules which forces all consumers to pay for channels they don’t want in a basic expanded tier – where ESPN, TNT and regional sports channels reside because multiple cable systems operators place them there not consumers- and give corporations favorable tax breaks in buying tickets or club seats or luxury boxes.

If you don’t believe David Stern, perhaps Mario Cuomo’s words from 1991 will back up Stern. Cuomo, at that time, was the governor of New York and was lobbying the National League of Major League Baseball for an expansion team for Buffalo.

Cuomo was hardly a reluctant lobbyist as he told this reporter when he was asked if the Cuomo name—Mario Cuomo was considered a favorite for the 1992 Democratic Presidential nomination—would help get Buffalo a franchise.

“When you say enormous, you mean length?” joked Cuomo in response to the question. “Ah like Willie Sutton (the legendary bank robber). That’s an excellent question and it is a question I thought of before you did frankly.

“From the beginning I have said to (Buffalo mayor at the time) Jimmy Griffin, you know we have been very supportive from the beginning and it is not because I am a baseball fan. It is because this is a terrific investment for a strong part of the state.



“Pilot Field (the baseball park built in the late 1980s and a facility that is now known by yet another corporate name—the fourth since the stadium opened in 1988) was a great idea. I am proud of the judgment I made in giving nearly $22 million (to pay for the project). It wasn’t a gift, it was an investment and a very good investment and Buffalo proved that by setting (attendance) records for a few years and by qualifying by being this high up in consideration (for an expansion team).”

Buffalo was in the hunt along with the Miami area, St. Petersburg, Florida and Denver, Colorado. While Cuomo was a big name, he didn’t have the same clout as Florida Senator Connie Mack III and Colorado Senator Tim Wirth. Those two lawmakers could have played havoc on Major League Baseball by starting legislation that stripped Major League Baseball of antitrust protection from United States business laws which gave Florida and Colorado a leg up on Governor Cuomo.

But sports owners cannot afford to turn their collective backs on politicians of any stripe who can help that get a sweetheart lease for a team.

“But I said to Jimmy Griffin and Rich, Bob and Mindy, (the people pursuing the franchise for Buffalo) in the beginning. I am not sure exactly what role you should want me to play. How do they feel about politicians? If it is better for us to stay away, I will go nowhere near this thing. If you think it is helpful for me to talk to (National League President) Bart Giamatti, may he rest in peace, I will. But you tell me what your sense of how the owners feel about talking to politicians.

“Under some circumstance, your political identification could be a negative. I don’t know what these baseball people feel about it. Bob and Mindy came back to me and said we will tell you when and how you think you can be most affectively supportive. And they have from time to time. I spoke to Bart Giamatti, again may he rest in peace, he was a terrific, terrific human being. I knew him when he was president of Yale and I knew him as Commissioner.

“And they said when it is time to make the presentation; we would like you to be there. We understand other governors will be there. Their judgment is, it does not hurt for the political person to be there.

“I think from the owners point of view, they need to know what the governmental units, upstate New York. It is important for the owners to know that we are going to contribute to the stadium’s expansion. They want to hear you say it. They want to see you on the record. They want to know the money will be there, that the support for infrastructure will be there. That when you have a World Series, the police will be there. The security will be there. That is all a very important part in running a major sports franchise.”

Cuomo wasn’t done yet. He spoke the words that politicians that elected officials understand when it comes to government-sports partnerships.

“It is one of their stated criteria,” Cuomo said of what sports leagues want. “Indeed it is their first criteria. To what extent do you have sport and government?”

In the end, the National League did expand to the Miami area and Denver and the threat of having the antitrust exempt being pulled was gone.

Major League Baseball still has portions of the 1922 Supreme Court of the United States ruling that granted the industry an antitrust exemption in place. The 1922 decision is felt to this day in the New York City area.

New Jersey cannot get a Major League Baseball franchise because the owners of the game can block anyone from bringing a third team into the area. Oakland A’s ownership cannot move to San Jose because of the exemption.

Government has invested billions into helping sports reach a level that no one who played in the NFL or the NBA in the 1940s or 1950s could ever envision. The stadiums, the cable TV act, the 1986 tax reform, the Sports Broadcast Act of 1961, the 1966 American Football League-National Football League merger, the tax hikes for car rentals, hotel, motel rooms, and restaurant bills, sewer and water, alcohol, cigarettes (the so-called Sin Tax in Cleveland) and various tax hikes to build stadiums and arenas and yet, it is not enough.

The owners and players cannot figure out how to split up $9 billion in annual NFL revenue. The NBA owners want major salary givebacks because they claim they are losing money despite sweetheart leases because they cannot generate enough in arena revenues for many franchises.

The National Football League lockout allegedly will have an impact on communities that will not be hosting training camp this year regardless of whether there is a settlement or not in July. Yet Cuomo’s son Andrew has not said a word about the lockout as New York’s Governor even though the Madison, New Jersey based New York Jets will not hold training camp as planned in central New York State at the State University of New York – Cortland. The Baltimore Ravens franchise will stay at the team’s training facility instead of traveling to McDaniel College in Westminster, Maryland. Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley is quiet about the NFL Lockout even though his state seduced Cleveland Browns owner Art Modell to Baltimore with a generous lease offer and helped Modell through a tough financial situation in 1995.

Maryland spent more than $100,000 per jobs created at the Ravens football facility. New York is kicking in about $3 million a year at the Orchard Park football field for the Buffalo Bills. Louisiana finished paying a $186.5 million bill to New Orleans Saints owner Tom Benson to keep him in town between 2002 and 2010 and renegotiated the contract that gave Benson a building (he is renting office space to the state) for about $10 million and reduced the state’s contribution to the team to as much as $6 million annually along with tax breaks.

Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal has said nothing about the NFL lockout and the upcoming NBA lockout. Louisiana pours millions of dollars in NBA’s New Orleans Hornets. Mitch Daniels is Governor of Indiana, a state that is basketball crazy. But the NBA’s Indiana Pacers cannot make money in what was a new building in 1999 and the team under the right set of circumstances could move in 2013. The Pacers ownership is paying virtually nothing to use the city’s municipally built arena and sucks out every nickel from the building.



Daniels is mute on the subject of sports. The NFL’s Indianapolis Colts are taking virtually every cent out of the city’s new stadium. Sports is costing Indiana residents millions upon millions of dollars.

Media anointed political superstars like New Jersey Governor Chris Christie is a heavyweight at putting down his bosses — the public — but he along with a lot of elected officials who pay the bills for sports are more like Harpo Marx or Marcel Marceau and are lightweights when it comes to solving lockouts that have been caused in part by using public dollars to build arenas in areas that should never have major league sports.

Christie inherited a bill of hundreds of millions of dollars for the now departed Giants Stadium and the Meadowland sports complex. New Jersey also supplied hundreds of millions of dollars for infrastructure for the New Meadowlands Stadium and provided property tax taxes for the Giants/Jets stadium. He should be vocal and pressure John Mara and Woody Johnson, the Giants and Jets owners but publicly he is not.

Cuomo never reviewed the property tax break that various owners of Madison Square Garden have enjoyed for nearly three decades. His son Andrew apparently doesn’t want to put the Garden back on the New York City tax roll either.

The public has a stake or an investment in stadiums and arenas and by extension sports franchise. The elected officials across the country should have stepped up and pressed NFL owners to get a new collective bargaining agreement done if having sports teams are important and if stadiums and arenas are economic engines. Elected officials should be all over David Stern and NBA players to get a deal done. The NBA has shutdown summer leagues due to the pending lockout.

If sports is so important and adds billions to the economy—like politicians who pitched voters to approve sports facilities—where is the pressure on keeping the games going?

Cuomo and Stern have let people in on a secret that sportswriters seem to blissfully ignore and that the worldwide leader in sports doesn’t want to talk about. By the way, the worldwide leader in sports owes its very existence to federal legislation in 1984.

Sports depends on government to survive. But do the politicians and the public know that? The answer seems to be no.

Evan Weiner, the winner of the United States Sports Academy's 2010 Ronald Reagan Media Award, is an author, radio-TV commentator and speaker on "The Politics of Sports Business." His book, "The Business and Politics of Sports, Second Edition" is available at bickley.com, Barnes and Noble or amazonkindle.

Former New York Jets great Marty Lyons says retired players need health benefits now
THURSDAY, 19 MAY 2011 07:43

http://www.newjerseynewsroom.com/professional/former-new-york-jets-great-marty-lyons-says-retired-players-need-health-benefits-now
BY EVAN WEINER
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
NEW YORK. N.Y. — In October 1987, New York Jets defensive lineman Marty Lyons decided to cross a picket line and play football because he didn't like the way National Football League Players Association Executive Director Gene Upshaw was conducting the association's business. The NFLPA went on strike looking for a liberalized form of free agency and more money. The NFLPA didn't bother asking for after-career lifetime health benefits.
Lyons has never looked back at his decision to cross the picket line and in hindsight thinks the 1987 four week strike was a waste of time.
"I don't worry about it, I got more important things to do than worry about a labor dispute, worry about a lockout" said Lyons on Tuesday at the announcement that he was elected into the College Football Hall of Fame. "I got four kids, I try to be the best father, best husband that I can to them. Whatever happens in this dispute, they will settle it.
"If it is going to help the league, if it is going to help the players, if it is going to subsidize our retirement a little bit better. Great. If it doesn't, I can't worry about things I can't control. I am interested. I am still an NFL alumnus, I still believe in what the players are trying to accomplish but I cannot control it. If you can't control it, why get stressed out about it. I support (former Giants defensive lineman) George Martin and the NFL alumni. I was just at the NFL Draft with (Commissioner) Roger Goodell. I do a lot of work for the Jets. I see the issues on both sides of the fence. But I can't control any of it, so you know what, I get every morning and I go to work."
But Lyons is interested in the welfare of his former teammates and others who played in the NFL and thinks the old players need some help.
"Eighty-seven, it was very difficult," he said the of labor action. "I think there was a lot of dissension between the players and the leadership we had in Gene Upshaw. When the replacement teams can in, some of us made the decision that it was in our best interests and our families best interests allow to let these people to come in and take our jobs."
Neither the 1982 nor the 1987 NFLPA strikes, in the long term, helped the membership. The "Money Now" mantra of the players should have been replaced by “what will your life at the age of 45, 50, 55 and 60 be like?” The players seem to have the same problems today as they did in 1982 with the exception of having more money than those who played 29 and 24 years ago.
"Probably not," said Lyons of whether the two strikes helped those players involved in the long run. "You know, I think the issues from 87 to where we are now maybe get magnified a little bit more because there is more money involved. Anytime that there is money involved and the issues are back and forth, I don't know who wins. Because you got the owners, because they want a little more money, you got the players...I see guys like Kevin Turner, a good friend of mine who played at the University of Alabama suffering from Lou Gehrig's disease.
"A lot of head injuries.
"He is 41 years old, 42 years old with three kids. What's the NFL going to do for him? What's his pension going to do for him and his family? He's just fighting every day to stay alive.
“There's another head injury. "
The National Football League does not acknowledge that head injuries may cause health problems down the line. In 2010, the league posted a warning about head injuries in each of the 32 team's locker rooms but other than a few words and some other forms of communications, players still are getting their bells rung and returning to the field as quickly as possible.
"You didn't worry about them (head injuries), you really didn't worry about injuries," said Lyons of his attitude and the attitude of his NFL playing peers during his time in the league in the 1980s. "Because the bottom line is, if you allowed somebody to come in and take your position, you may not get it back. So there was a big difference, everybody played hurt. If you were injured, it was a different story."
Lyons former coach Walt Michaels and former Sack Exchange teammate Joe Klecko are hurting like many others who played in the NFL.
"If you see Walt now and walks around, if you see Joe Klecko, he just had a shoulder replacement. The game does have a price to pay if you play it long enough. And I think man for man, the individuals that are playing the price now, myself I had eight operations, I would have gone through a few more if I had an opportunity to lace them up and play one more game. It is well worth the price now to get out of bed."
Lyons is doing well. He is a senior vice president of operations for a Long Island construction company, the Marty Lyons Foundation is still going strong after 27 years helping terminally ill children, he is a motivational speaker and has 20 years of broadcasting on his resume.
But Lyons knows that former NFL players need help.
"I would love to see the league and the committee (the players association or more correctly what is the decertified players association) to come to some sort of agreement that if you are a vested player (three or more years experience) and you leave the game, you have a lifetime benefit of health benefits. When you retire, you benefits stop (the post 1993 players get health benefits for five years and then it ends, Lyons career was done in 1989 after 11 years). You better hope you get a good job or have enough money to go on COBRA. So I think health benefits are the number one priority that we should be looking at to get retired players once they leave the NFL.
"If you are vested and you make a contribution to helping the league and the players then you and your family should have lifetime health benefits. When I left the game in 1991, I had to get my health benefits. In hindsight, I think it was a mistake (that the NFLPA did not fight for lifetime health care) because some of the players who are financially stressed or some of the players now who don't have health benefits maybe they would not be in this situation in their life and the time of the life if they had better benefits, better health care. Maybe they would have gotten the proper help needed."
Lyons, despite an 11 year career, never made big money that could last a lifetime. The "billionaires versus millionaires" slogan that sportswriters have attached to this lockout doesn't work. Very few players make huge sums of cash. Most careers are brief and players need to find other employment after their careers. But the problem is that NFL players might have short careers but their aches and pains last a lifetime and some become disabled and cannot work. Those players eventually end up on social security insurance and Medicare and are looked after by taxpayers.
That is where Upshaw and his associates which include members of the NFLPA executive board and player agents failed their constituency in 1982, 1987 and 1993. They took short term gains and didn't see the future.

Lyons looks at the dispute as a former player but notes that other people are getting hurt. NFL teams have been laying off or reducing employee’s salaries. Coaches are taking a pay cut and if games are missed per diem employees will be left out in the cold.
"Everybody wants a little bit more of the pie," he said. "And the bottom line is that the people at the bottom end of the food chain that are going to pay the price if they don't play the game of football. You got a lot of people that are relying on that added income every single Saturday or Sunday whether they are parking cars or working concessions or working the stadium. For them not to have an opportunity to feed their family when there is a lockout or labor dispute, it is a shame."
NFL owners and players go to court on June 3 to argue over whatever they are fighting for. Collective bargaining agreement negotiations pick up on June 8. The players want status quo and keep 59 percent of football revenues, the owners want the players to give back revenues, cut their salaries (contracts are not guaranteed) and help build stadiums in Minnesota and Santa Clara, California by kicking in part of their revenues. Meanwhile former players are still out in the cold with meager pensions and no health benefits and for many football players, getting health insurance is almost impossible because of pre-existing conditions.
This is the NFL, with the initials NFL standing for, "Not For Long."
Evan Weiner, the winner of the United States Sports Academy's 2010 Ronald Reagan Media Award, is an author, radio-TV commentator and speaker on "The Politics of Sports Business." His book, The Business and Politics of Sports, Second Edition is available at bickley.com, Barnes and Noble

Fans don't matter in sports
MONDAY, 16 MAY 2011 14:43


http://www.newjerseynewsroom.com/professional/fans-dont-matter-in-sports
BY EVAN WEINER
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
THE BUSINESS AND POLITICS OF SPORTS
And so the National Football League lockout has become a version of the People's Court. The good guys, the National Football League Players Association, are fighting for workers' rights and are begging "fans" to help them lift the lockout. The owners, the bad guys, want to take away the players ability to make truckloads of money and are threatening their long term health care. Wait, the players have done such a great job in past collective bargaining agreements that former players lose health benefits five years after their playing careers are done and only if a player has three years in the league.
The "People's Court" is now playing in Minneapolis, Minnesota where United States District Judge David Doty is figuring out of the owners owe the players money over how the league managed to negotiate TV contracts to protect that side if in the event of a 2011 lockout. The players are seeking $707 million in damages. The fans will get ZERO if Judge Doty gives the players a monetary award even through a good chunk of that TV money comes from the cable TV subscriber-based ESPN and the satellite pay service DirecTV. In fact a good many people who never watch an NFL game on either ESPN or DirecTV are subsidizing the billions of dollars that ESPN and DirecTV pays the NFL.
The chances are that Judge David Doty will not address relief for subscribers are great. Fans are not a part of the lockout equation. Cable TV subscribers never received a rebate in 1994 and 1995 when Major League Baseball shutdown the 1994 season and the National Hockey League's lockout did not end until January leaving cable TV subscribers without a product from mid-September 1994 through January 1995. An awful lot of teams had local cable TV deals in 1994 and 1995 and subscribers were playing for something that they didn't get. Programming in terms of games which they were charged for. In 1998-99, the National Basketball Association locked out the league players for about 30 games. Not one cable TV subscriber received a penny back for missed games. Interestingly enough the owner of the Golden State Warriors, Chris Cohan, tried to stiff the Oakland Alameda Coliseum Authority and not pay rent at the Oakland Arena during the NBA lockout.
An arbitrator smacked down Cohan and forced him to pay rent for missed games.
No one has ever looked after cable TV or satellite TV subscribers and gotten consumers money back for missed games because of labor actions.
Judge Doty also should bring up the fitness of Rupert Murdoch (FOX owned and operated stations such as Channels 5 and 9 in New York and Channel 29 in Philadelphia), Sumner Redstone (Channel 2 in New York, Channel 3 in Philadelphia) and Comcast-GE's Channel 4 in New York and Channel 10 in Philadelphia for agreeing to deals with the NFL that would underwrite a lockout by supplying a full TV rights fee even if there was a lockout.
The question here that needs to be asked in court is how people who have public licenses to run TV stations nationally (and program networks and syndication arms—FOX is not a network but a syndication company) like Murdoch, Redstone and the NBC owners (General Electric when the contract was signed) could use monies generated by a business that is owned by the public---a television station---to provide a foundation for a lockout/strike war chest?
Television is one of the three essentials of the sports business. The trilogy is government (government builds stadiums, provides tax breaks for the business, creates cable TV rules and allows businesses to write off part of the expense of a luxury box, club seats, tickets and dining in a stadium or arena restaurant), cable TV (in the case of the NBA, NHL and Major League baseball through regional sports channels) and corporate support.
The fans don't count for much except undying loyalty to a team.
Despite all of the fans "concerns" no one is protecting them while the owners and players have an army of high priced lawyers taking care of their interests.
The other "People's Court" venue is in St. Louis where an Eight Court of Appeals panel has been reviewing Judge Susan Nelson's order to lift the lockout.
The battle between the NFL and the former players association has been defined as billionaires versus millions. That is not true at all. It is multi-faceted with elected officials having their hands all over this lockout. Here's why. Politicians pushed stadiums after the 1986 federal tax code revisions to become "big league." Canadian sportswriters have it all wrong when they blame National Hockey League Commissioner Gary Bettman for the league's "sunbelt strategy" and expansion into Atlanta, Nashville, Tampa, Miami, Anaheim and San Jose (although neither Anaheim nor San Jose are in the sunbelt) and franchise relocations into Raleigh, Dallas, Denver and Phoenix. New arenas came online with sweetheart leases and begged to get into the NHL. The same thing happened in the National Basketball Association, the NFL and Major League Baseball.
To those Canadians sportswriters who keep spewing the same nonsense about Bettman’s southern strategy and get it wrong constantly. The NHL decided to expand to 30 teams from 21 in 1990, four years after the revision in the tax code while Bettman was working at the NBA.
Cities bid against one another for teams and when the league would not expand into a city, an existing club owner picked up and moved to a city waiting with open arms. In the NFL, Baltimore, St. Louis, Nashville and Oakland got teams. As more cities built NFL facilities and handed out sweetheart leases, the ones left behind---Minnesota, Oakland and San Diego---could not maximize or match the revenues in their old stadiums. The new places in East Rutherford (for the Jets and Giants), Arlington (the Dallas Cowboys) and Indianapolis (where Jim Irsay hit the lottery in terms of what he has to pay in order to rent the new facility) pushed up league revenues and raised the salary cap for players. It also brought up the salary floor and the less revenue producing stadiums were not printing out the right amount of money for NFL owners. Literally some teams cannot keep up to the Joneses (okay Jerry and Stephen Jones and the Cowboys) and that is why the NFL wants to cut the slice of the revenues the players get from 59 to 48 percent and reduce salaries.
The players, of course, want no part of that seeing how TV monies are enormous and that NFL owners seem to be swimming in money. The players want the owners to show them the books. The owners won't give them the books the players are seeking. The majority of the players don’t make millions and have short careers.
It is all about "Money Now" on both sides of the argument.
Previous incarnations of the National Football Players Association (this version doesn't exist, wink-wink, as the players association officially decertified in March) have ignored the long time health needs of the players and have always stuck to the "Money Now" mantra, a slogan which appeared in 1982. A lot of people knew that playing surfaces in Philadelphia and Houston and other places were not good for the players. The players did nothing about the surfaces of stadiums that were built on the back of taxpayers.
The multi-purpose stadiums built in the 1960s, Houston, St. Louis, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia and other places had an artificial field which was separated from a concrete type surface by a piece of foam or other flimsy padded material. Players knew the fields were not safe yet the people who were watching out after their interests worried about "Money Now."

By the way, where are the municipal leaders who lead the rush to get stadiums built for NFL owners (and other sports)? President Barack Obama has washed his hands of the NFL lockout as has the Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Republican Lamar Smith of Texas. Apparently all elected officials want to stay clear of the NFL lockout despite the fact that the NFL clearly has been built by Congress (the Sports Broadcast Act of 1961, the 1966 AFL-NFL merger, the 1984 Cable TV bill that allowed cable operators to bundle channels on a basic tier and forced subscribers to pay for all channels on a basic tier -- the tier that became the home to sports -- whether the subscribers watch sports programming or not and the 1986 tax code revision which changed the way municipally funded stadiums and arenas were financed and placed the burden of paying off the debt on taxpayers) and helped along by local elected officials.
There is no bully pulpit pressure on either side. There is no Congressional pressure. Missing in action on the subject are Governors like Chris Christie, Andrew Cuomo, Tom Corbett, Rick Snyder, Scott Walker, Rick Scott, Jerry Brown, Rick Perry, Bobby Jindal, Jan Brewer. Minnesota's Mark Dayton is busy looking to get New Jersey's Zygi Wilf a stadium for his Minnesota Vikings despite the lockout. Tough guy politicians are beating up on municipal workers and teachers yet have not voiced an opinion on the NFL lockout which may close stadiums in the fall. The same stadiums politicians have claimed are economic engines for the community.
The fans are being hosed and yet they always come back although not necessarily in the stadiums or arenas. Fans have been priced out by NFL owners unless they want to pay a fortune of money for a seat. But fans can always sit in front of a TV and the owners will make money from rights fees and from cable TV, it doesn't matter if no one watches. The ESPNs and the regional sports channels of the world get their money from subscriber fees. That is part of the argument that has been redacted from the Judge David Doty's courtroom. No one, from NFL lawyers, to the people who are representing an organization that allegedly went out of business on March 11, the NFLPA, to the cable TV network executives want to touch. It would just bring unwanted trouble.
NFL beat writers for newspapers aren't going to report on that either and it would not be in the best interests of ESPN SportsCenter, ESPN's Outside the Lines, the fluff ESPN shows that feature sportswriters like Mike Lupica and a gang of know nothings talking about nonsense, or the CBS, NBC, FOX or Disney's ABC news to discuss that aspect of the lockout. The television executives have a big role in this lockout. They are not complaining about their partner's---NFL owners--business strategy. Corporate partners have also been very quiet about the NFL's tactics. The only ones complaining are the bottom feeders---the fans.
The NFL is just the first in the queue. NBA owners and players don't have a collective bargaining agreement after June 30. The Major League Baseball owners and players six-year collective bargaining agreement ends in December and the National Hockey League owners and players deal is done in September 2012.
It's all about money.
Evan Weiner, the winner of the United States Sports Academy's 2010 Ronald Reagan Media Award, is an author, radio-TV commentator and speaker on "The Politics of Sports Business." His book, "The Business and Politics of Sports, Second Edition is available at bickley.com, Barnes and Noble or amazonkindle.

The never-ending business of sports
FRIDAY, 06 MAY 2011 08:34

BY EVAN WEINER
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
THE BUSINESS AND POLITICS OF SPORTS

http://www.newjerseynewsroom.com/professional/the-never-ending-business-of-sports
Two Saturdays ago, my son and I were at the Yonkers, N.Y. Planet Fitness working out. The 55-year-old man and the 25-year-old son were talking sports – but not anything about on-the-field action.
It was about the Mets ownership and Bernie Madoff and the Los Angeles Dodgers owners divorce with Jamie McCourt hiring David Boies (who tried Gore v. Bush in front of the Supreme Court after the 2000 Presidential Election on behalf of Al Gore) in her battle against Frank McCourt and how Boies was now also representing the National Football League in court in a proceeding against the remnants of the decertified National Football League Players Association.
My son is of the opinion that the sports bubble has burst, which it has, but it doesn't appear that way on the surface. Sure, National Football League owners have locked out the players because of finances and National Basketball Association Commissioner David Stern is ready to put the lock on the door on July 1, telling the players they are no longer welcomed until they give back some $800 million in revenue.
But more and more money is being poured into sports in the United States and elsewhere. In Australia, the Australian Football League signed a record four-year, $125 billion (in Australian dollars or about $137 billion in American currency) agreement with three networks including one partially owned by Rupert Murdoch. In the United States, NBC's new bosses, Comcast opened up their checkbook for a 10-year, $2 billion deal with the National Hockey League. The Pac 12 signed a 12-year, $3 billion contract with FOX and ESPN, which will give each member school $21 million annually over the life of the contract.
The bubble has not burst despite patches of empty seats at the new Yankee Stadium and a drop in Major League Baseball attendance early in the season. Television money is making up for the lack of revenue from unsold seats.
As we spoke in the locker room, a man decided to join in on the conversation saying that he agreed with my son. The explained that he had New Jersey Nets season tickets for the past 26 years and he would have to pay triple for his seats when the franchise moves to Brooklyn. He has to pay $385 per ticket for the same type of seats in Brooklyn as he had in the Meadowlands and at Newark. He was undecided about renewing his Nets tickets given that he could get Giants or Jets tickets at the Meadowlands as the wait list for season tickets for both teams has disappeared.
But the man was undecided about whether paying $385 per ticket starting in 2012 was the prudent thing to do.
This is the hold sports has on fans.
The late John McMullen, when he owed the New Jersey Devils, told me that sports is the only business where emotions – not rational thinking – guides the business for owners, executives, players and fans. How else can you explain the cheering in Sacramento when the NBA's Kings owners – the Maloof brothers – decided to stay in the city for another season with the hope someone will find $500 million to build an arena and then give virtually all of the revenues in a mostly taxpayer-funded facility to the Maloofs.
This even though Sacramento’s unemployment rate is around 12 percent and the city is letting go of municipal workers because Sacramento (along with California) is broke.
That happened on Monday. Sacramento kept the team for a year and while that was happening NFL lawyers and attorneys representing the defunct NFLPA were positioning themselves to beg the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis to either allow the NFL lockout to continue or lift it. Also this week, the Department of Justice wants to know more about the Bowl Championship Series in college football.
The DOJ is trying to figure out whether the Bowl Championship Series runs afoul of federal antitrust laws. The DOJ wants to know why there is no college football championship game. The DOJ is not asking any questions about the education of so-called "student-athletes" (a term invented so colleges could shield themselves from workers’ compensation claims) or the limit on how much money the so-called "student-athlete" can make from off-the-field jobs. Or why college programs have antitrust protection and college football teams appearing in bowl games don't pay taxes on the take home revenue from the games.
Sports fans endure a lot of nonsense but they never turn their back on the games. A lot of people have been priced out of MLB, NFL, NBA or NHL games but that's fine. They can watch games on television and buy all the overpriced jersey and hats and other things with team or league logos on it.
Owners and leagues care about the logo, not necessarily players. A logo is worth more than a great player. Sports fans like "our guys" no matter what city "our guys" play in – even though "our guys" are itinerate workers at best who sell themselves to the highest bidder after being "drafted," in an illegal act that is under labor law made legal through a collective bargaining agreement.
In Sacramento, the Kings, are "our guys" and we need "our guys" for some reason. It isn't because "our guys" are economic magnets who will propel the economy (that argument died in the 1990s) and bring new business to the California capital. But "our guys" bring some unexplainable something to any city or area. A small segment of the population feels good because their area is major league.
In Charlotte, after George Shinn moved his NBA Hornets franchise to New Orleans in 2002, one of the reasons that Charlotte Mayor Pat McCoury gave for wanting to build a new arena to replace the then 14-year old Charlotte Coliseum and get the NBA back in town was because Charlotte would get mention on ESPN's SportsCenter. McCoury got a new arena built and a replacement team -- which has been an economic disaster.
In Glendale, Arizona, the city gave the NHL $25 million to cover the financial losses incurred by the league-owned Phoenix Coyotes. The city hopes to get the NHL to sell the team to a Chicago businessman shortly and keep the franchise in Glendale. If the city fails, the team will go to Winnipeg and make Winnipeg a "major-league city" in North America, complete with that feel good feeling that sports is supposed to bring.
Since Monday, Sacramento has kept a basketball franchise and now will turn over every rock possible to find money to satisfy the NBA and the Maloofs that the city (and a six county area stretch out to Lake Tahoe and the California-Nevada border) can act like a major-league city and pay for an arena that will make the Maloofs feel good. Glendale has forked over $25 million to the NHL, the Department of Justice is looking into the Bowl Championship Series, the NFL is playing at a St. Louis courthouse, the International Olympic Committee put the word out to American TV networks that it is time to pay a king's ransom if they want a crack at the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics and the Rio 2016 Summer Games.

The NFL is hoping someone in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area will build the NFL Vikings a new stadium while Toronto Mayor Rob Ford wants to go after the Jacksonville Jaguars or the heavily taxpayer-subsidized New Orleans Saints and bring one of those teams to his city.
The NBAPA is not happy with the latest NBA owners’ proposal for a new collective bargaining deal as the old one expires on June 30 and David Stern has already bought a padlock. Major League Baseball may have to pick up the tab and pay Los Angeles Dodgers players as the Dodgers ownership – allegedly – has no money to pay the players.
The Wilpon-Katz-Madoff saga continues with the Mets ownership still locked in a battle with Irving Picard, the trustee overseeing the Madoff victims claims, and there is no end in sight although Fred Wilpon and Saul Katz are looking to sell a piece of the franchise to cover debts.
Just another week in fantasyland.
Evan Weiner, the winner of the United States Sports Academy's 2010 Ronald Reagan Media Award, is an author, radio-TV commentator and speaker on "The Politics of Sports Business." His book, "The Business and Politics of Sports, Second Edition is available at bickley.com, Barnes and Noble or amazonkindle.

Two decades later, sports is out of whack
TUESDAY, 03 MAY 2011 08:26
http://www.newjerseynewsroom.com/professional/two-decades-later-sports-is-out-of-whack
BY EVAN WEINER
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
About two decades ago, a tall man with an identifiable nasal twang was holding court at Gallagher's Steak House one afternoon as he lifted a martini with a shaking hand to his mouth. The septuagenarian with a bad wig was standing near the slabs of meat that were hanging at the steak house and in a crescendo was complaining about the world of sports. The empty room began filling up as the man droned.
"Sports is out of whack," said the man with the familiar voice in a loudish way as he fumbled to take a sip of his martini. He was disgusted with the industry that he first entered in the 1950s as Willie Mays’ advisor.
Last week was yet another week of vindication for the man who was despised by sportswriters for telling it like it is.
The three -- make that about five -- events of the week of April 25-April 30, had nothing to do with actual games. There was the draft in a locked-out-then-open-for-business-then-locked-out National Football League.
There was Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson moving as much earth as he could to try and keep the city's National Basketball Association team in team in town despite the fact that the unemployment level had hit 12 percent in his region. At the same time he was rounding up $10 million in marketing partnership for the owners of the NBA Kings, the Maloof brothers, Johnson was cutting workers at the city's police and fire departments and school administrators were trying to figure out whether they can keep sports going in Sacramento public schools.
East of Sacramento on US 50, Lake Tahoe interests were beginning a plan to bring the 2022 Winter Olympics to the area and were beginning the campaign to try and sell the idea to locals as a job creator and a moneymaker like the 2010 Vancouver Winter Games, which cost Canadians a fortune in taxpayer subsidies.
Just another week in the toy store of life, as sportswriters like to refer to their little world.
The National Football League lockout is being played out in a various courtrooms and has political overtones whether people want to believe it or not. The players scored a big victory when Susan Richard Nelson, a federal judge for the United States District Court for the District of Minnesota, lifted the lockout last Monday.
Judge Nelson was nominated to the bench by President Barack Obama, a Democrat who is believed to be labor friendly. Judge Nelson, in her opinion, wrote that she was convinced of the players’ argument that the lockout was irreparably harming their collective careers.
The irony here is that Judge Nelson fell into line with National Football League Players Association thinking of 1982 -- Money Now -- and her ruling did the retired, discarded players no favors. The present players are the ones who have to help out the disabled former players -- the discarded ones -- who have no health benefits because the NFLPA never got around to getting players long-time health care and have to depend on social security and Medicare for health coverage. Judge Nelson worried about the present day players but nowhere is there a players association worry for retired players who are hurting.
The discarded players are wondering whether one of their own, former Giants defensive lineman George Martin, can lobby the NFLPA or whether they have to have a group to pressure the NFLPA to do something about their financial/health benefits problems.
The owners and players don't plan to get back to the bargaining table until May 16. More time has elapsed for the former players who need real help, not government assistance for their pre-existing medical conditions.
The NFL won Game 2 in this best-of-who-knows playoff series when the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals granted the league a temporary stay of Judge Nelson's order with two judges -- both Bush appointees -- agreeing with the league, while a Clinton appointee sided with the players. The 8th circuit in St. Louis is thought to be more business friendly.
The two lead negotiators in the talks are very political. NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell is the son of Charles Goodell, a Republican, who represented Western New York in the House of Representatives and replaced the slain Robert F. Kennedy in 1968 in the Senate. Goodell's father-in-law, Sam Skinner, was Chief of Staff for President George H. W. Bush.
NFLPA Executive Director DeMaurice Smith was a member of President Obama's transitional team.
In a sense it is the Democrats versus the Republicans. Labor versus business.

NFL owners have done a poor job of explaining the why behind their proposal of asking the players to take substantially less of the gross, from about 59 percent to 41 percent with 48 percent of that going to player salaries. The players don't believe there is a real financial problem in the NFL after the league got new large TV deals and a bunch of new stadiums with more revenue streams coming online.
The 1986 federal tax code update created the NFL labor dispute. Owners seized on a piece of the changes in the code that had major consequences. Municipalities could build new stadiums for teams and get as little as eight cents back on every dollar generated inside the facility. Depending on the deal an owner cut with the city officials, an owner could garner as much as 92 cents of every dollar.
But it is those taxpayer-funded new stadiums that have caused the problem. With every new stadium that has opened or has been renovated, more revenue does flow into the league -- which raises not only the salary cap ceiling but also hikes the salary cap floor.
The 1986 tax code revision was a double-edged sword. For some owners (like Art Modell) it was a lifesaver, while for others (like those in Minnesota), it has been a disaster.
Franchises playing in old facilities like the Oakland Raiders, the San Diego Chargers, the San Francisco 49ers, the Atlanta Falcons, the St. Louis Rams, the Minnesota Vikings and others cannot keep pace and are struggling to meet the salary cap floor. Additionally some owners have thrown a lot of money into new stadiums and have to pay down the stadium debt.
The 49ers owners, the York family, have not gone full throttle in getting financing for a proposed stadium in Santa Clara as of yet. The league wanted to show the players they need to contribute money for the Santa Clara facility.
Northern California's two football franchises are not alone in the need for a new facility in the region. The ongoing saga of the Sacramento Kings franchise continues apace with Mayor Johnson leading the charge to build a new arena. Johnson is a former NBA player who has some friends in high places over at the Olympic Tower in Manhattan at the NBA offices.
He wants to keep an NBA team in a city with major fiscal problems that a couple of years ago had tent cities for the homeless. Sacramento is a small market that has been a problem for NBA Commissioner David Stern and his owners for about a decade and a half. The city has been unable to get financing for a new arena for Kings basketball for about a decade. The Kings owners, the Maloofs, may see Anaheim as a financial savior.
Johnson has rounded up the business community and has gotten some economic promises but it may be far tougher to put together a wide coalition of the willing in Northern California to put up money for a new arena in very difficult economic times. But that isn't stopping people in the region from kicking the tires to find out if the 2022 Winter Games is a viable business.
The International Olympic Committee might like to go back to Lake Tahoe/Squaw Valley, a Winter Games venue in 1960, but the IOC also likes money and they really like taxpayers to pick up the tab for their two-week sports bazaar, which seems to be more than just a money loser. The IOC Games is a financial drag and California is not a place where taxpayers will be willing to put up big bucks for an event that is still 11 years away. Still the old “it will create jobs” mantra will be trotted out and it will bring attention to Lake Tahoe.
That was the week that was. It's over and sports will let it go for another week. That elderly tall gentleman who is constantly being validated for his simple statement was partly responsible for the success of the National Football League. He might have been bigger than the NFL during his prime years in the 1970s.
The man who two decades ago said “Sports is out of whack” was none other than Howard Cosell, who during the 1970s was one of the three men in the booth announcing Monday Night Football and was both the most popular and most hated man on TV.
You wonder what Howard would have said about the week that was.
Evan Weiner, the winner of the United States Sports Academy's 2010 Ronald Reagan Media Award, is an author, radio-TV commentator and speaker on "The Politics of Sports Business." His book, "The Business and Politics of Sports, Second Edition is available at bickley.com, Barnes and Noble or amazonkindle.

Why are NFL owners really locking out the players?
TUESDAY, 26 APRIL 2011 08:10

BY EVAN WEINER
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
THE BUSINESS AND POLITICS OF SPORTS

http://www.newjerseynewsroom.com/professional/why-are-nfl-owners-really-locking-out-the-players
The National Football League has been pretending that all is well in the land of the 32 franchises and the league's more than 1,600 employees. Teams are conducting cheerleader tryouts. The league released the 2011 pre-season schedule, then came the regular season schedule announcement and the exciting month of NFL football reaches a climax with three days worth of what is essentially a major restraint of trade, the college draft. That exercise, which starts on Thursday, is made legal thanks to the 2006 National Football League-National Football League Players Association collective bargaining agreement which gives the NFL the right to offer college players a chance to join the players ranks through that mechanism even though the college players have no say in the 2006 agreement.
So all is wonderful in the land of the NFL except for one minor detail. NFL owners have locked out the employees who perform on the field — the players and no new negotiations on the collective bargaining agreement are scheduled until May 16 after a flurry of court decisions will be made on the legality of the lockout and whether the owners can use TV monies from 2011 rights from FOX, NBC, CBS, Disney's ESPN and DirecTV for football operations even if there is no product.
The lockout was lifted by a Minnesota judge on Monday afternoon; the NFL will appeal the ruling which means both sides are back to the bargaining table with no rules for business for 2011. It could be that 2010 rules apply which is not necessarily good for either side. Players will have to wait six years, not four for free agency and the owners have no salary cap to control players costs.
A win for the players perhaps, a win for fans perhaps. A loss for the owners perhaps. But one thing is certain, a lot of the money problems, real or imaginary, that NFL owners are having come from municipalities building new stadiums for teams and that taxpayers dollars which went for palatial stadiums in 1990 are longer good because 21st stadiums are so much better.
The owners have contended that their side was forced into a lockout because the players cannot see that they are financially hurting or that the business model no longer works or that the stars aren't in the right place because the moon isn't in the seventh house and Jupiter hasn't aligned with Mars or something else.
There actually is a reason that the owners do have but for some reason the owners side has not spelled out the problem. Simply, every time a new stadium comes on line (in the most recent cycle, it has been Jerry Jones' Cowboys home in Arlington, Texas and the new Meadowlands facility), the stakes for lesser revenue teams become higher because the new stadiums raises league revenues (all those shiny luxury boxes, club seats, and personal seat licenses) because old facilities just don't have the whistles and gadgets the new places have. The salary cap ceiling goes up as well as the salary cap floor and spending to the minimum has caused owners with fewer revenues streams problems. Teams have to pay for players and probably debt service (for either buying a franchise or throwing money at a new stadium — Cowboys, Giants-Jets, New England Patriots to name some of the franchises that have kicked money into new facilities) and have to cut other areas and that may include the number of coaches on a staff, scouts and other front office personal including sales and marketing employees.
That seems to be the "broken economic model" that NFL owners through Commissioner Roger Goodell are talking about. The owners just have not spelled it out publicly. It goes back to owners versus owners and whether big market owners want to share revenues with smaller market owners.
Oakland, Minnesota, St. Louis, Atlanta, Charlotte (Carolina), Buffalo, Jacksonville, San Francisco and San Diego apparently in that leaky boat (old stadiums) with no upward ability to raise revenues. A little more than 15 years ago, Atlanta along with Jacksonville opened new stadiums and St. Louis officials built a domed stadium that satisfied Los Angeles (actually Anaheim) Rams owner Georgia Frontiere who moved her Rams from the second largest TV market (albeit Anaheim) to Missouri.
The present dispute between the owners and players has roots in the 1960s when Irving, Texas built Dallas Cowboys owner Clint Murchinson a stadium complete with luxury boxes which gave Murchinson extra revenue. In the early 1970s, New Jersey decided to become "big-league" and built the Meadowlands which also had luxury boxes which added to the Mara family's revenue stream.
By 1983, NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle was complaining that the "luxury box" was the bane to his existence. NFL owners wanted new stadiums and started playing the field. Rams owner Carroll Rosenbloom began plotting the move of his franchise to Anaheim in 1978 although he didn't live to see the team play in a rebuilt Anaheim Stadium in 1980. The Minnesota Vikings ownership shopped around but eventually got a new stadium in Minneapolis. Al Davis ended up in Los Angeles in 1982 in a move that also was spurred by the possibility of more TV money. Even Leonard Tose thought about moving his Philadelphia Eagles to Phoenix although that was to get out of millions of dollars of legal gambling debts and get some money back into his coffers. The NFL didn't want to leave Philadelphia because of an owner's financial trouble caused by gambling at Atlantic City casinos.
Perhaps the NFL owners can explain their position which was caused by government subsidized stadiums being opened in select cities by using an example from New Orleans in 1999. In that year Saints owner Tom Benson started looking for either a rebuilt Superdome or a new New Orleans stadium. Benson was miffed when Louisiana officials did not follow the leads of Jacksonville, St. Louis, Baltimore, Nashville, Cleveland and Oakland which put up piles of cash to attract either an expansion or relocation team to their cities. Jacksonville got an expansion team in 1993, St. Louis wooed Frontiere and got married to the Rams in 1995, Davis took his Raiders back to Oakland in 1995. Houston Oilers owner Bud Adams grew tired of the Houston Astrodome (he first suffered Astrodome fatigue in the late 1980s) and took Nashville offer in 1996. Cleveland came up with funding for a new stadium after Art Modell announced his Cleveland Browns franchise would move to Baltimore in 1996. Cleveland came back online in 1999 in the NFL. Also in 1999, Los Angeles and Houston were bidding for an NFL expansion franchise which would start play in 2002. Houston voters approved a referendum and built a new facility which is what Adams wanted all along and didn't get.
Benson played the stadium game because his football revenues were failing as new taxpayers funded stadiums were opening around the country. In spring 1999, Benson began his attempt to renegotiate the team's lease with Louisiana Governor Mike Foster and the Louisiana legislature. The issue then was the naming rights to the Superdome. Benson did not want the structure named after former Governor John McKeithan who pushed to build the stadium in the 1970s. Benson said renaming the Superdome by calling it the McKeithan Dome would cost his team millions of dollars annually.
The legislature wanted to honor the former Governor while Benson wanted the naming rights to the facility so he could sell it to a business who would pay millions for the privilege.
By 1999, the New Orleans economy had slipped as businesses closed offices in the city and New Orleans population was on the decline. One Saints official said that the team once had the fourth best revenue generating lease in the business. However that official added that once St. Louis, Nashville and Baltimore started enticing team owners with virtual rent-free stadiums, the Saints franchise quickly plummeted to near the bottom of the league.

Benson could no longer keep up with the big boys in what was supposed to be a socialist society which is the NFL's business model.
On January 10, 2001, Benson and the Saints filed a "letter of default" alleging that the state and Superdome officials violated the Saints lease at the dome. Benson had other options which he used despite the fact he had a lease until 2017 with the state for his team to play football at the Superdome. Mississippi officials talked about building a multi-sports complex some 45 minutes from downtown along Interstate 10. Benson owned a car dealership in San Antonio, Texas and seemed to have an interest in the then eight-year-old Alamodome which seated 65,000 people. But the Alamodome was already outdated by 2001. San Antonio Mayor Howard Peak admitted that the Alamodome needed "more suites even though we have 65,000 seats, we have to have club seating and other types of seating."
San Antonio had a new building but the wrong type of seating.
Benson did play the game masterfully. He got an agreement with the state that gave him $186.5 million in state handouts between 2002-2010 and his recent agreement came with a Superdome revenue for more bells and whistles and up to $6 million in annual state handouts if certain benchmarks are not hit. Additionally Benson took control of a building near the dome and is renting offices to the state as part of the new Superdome agreement.
New Orleans may be a small and financially challenged market by Governor Bobby Jindal has no problems providing subsidies to a private business — an NFL team.
Benson can compete because of taxpayers dollars. Other owners aren’t as fortunate in getting a block grant from state or city governments although they do well in other government related tax break areas.
St. Louis has an interesting lease, the Rams-St. Louis agreement calls for the team to be in the top 25 percent of stadium generated revenues in the NFL. With newer stadiums opened, the revenues are probably not in the top 25 percent and an owner can opt out of the lease agreement which ends in 2014. Will Missouri follow Louisiana lead and throw money at Rams ownership?
Right now, Santa Clara, California officials are trying to figure out how to transfer money into an account to build a stadium for the York family's San Francisco 49ers. In Los Angeles, competing groups want an NFL team and in one case, AEG's downturn stadium proposal, the company looks to be trying to pull off a land grab.
The owners want to cut players salaries yet have not given a reason why. It seems hard to believe any NFL owner has financial difficulties with a team. In 1993, Jerry Richardson and Wayne Weaver paid about $140 million for expansion teams in Charlotte (Richardson's Panthers) and Jacksonville (Weaver's Jaguars). By the end of the decade, Houston's Robert McNair paid five times as much for an expansion team. TV monies exploded when Rupert Murdoch bid for NFL rights for his weak FOX syndication alliance of TV stations in late 1993. The owners have done a poor job of articulating their side of the story but apparently there is a side. The lesser markets cannot keep up with the big boys who drive the revenues and in a league that has prided itself with a "leaguethink" philosophy where the weakest link (or smallest market) is equal to New York, Dallas, New England, Washington, Houston and Philadelphia this has become a major problem.
The owners are financially hurting, so they say.
But all of these problems will be swept aside for the draft, just the same way the problems disappeared when the league announced the regular season schedule. It is Kafka-like, black is white, up is down, the NFL is operating as if it is business as usual.
Evan Weiner, the winner of the United States Sports Academy's 2010 Ronald Reagan Media Award, is an author, radio-TV commentator and speaker on "The Politics of Sports Business." His book, "The Business and Politics of Sports, Second Edition is available at bickley.com, Barnes and Noble or amazonkindle.

NFL lockout 2011: Why are Gov. Christie and other politicians strangely silent?
THURSDAY, 21 APRIL 2011 12:03

BY EVAN WEINER
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
THE BUSINESS AND POLITICS OF SPORTS

http://www.newjerseynewsroom.com/professional/nfl-lockout-2011-why-are-gov-christie-and-other-politicians-strangely-silent
The National Football League Draft is on the horizon and there has been a deafening silence from a group of people who actually have some power to exert some influence on what appears to be stagnating talks between the owners, who have locked out their employees — the players — and the players representatives.
People like New Jersey Governor Chris Christie who has no problem yelling at his employers in public settings — New Jersey voters — has gone mute on the issue. Christie is no better than Texas Congressman Lamar Smith who doesn't think Congress ought to be involved in the dispute or President Barack Obama. Christie is in a governor's league that includes both Democrats (Andrew Cuomo of New York, Jerry Brown of California, Mark Dayton of Minnesota among others) and Republicans (Rick Scott of Florida, John Kasich of Ohio, Scott Walker of Wisconsin, Rick Snyder of Michigan, Rick Perry of Texas, Jan Brewer of Arizona, Bobby Jindal of Louisiana) who should be out there jawboning NFL owners to get a deal done with the players.
All the governors are cutting costs so you figure the potential of losing money because there will be no business conducted because of the lockout would stoke their combative fires.
But it hasn’t.
You see taxpayers are on the dole for stadiums that NFL owners use. In Christie's case he inherited a $300 million commitment for infrastructure at the New Meadowlands Stadium and New Jersey is still paying off the debt on the defunct Giants Stadium. Jindal signed off on a deal that calls for cash strapped Louisiana to contribute up to six million annually in public subsidizes for Tom Benson's New Orleans Saints. New York is giving Ralph Wilson some three million dollars annually for upgrades at Wilson's Buffalo Bills facility.
You go from state to state and you will see just how much government money has been invested in the National Football League through stadium building or renovation with the old adage that stadiums are economic engines.
Stadiums are not economic engines and that has been documented time and time again.
The governors are not the only ones who have lost their usually loud voices. There are mayors and city councils that have been strangely silent. The noise machine on AM radio is also strangely quiet on this issue (although given the very nature of talk radio whose content will never be confused with any serious discussion on anything of importance, it might be a blessing in disguise).
Congress too is not touching this issue but there is a big role here that can be played. Congress knows how to apply pressure on sports. But for some reason, Congress even during the days of steroids hearing up on the hill has treated the NFL with kid gloves. Congress praised the NFL's drug testing polices a few years ago.
Here is another reason Congress needs to get involved. Discarded NFL players cannot get health insurance because of pre-existing conditions. No one knows just how many of the former players are now on the public dole on social security insurance or Medicare. As the debate on the future of those programs continues, someone in Congress should be asking why football players who suffered disabling injuries in a sport that brings in a reported $9 billion annually are on the public dole.
National Football League owners, of course, are highly political creatures. San Diego's Alex Spanos gave a speech at the 2000 Republican Convention in Philadelphia when George W. Bush accepted the party's nomination as the GOP's candidate. Spanos also spent a lot of money on 527 attack ads against John Kerry in 2004 when he ran as the Democrat's candidate against George W. Bush. Yet Spanos did know this, you can be a good Republican soldier but sometimes you need a Democratic operative to help you get a new stadium. Spanos hired Mark Fabiani who was deputy campaign manager for communication and strategy for Al Gore during his 2000 run against George W. Bush.
If National Football League teams contribute so much to local economies as the former National Football League Players Association (the group no longer exists) claims, why have the elected officials suddenly becoming like Harpo Marx and Marcel Marceau?
Doesn't the NFL create jobs in a community?
Then there is the TV issue. The NFL Network and ESPN continue to collect subscriber fees from viewers and some of those dollars have been put into a war chest by NFL owners. The use of 2011 TV monies is a another bone of contention between the NFL owners and the now decertified National Football League Players Association with the disbanded association complaining that Rupert Murdoch's News Corp (FOX), Comcast/GE's NBC, Sumner Redstone's CBS, the Walt Disney Company's ESPN and DirecTV money should be frozen and the owners should not have access to those funds.
The NFLPA brought the issue to court and a judge will eventually rule if the NFL owners can use that money.
The money issue is a big deal. Why should non football fans who never watch the NFL on ESPN or ESPN for that matter pay for a service that never use. Because of the 1984 Cable TV Act, anyone who gets basic expanded cable is paying for ESPN. That is another reason that Texas Republican Lamar Smith, the Chairman of the Committee on the Judiciary is wrong when he says that Congress doesn't have a role in the lockout.

The NFL's success is the result of Congressional activity. The Sports Broadcast Act of 1961 was pushed through the House by Brooklyn Democrat Emanuel Cellar and flew through the Senate in what seems like record time and was signed into law by President John F. Kennedy on September 30 of that year. The law allowed the NFL's 14 teams to become one entity when it came to TV negotiations which allowed NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle to sell the league's teams as one to the highest bidder at the time. William Paley's CBS beat David Sarnoff's NBC but Sarnoff in 1964 decided to bankroll the American Football League.
Sarnoff's money gave the AFL the wherewithal to sign players like Joe Namath and eventually provided the impetus that forced the NFL and AFL to merge. That marriage needed to be approved by Congress. NFL Commissioner influenced two key legislators Louisiana Senator Russell Long and Congressman Hale Boggs with the promise of putting a team in New Orleans in exchange for their votes. The merger was approved by Congress and President Lyndon B. Johnson in the fall of 1966 and New Orleans had a franchise a few days later.
The revision of the 1986 Federal Tax Code featured a loophole that owners immediately embraced. Any municipality building a stadium could only get back eight cents of every dollar generated in the facility to pay down the stadium debt. Owners, depending on the lease terms, could keep 92 cents of every dollar spent in the building.
Taxpayers should be asking why the politicos have gone troppo on this issue. Sports fans are not rational when it comes to their teams, their sport. They don't understand that sports is a business first and is heavily dependent on government support. State and local governments are spending hundreds of millions of dollars on facilities and are not coming close to breaking even on the projects. Because of that, governments have to tap other taxable areas to pay off the debt. There are all kinds of taxes, a hotel tax, a motel tax, car rental tax, sewer tax, cigarette tax, beer and alcohol tax, water tax and whatever else politicians can find to tax for sports. Sports owners can depreciate player contracts and don't pay any property taxes on facilities.
Still sports fans go on blithely and are wondering about their favorite NFL team's draft strategy. Next week's draft is the final product of the 2006 owners-players agreement. Both sides agreed that they would be a draft even if there was a lockout. There is an interesting aspect to a draft. It is, in itself, a restraint of trade but in a free market society accepted. Thirty one owners and the Green Bay Packers Board of Directors divvy up players and the players have no choice but to go to the team that drafts them. There are a few exceptions, Bo Jackson, John Elway and Eli Manning were able to beat the system and get to a preferred destination.
The owners and players continue their pitched battle. The owners claim the economic system is broken though have presented no public proof that they are hurting as an industry and the players don't want to give up the gains they have made financially over the years. The players also seem to not want to be bothered with taking care of their former members or are thinking about their own future down the road in terms of medical benefits. There is always social security and Medicare for them down the road — if the solons of DC decide to continue the safety net like many other industrialized countries although those aging Beltway solons just see darkness ahead for America.
Obama, Lamar Smith, Harry Reid, John Boehner, Chris Christie, Andrew Cuomo are at best ambivalent about the NFL lockout. There should not be. The do have a responsibility to NFL fans who spend money on the product, to taxpayers who have to pay for NFL stadiums, to cable TV subscribers to jawbone the two warring sides. Instead they are missing in action and have sloughed off their responsibility to get involved in an industry they built.
Evan Weiner, the winner of the United States Sports Academy's 2010 Ronald Reagan Media Award, is an author, radio-TV commentator and speaker on "The Politics of Sports Business." His book, "The Business and Politics of Sports, Second Edition is available at bickley.com, Barnes and Noble or amazonkindle.

NFL's big game against the players starts this week in Minneapolis
TUESDAY, 05 APRIL 2011 11:46

BY EVAN WEINER
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
THE BUSINESS AND POLITICS OF SPORTS
Portions of this column are by Evan Weiner and Heather Rascher from ''A Business History of Professional Football,'' unpublished manuscript (2005).
http://www.newjerseynewsroom.com/professional/nfls-big-game-against-the-players-starts-this-week-in-minneapolis

The biggest game on the NFL season starts on April 6 when National Football League owners and the remnants of the now defunct National Football League Players Association face off in a Minneapolis courtroom. In a script that looks like a sequel to the days after the National Football League Players Association imploded in October 1987 when the NFLPA decided to sue NFL owners for free agency, the NFLPA is back in a Minneapolis courthouse and suing NFL owners. Ten players, including one college player who was not even a part of the defunct NFLPA, Von Miller, are suing the league in an antitrust action hoping the court will lift the owners lockout.
Miller's name is on the suit but he is planning to attend the National Football League Draft, an act that restrictions the freedom of college players in finding jobs. The only reason the draft is legal is through collective bargaining. The owners and players have agreed to a draft. Miller plans to be in the courtroom while New Orleans quarterback Drew Brees, one of the 10 plaintiffs, will not attend the opening day festivities. Brees will be at a golf fundraiser.
Brees last week was sounded a conciliatory note to retired and discarded players after being blasted by Sam Huff for criticizing former players who are down and out because of football related injuries. Brees apparently learned well from the late Gene Upshaw (who was the NFLPA Executive Director) who once said that the association could not worry about every problem. While the NFL and the NFLPA duke it out in Minneapolis, the former NFLPA may be involved in another action as former New Orleans and Miami defensive back Gene Atkins is suing the NFL's retirement board after being denied additional health benefits by the group which included the late Dave Duerson. The former defensive back, Duerson, was on the board which said no to Atkins football degenerative claim in 2006. Duerson's suicide in February 2011 raises questions according to the brief filed about Duerson's competence in light of statements that came out after the suicide that he had memory loss and difficulties spelling words.
The NFL and the NFLPA have had more than a half century of issues.
The NFLPA formed in 1956 with help from Creighton Miller, the first General Manager of the Cleveland Browns. Unhappy players in Cleveland and Green Bay assembled a network of "player reps" on each team. The players included Don Shula (Colts), Frank Gifford (Giants), and Norm Van Brocklin (Rams) to represent their teams. The Chicago Bears players did not have a representative. The players first meeting was held in New York in the fall of 1956, after the owners ignored the players' attempts to discuss their requests. The players asked for minimum salaries of $5,000 per season, injury pay, uniform per diems, and for teams to supply their own equipment.
Nothing happened but the players got a big break in 1957 when, the first lawsuit involving professional football and antitrust was filed, Radovich v. NFL, which significantly altered player rights within the league. The case involved a player/coach, George Radovich, who sued the league because the NFL effectively prevented him from attaining employment in the NFL or affiliated leagues, such as the Pacific Coast League, which was in existence at the time. The case was dismissed on the grounds that the NFL was exempted from the antitrust laws, and was appealed to the Supreme Court, which reversed the decision of the trial court, holding professional football subject to the antitrust laws.
The Supreme Court decision changed life for NFL owners. The players could now sue the league on antitrust grounds which they threatened to do. The owners and players settled with the players receiving minimum salaries of $5,000, $50 payment for preseason games, medical coverage for injuries, and a pension.
But the players didn't get what they agreed to and spend the 1958 season chasing the owners to live up to the agreement. The deal was finally signed in 1959.
The players did catch another break when Lamar Hunt started the American Football league and for some college players, they were able to play the NFL off against the AFL in getting some leverage for their initial contract. The AFL-NFL war over established players began in earnest when Pete Gogolak, a kicker on the Buffalo Bills signed a deal with the New York Giants in 1966. What was good for Gogolak and two NFL quarterbacks John Brodie and Roman Gabriel along with Mike Ditka who were been pursued by AFL Commissioner Al Davis to sign with his league was not good for the owners of either league. Brodie, Gabriel and Ditka got raises from their NFL teams. The AFL and NFL announced their intent to merge on June 8, 1966.
The National Football League Players Association wanted to fight the merger but didn't have the funding to do so.
The NFLPA has always been weak and the owners have always known that. The two leagues may have merged, but the player associations did not, as the players on the 16 NFL teams were NFLPA members and the players on the 10 AFL teams were American Football League Players Association members. This caused a major problem in subsequent negotiations as the NFLPA would come to a tentative agreement with the owners on certain collective bargaining issues (such as minimum salaries, retirement age) then the owners would bargain with the AFLPA, who accepted lower terms, which wasn't good for NFLPA members.
There was a brief lockout and a 20-day strike in 1970 that ended just before the 1970 All Star game and which did not result in the cancellation of regular or post-season games, the NFL and NFLPA signed a four-year contract, the first collective bargaining agreement in the history of the NFL, which raised player salary minimums to $12,500 for rookies and $13,000 for veterans, added dental insurance, improved the pension, gave players the right to have agents, gave players representation on the Retirement Board, and provided for impartial arbitration of injury grievances.
(Retired players from that era are still battling the NFL and the NFLPA and the retirement board over injury grievances and the complaining have caught the attention of Congress)
In 1974, the previous CBA was coming to an end. Players were demanding the elimination of the Rozelle Rule and the option clause which kept a player tied to his team in perpetuity unless another team was willing to give up number one draft picks or players to sign a free agent among other things. On July 1, the players went on strike, and were prepared to sit out until a new bargaining agreement was hammered out. The sit-out led to the cancellation of the New York Jets game at New Haven, the first game ever canceled due to a labor impasse. However, by the early part of August, about a quarter of the NFLPA crossed the picket lines, breaking down union solidarity. On August 11, Garvey sent his players back to work after a federal mediator suggested a 14-day cooling off period, instead pursuing the issue through the John Mackey case. The 42-day strike ended that day with nothing gained.
The NFLPA won the Mackey vs. NFL antitrust lawsuit in 1977, but players received only limited free agency with compensation under a new CBA.
On September 21, 1982, NFL players went on strike. It was the longest strike in professional sports in the U.S. at the time and lasted until November 17. The owners responded by locking the players out at the commencement of the strike. During the strike, only 126 of the 224 scheduled regular-season games were played, forcing the league to change the format of post-season play to include 16 teams instead of the usual 10 teams. The players held two "All-Star" games to raise some funding for players without a paycheck. The players got more money but two goals were not met, a form of free agency and more pension money.

The owners were not going to let that happen in 1987.
The players decided to strike after the second week of the season and the NFL reverted to its 1974 tactic of bringing in rookies and free agents and play replacement games. The league canceled the third week's schedule and resumed with the week four match ups.
In 2000, Hollywood made a movie about the 1987 strike called "Replacements," which was based on the Washington Redskins.
Some teams scouted the best available talent and tried to put together a strong replacement team. Other teams took chunks of local semipro teams, like the New York Giants, and hoped for the best. Others like Philadelphia Eagles Coach Buddy Ryan didn't take the replacement games too seriously and wanted for the players to return.
Like in 1974, veterans crossed the picket lines and by October 25, the NFL was able to claim victory. The players reverted to their old standby; plan B that was court action and that set off years of litigation.
"It was a great time and a lot of fun," said Charley Casserly who was part of the Redskins front office at that time. "Really, the interesting thing was we put together a time, the whole organization and Joe Gibbs did a great job coaching them. Nobody crossed the picket line and we beat two teams, St. Louis and Dallas on that climatic Monday Night that had about 10-12 players cross the picket line. The Dallas team had (Tony) Dorsett, Randy White, Danny White, Too Tall Jones. It was quite a time."
The NFL teams who did compete for players for Schramm's replacement league look anyway for players. Casserly found four players in a Richmond, Virginia halfway house who were playing for a minor league team including Tony Robinson who was the quarterback of the replacement team that beat Dallas.
"We did have a little philosophy on it," Casserly continued. "We wanted players that knew the system. We had to put together a team in 10 days to go play a game. Football unlike all other sports is really a team sport. So we wanted guys who knew the Joe Gibbs system. So we started with players who had been in our camp that year and been in our camp the year before and had been in camps with the Gibbs/(Don) Coryell system. We got players from everywhere.
"Obviously NFL cuts, but we got players from Canada, players who were cut in Canada. We wanted players in camp who were healthy and ready to go."
The players crumbled quickly in 1987 but years later Dave Jennings, who was a New York Jets punter at the time, thinks the showdown with the owners was worth it.
"The players were not that interested in a long term strike, they were looking at the next paycheck," said Jennings. "It's tough to get players to strike and stay together. In 1987, it was a shorter strike and we had the court cases working and eventually it worked out for us.
"We got nothing from the 1987 strike, we didn't get anything directly, but indirectly we got free agency and you see what happened. Free agency works."
The players did not get much though in post career benefits. They got their "Money Now" and didn't worry about the long term affect that football would have on their health.
After the conclusion of the 1987 players’ strike, the NFLPA filed an antitrust suit against the owners on October 15, 1987, seeking an injunction against the continuation of the NFL’s player reservation system, and asking for free agency. In (Marvin) Powell (v NFL), filed in the same jurisdiction that heard the Mackey case a decade earlier, the NFLPA claimed that, absent a new agreement, the NFL could not rely upon any “labor exemption” to immunize its player choice and movement restrictions from antitrust laws. Essentially the case considered whether the non statutory labor exemption would continue to protect the RFR system after the expiration of the CBA, and for how long the protection would be extended. In the first phase of the Powell I trial, the NFL argued for exemption based on the theory that the RFR system was entitled to absolute immunity as the subject of mandatory bargaining affecting only parties to the employment relationship. Additionally, the league conversely argued that the survival doctrine, which suggested that the non statutory labor exemption in effect during the term of a CBA survives the expiration of such CBA providing that the conduct at issue was protected during the term of the agreement, protecting the system from antitrust laws indefinitely following the expiration of the CBA.
The absolute immunity theory was rejected by the District Court of Minnesota, which spent more time focusing on the survival doctrine theory, using the Mackey test to determine whether the 1982 CBA qualified for the non statutory labor exemption. Despite the claims of the players that the 1982 CBA was not the product of arm’s length bargaining, the court found that the contrary to be true, and considered whether the CBA then “survived” its expiration due to the fact that it was reached through collective, arm’s length bargaining. The court determined that the CBA would in fact survive the exemption, but still had to determine the length of time such an exemption remains effective.
In January 1988, the district court ruled that the exemption survives the expiration of a CBA, but terminates when the employer and the union reach a bargaining impasse on an issue. Judge David Doty’s decision analyzed the positions of the parties and rejected both arguments, ruling that the “labor exemption related to a mandatory bargaining subject survived expiration of the collective bargaining agreement until the parties reach impasse as to that issue.” Doty indicated an unwillingness to apply the non statutory exemption fully, and ruled that he would not extend “blanket protection to union-employer agreements merely because the challenged activity arises within the context of mandatory collective bargaining.” The decision ultimately favored the owners, allowing them to implement new or different employment terms reasonably contemplated within the scope of the parties’ bargaining history. In Powell I, however, the court could not determine whether the parties had in fact reached an impasse, as it was awaiting an NLRB ruling on NFL charges that the players’ union was not bargaining in good faith.
The NLRB ruled in April 1988, dismissing the owner’s charges of bad faith bargaining, and finding the NFLPA was not required to continue to meet and bargain with the NFL because the parties had reached an impasse in negotiations. In June of 1988, after hearing the motions, the court rendered its decision that the parties had in fact reached an impasse over the free agency issue and that the system of restraints on player movement was now subject to antitrust laws.
The NFLPA decertified in 1989. It no longer represented NFL players and would never do so in the future. (The 2011 NFL complaint to the National Labor Relations Board pointed out that the present NFLPA had decertification as a tool in their toolkit and planned to use it all along in bargaining with the owners and would blow up collective bargaining talks and run to court.)
The players sought an injunction against the use of the RFR system in Powell II, and the owner’s contested the injunction and the court’s earlier ruling. The court ruled that the non statutory labor exemption no longer protected the RFR system from antitrust review, but agreed with the owners that it had no legal authority by which to grant an injunction. Thus the first two phases of Powell set the stage for Powell III, to determine whether the RFR system did in fact violate antitrust laws.
In the final phase of Powell, the NFL filed an interlocutory appeal in the 8th Circuit seeking an order reviving the exemption, reiterating its earlier argument that the labor law should prevail. The players argued that an agreement with the League would in essence overturn the court’s earlier decision in Mackey. The court determined that both parties have a continuing obligation to bargain with one another in furtherance of the collective bargaining process and to maintain a peaceful labor relationship. Further, upon impasse, the courts ruled that the League may exercise its discretion in implementing new or different employment terms within the scope of the parties’ pre-impasse proposals. Finally, the court disagreed with the ruling in Powell II, and ruled to allow the players to unilaterally generate an impasse in order to subvert the non statutory labor exemption and to pursue an antitrust suit for damages. The court then determined that the exemption would survive until a collective bargaining relationship no longer existed, forcing the players back into a bargaining process in which they historically operated at a disadvantage. The court instead suggested that the players resolve a dispute by 1) collective bargaining, 2) using economic force, or 3) reporting their claims to the NLRB.
The NFL appealed and Doty’s finding was overruled. In November 1989, the Appeals court reversed the earlier court’s ruling stating that as long as the players had a union that they could not sue under the antitrust laws (according to rulings involving the dual approach of collective bargaining and antitrust laws). The 8th Circuit Court of Appeals found that, since bargaining was continuing, the labor exemption was still in effect, and overturned Doty’s view and found the restraints in Powell were “exempted from antitrust scrutiny as the exemption survived impasse.” The court ruled that these practices remained within the non statutory labor exemption as long as the NFL and NFLPA maintained an “ongoing collective bargaining relationship”, and that the players could not pursue antitrust claims during collective bargaining. A federal jury subsequently awarded damages and unrestricted free agency to four plaintiffs. Thus, in the aftermath of Powell, the NFLPA decertified, and challenged the NFL’s restraints on antitrust grounds, setting the stage for further litigation.
In 1988, the Washington Redskins signed Wilbur Marshall, paying a steep price ($6 million for 5 years) for his contract, and having to give up their first-round draft choices in 1988 and 1999 as compensation to the Chicago Bears — a penalty that discouraged future deals. In effect, the player’s old team maintains the right of first refusal whereby it can match any offer made to the player by another club, and any team which ultimately signs the player must compensate the old team with draft choices, costing teams at least two first round draft choices to sign most top level free agents, such as what occurred with Wilbur Marshall.
McNeil v. National Football League with Freeman McNeil of Jets as lead plaintiff, involved free agency and related antitrust claims. Prior to the trial in June 1992, the parties filed a number of pretrial motions, the most important of which was the players’ motion for partial summary judgment to strike the owners’ labor exemption defense. The players argued that because the union had officially been decertified, the non statutory labor exemption no longer barred an antitrust challenge to Plan B, thus allowing the jury to consider the case under the Sherman Act. Further, the players’ argued that by abandoning the union they had been placed at a significant bargaining disadvantage, as the owners had used the player association’s non-union status to strip the players of insurance benefits and to extend the playing season. In its defense, the NFL relied on competitive balance arguments saying that the restrictions on free agency were necessary. The League also claimed that the NFLPA continued to function as the official bargaining representative for the players despite decertification, and, regardless of the union’s status as certified or decertified, the non statutory labor exemption still remained in effect.
In the Powell case, the court provided no guidance as to a specific time or event that would eliminate the exemption, and that the court rejected the owners’ contention that the exemption should extend indefinitely. Moreover, the court rejected the owner’s claims that the NFLPA and the players’ union separation via decertification was not valid considering that the NLRB did not decertify the NFLPA. Both parties moved for summary judgment on several fronts. The NFL denied that it could act as a monopoly and violate the Sherman Act, as it was simply a conglomeration of co-owners that were engaged in the common business of producing and marketing professional football for entertainment; the court rejected this claim. Moreover, the NFL claimed that Plan B did not violate antitrust laws, and even if it did the players were not entitled to any damages. The court denied the owners’ motion, holding the owners liable for “antitrust damages from the date the collective bargaining relationship between the union and the league was terminated, but agreeing with the owners that the League was not itself a monopoly. The court did, however, deny the players’ motion for summary judgment concerning the application of the per se rule.

The sides even argued over the jury selection, which was comprised of eight women, none of whom watched professional football. The NFL realized that the odds were not in their favor, and continued to try to convince the jury that under Plan B all parties flourished and that unrestricted free agency would financially ruin many teams in the league. In September 1992, the jury verdict in the McNeil case found that the NFL owners’ restrictions in Plan B were unreasonable restraints of trade in violation of the Sherman Act. The jury also ruled that Plan B resulted in many players being under compensated, and that competitive balance could be preserved with a more liberal system. The jury awarded damages to four of the eight plaintiffs (not McNeil) totaling $543,000 (which was trebled to $1.63 million as per antitrust laws). While damages to the players were minimal, the case opened the door for free agency in football. However, total free agency was not approved by the courts, which ruled that some restrictions were necessary to maintain competitive balance.
The jury’s verdict effectively destroyed Plan B, sending the parties back to the bargaining table. Settlement talks began because both sides had leverage and something to lose. Both sides were victorious, in that the players were freed from Plan B, but did not get unrestricted free agency. The NFL had a few choices: implement another plan that was sufficiently different than Plan B (because only Plan B was enjoined), or it could hope for a reversal on appeal of the McNeil case and continue with Plan B.
Although both parties returned to the bargaining table, they were soon engaged in further legal disputes involving the noncompetitive effects of the League on its players. Aware that it would take time for the McNeil ruling to take effect, the players involved in the dispute remained unsigned at the time of the verdict (September 1992). These players subsequently filed suit, Jackson v. NFL, attempting to be freed from operating under the Plan B system and seeking damages for financial injuries suffered due to the restrictive nature of the system. The case was lead by Keith Jackson of the Philadelphia Eagles, and the remaining nine players involved in the suit included D.J. Dozier, Thomas Everett, Louis Lipps, Stephone Paige, Joseph Phillips, Webster Slaughter, Natu Tuatagoloa, Garin Veris, and Leon White. Before the court could rule on the case, six of the ten players were either released or traded, leaving only four players restricted by Plan B. The court allowed the players five days to sign contracts with other clubs, all of which did, and, because there were no other players that were unsigned or were restricted by Plan B. As such, the case was dismissed by Judge Doty, and left the league with the sense that the courts were now behind the players.
Following the McNeil verdict, a new antitrust lawsuit was filed on behalf of all NFL players – White v. NFL challenging the continued implementation of these or similar unreasonable restraints on competition for player services. The White case was lead by Reggie White, a tight end for the Philadelphia Eagles, who filed the case on behalf of himself and any other player who would play or played in the NFL. The case sought to permanently enjoin the future enforcement of Plan B or any other system, the draft, preseason pay, and the NFL owners’ refusal of negotiating individual benefit packages. In January 1993, the NFL owners agreed to a global settlement of the White class action and other player suits, which granted NFL players, for the first time, the opportunity to be unrestricted free agents, with substantial increases in compensation in a now competitive market. These settlements resulted in payments of $195 million in damages. In exchange for these substantial benefits, the NFL players’ class agreed to a salary cap system.
There was a poison pill in the settlement that kept labor peace for 18 years.
The owners had a salary cap and the players would become free agents after four years of work instead of six seasons. The final year of the collective bargaining agreement, if either side pulled out of the pact, would see players free agency start at six years while the owners would cede the salary cap. That clause was important because neither side wanted to give up a significant piece of leverage as the most players never even get to four years service and the owners could control players costs.
The owners blew up the contract in May 2008 after a number of extensions. The owners no longer wanted to share nearly 60 percent of the industry's revenues with the players.
The post 1993 era players would enjoy far better post career pension and health benefits than those who were in the league before the 1993 season if they got vested. But former players are not getting too much help from the NFL and the NFLPA (or whatever form that the association is claiming today — this was a group who swore in the 1990s that it would never again represent NFL players and yet reformed) — Are all NFL players going to get real post retirement health benefits and if a player is physically disabled because of an injury or injuries suffered on the field, will the players association take care of medical bills or will the disability board turn down the former player forcing that player to seek government programs to pay for medical bills when the owners and players finally get a new agreement--which will happen eventually.
Will the NFL retirement and disability board take care of them? In the case of Johnny Unitas and many other players, they answer was no. Apparently players had a choice, retirement benefits or disability benefits. In Unitas' case, the retirement checks stopped when he took disability payments.
What happens if an NFL career lasts just a year before benefits really kick in? Who takes care of that player if in that one year of NFL play something happens that won't kick up until years after the career is done but can be traced back to football?
Will the United States Government be responsible for football related injuries? The answer to that question is yes and it doesn't matter if you are for health care or against it or you want social security or are looking to gut the system. That's why Congress is taking a closer look at the violent world of football.
One former player is claiming that owners don't want to pay medical and disability payments to former players and that the players association has gone along with the owners and not helped disabled players.
Another question. Is the Department of Labor's assertion that the NFL Retirement and Disability Board paying more attention to hiring lawyers and spending money there instead on former players with disabilities true?
The players should be looking into that.
The National Football League Players Association has put out some information saying it has spent $13 million or so to help out disabled players. A little while ago, the former Interim Director of the NFLPA Richard Berthelsen who was the association's general counsel for years took issue with the comment that the former Executive Director, the late Gene Upshaw, did very little to help out former players like John Mackey in times of need. Berthelsen said nobody did more for Mackey than Upshaw. The league and the players have a program, Plan 88 (Mackey's old number with the Baltimore Colts) that was added to the Collective Bargaining Agreement in 2007 providing eligible retired players with up to $88,000 per year for medical and custodial care resulting from dementia or Alzheimer's.

Mackey, the former President of the National Football League Players Association, is suffering from front temporal dementia. The NFL Players Association initially refused to pay a disability income due because some doctors have concluded there is no proven link between brain injury and playing football.
The battle between former players and the football industry over whether playing football causes brain injuries continues.
The "Big Game" in Minneapolis is just a part of the clash between owners, players and retired players in the major ongoing football battles.
Evan Weiner, the winner of the United States Sports Academy's 2010 Ronald Reagan Media Award, is an author, radio-TV commentator and speaker on "The Politics of Sports Business." His book, "The Business and Politics of Sports, Second Edition is available at bickley.com, Barnes and Noble or amazonkindle.