Journalist Sarah Palin should ask why TV money will fund an NFL lockout
TUESDAY, 30 NOVEMBER 2010 11:52
http://www.newjerseynewsroom.com/professional/journalist-sarah-palin-should-ask-why-tv-money-will-fund-an-nfl-lockout
BY EVAN WEINER
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
THE BUSINESS AND POLITICS OF SPORTS
So Sarah Palin wants "to help clean up the state that is so sorry today of journalism." Palin also has "a communications degree. I studied journalism, who, what, where, when, and why of reporting." Let's take Sarah Palin, who has a communications degree from one of the five colleges she attended in six years, at her word that she really wants to help clean up journalism. Let's give the former Alaska TV sportscaster an assignment and see how she does.
Palin is employed by Rupert Murdoch's FOX News Channel so it should be rather easy for her, as a onetime Vice Presidential candidate in the United States, to score an interview with the naturalized American citizen Murdoch. Palin, the former sportscaster, should begin the interview with her boss with a simple question. "Mr. Murdoch, why are you helping to underwrite the National Football League lockout which is slated to begin in March 2011?"
Palin's second question of the Australian-born media mogul should get right to the core of Murdoch's FOX News Channel and New York Post audience. "How does your guarantee of paying hundreds of millions of dollars in rights fees to the National Football League in 2011 help your audience, "real" Americans, even in the event that the 31 owners and Green Bay's management lockout the players and no games are played?
Palin should then just go with the flow and ask a few more questions "is providing financial support for a labor action by a custodian of the public airwaves — Murdoch owns a number of television stations across the United States. He had to become an American citizen to do that after being an illegal alien owning the New York Post before he was naturalized — a proper use of a television station license?" And, "is it in the public interest to use monies generated by News Corp-owned stations (including WNYW and WWOR in New York and WTFX in Philadelphia and 24 other stations), to support the NFL ownership group?"
To expand her report and show off her journalism skills Palin should invite Jeffrey Immelt, the General Electric Chairman of the Board and Chief Operating Officer (and at present owner of NBC), Robert Iger, the President and Chief Executive Officer of the Walt Disney Company (and ESPN owner), Sumner Redstone, the Chairman of CBS and Michael White, the President and CEO of DirecTV to appear on her report on the potential NFL lockout.
Iger should jump at the opportunity to chat with Palin after Sarah's oldest daughter Bristol brought new viewers and tons of phone calls over the past few months to the ABC show, "Dancing With the Stars," along with more advertising dollars.
Palin could pose the same questions to Iger and Redstone that she did to Murdoch and ask whether it is ethical that Iger's ESPN and White's DirecTV is taking subscribers money to provide a cushion for NFL owners. After all, Congress in 1984 kept ESPN alive (along with other cable TV networks) by allowing multiple system (cable TV) operators to bundle financially struggling networks like ESPN, CNN and The Weather Channel and to place them on a basic expanded tier, which is a direct restraint of trade in a free market society. The result was cable consumers now pay for networks whether they watch them or not. All basic subscribers pay for channels that only a fraction watches; and it is all legal because of the Cable TV Act of 1984 which was signed into law by the champion of free market — President Ronald Reagan. The whole issue of why media companies and by extension their news divisions (with the exception of DirecTV, which does not have a news division) are supporting NFL owners needs to be explained to the very "real" Americans that Palin says she stands with.
Murdoch, Iger, Immelt, Redstone and White agreed to individual contracts with the NFL and paid a lot of money for the right. They also told the NFL that they would cover (financial not in depth news) the owners in the event of a lockout and at some point down the road would get a rebate if the owners' lockout in 2011 forced the cancellation of games. But the NFL never lowers rights fees. When the contracts are renegotiated down the road, the NFL will still have big leverage over the TV networks — NFL games are among the top rated TV shows in the United States and attract the 18-34, 18-49, 18-54 male demographic that advertisers want. The NFL TV guys, Dallas's Jerry Jones, Denver's Pat Bowen, can ask for the moon; but that doesn't mean Murdoch, Igor, Immelt, Redstone and White's predecessor at DirecTV needed to give the NFL whatever they wanted. The 2011 season rights fees will go into the owners' war chest in the battle with the players; and because of that the owners will have an enormous edge over the players in the bargaining talks, as they can hold out while players' careers are brief and any games lost to the lockout will impact the players' pockets far more than the owners'.
The owners want to reduce the players' take of revenues from 59 to 48 percent and chop salaries by 18 percent. The TV people are in the owners' corner in the labor action which brings up a point. Are the TV networks shilling for the rich and elite, or do they care about "real" Americans? What does that say about their ability to real provide "fair and balanced" news?
In all seriousness, could ABC, CBS and NBC news divisions really report on the NFL owners' lockout in full detail, knowing the corporate bosses are providing much needed leverage for the owners? Could the FOX News Channel and ESPN lay out the story? The answer is no. No one on the FOX News Channel, MSNBC or ESPN is going to criticize Murdoch, Immelt or Iger. Katie Couric and her CBS news division is not going to go after Redstone. But Palin did run for Vice President and as a journalist she should have the gravitas to actually get Murdoch, Iger, Immelt, Redstone and White on record to explain their decisions.
Murdoch's FOX syndication arm (FOX is not a true TV network) owes the NFL an awful lot. Murdoch got the rights to NFC Games in 1993 with a four-year, $1.58 billion offer beating out CBS. Murdoch's FOX had The "Simpsons" and a few other programs like "Married With Children" and "Beverly Hills 90210" that garnered some interest on many weak stations. With the NFL, a powerful TV franchise in his back pocket, Murdoch also took away two strong CBS affiliates in Detroit and Milwaukee in early 1994 and all of that resulted in the loss of audience share for CBS' Sunday night news magazine, "60 Minutes." FOX also got a promotional platform for prime time shows during NFL games and ended up with a Super Bowl. The NFL built FOX and allowed Murdoch to move ahead with the FOX News Channel. CBS returned to the NFL in 1998, taking away NBC's AFC package with an eight-year deal. NBC returned in 2006 with a Sunday night package, Disney's ABC Sports was folded into ESPN's camp and in 2006, Monday Night Football shifted from over-the-air ABC to the cable ESPN.
Palin, the journalist, could conclude her in depth report by getting into the political arena by interviewing Congressional Republicans and asking if they plan to review the whole question of why and how Murdoch, Iger, Immelt, Redstone and White are using public airwaves or cable/satellite TV subscriber fees. The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform seems like a good place to start hearings on television's role in an NFL lockout.
The players association is asking elected officials in NFL cities to get involved with the negotiations, claiming there is a huge potential for major economic losses with NFL football in 2011. The NFL Players Association Executive Director should be playing the public financing of stadiums card just to educate the public about the real costs of football and sports in the United States and to reveal how "real" Americans are paying a variety of taxes to support sports facilities around the country. Palin, who apparently favors small government and less government spending, should ask about the billions upon billions of public tax dollars that are spent for facilities, including the one she approved in Wasilla, Alaska when she was mayor of that city for a junior hockey franchise that ended up in her town.
Palin is right about the quality of journalism today. Glenn Beck passes for a journalist, as do all of the yellers and screamers on cable TV news and AM talk radio. None of them really goes into any depth or perhaps even has the ability to be a savant even though CNN's Anderson Cooper is trying to "keep them honest."
The entire politics of the potential NFL lockout includes a conversation on workers' rights, medical/health benefits, retirement payments, government's role in infrastructure (stadiums), the National Labor Relations Board, Congress, the Oval Office and the media. Sarah Palin, of all people, could use her FOX credentials to work the story and get the info out to "real" Americans. Somehow though, it seems very unlikely that Palin would find the time and do the proper interviews with the proper people. "Real" Americans may not have an entire NFL season starting in March which includes the April Draft, mini-camps, free agency and then finally training camp. Someone should explain why this is happening and how Murdoch, Iger, Immelt, Redstone and White have fingerprints all over the potential loss of the NFL during next season by underwriting an owners' lockout.
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 www.bickley.com or amazonkindle. He can be reached at evanjweiner@yahoo.com
Showing posts with label CBS. Show all posts
Showing posts with label CBS. Show all posts
Tuesday, November 30, 2010
Monday, September 20, 2010
SenatiorWill the New York Giants or Jets be blacked out on local TV this season?
MONDAY, 20 SEPTEMBER 2010 12:59
http://www.newjerseynewsroom.com/professional/will-the-new-york-giants-or-jets-be-blacked-out-on-local-tv-this-season
BY EVAN WEINER
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
THE BUSINESS AND POLITICS OF SPORTS
On the opening weekend of the 2010 National Football League season, neither the East Rutherford-based New York Giants nor the New York Jets sold out the New Meadowlands Stadium. In theory, neither the Giants- Carolina Panthers game nor the Jets-Baltimore Ravens contest should have been seen in the New York area. On over-the-area, cable (ESPN, NFL Network) or satellite (DirecTV) in a 75-mile radius of New York City. But the game was on television despite the fact that the Giants and Jets did not sell out all of their inventory (seats) to the games.
Apparently the failure to sell club seats and luxury boxes, the really big-ticket items, doesn't count when it comes to National Football League blackout rules. So for TV purposes, the Jets and Giants not being able to sell out seats because they were designated as club seats or luxury boxes gives the two teams some leeway. The two teams New York City area fan base is much better off in terms of TV than the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, San Diego Chargers and Oakland Raiders fan bases. Tampa Bay failed to sell out the team's Tampa stadium during the NFL's opening week in a game against the Cleveland Browns.
The Chargers' home game on Sunday against Jacksonville was blacked out in the San Diego market because the stadium didn't sell out.
The Oakland Raiders home opener against St. Louis was blacked out on September 19 because the team did not sell out the Oakland Coliseum. Oakland's last home game telecast in the San Francisco Bay Area was the opening game of the 2009 season against San Diego.
Other teams will probably not sell out games during the 2010 and that has caught the attention of Congress. Ohio Senator. Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown has asked the NFL to take a close look at its blackout policy. The Ohio Senator thinks the league should take into consideration that the country has not recovered from the September 2008 economic meltdown and that people cannot afford pricey tickets.
In 2009, there were 22 blackouts across the league. In 2008, there were just five. The NFL will keep the policy in place even though a Senator is asking them to reconsider. This could get nasty at some point this fall if there is a trend of non-sellouts. Congress created the NFL as the league exists today with the Sports Broadcast Act of 1961 and Congress can make life miserable for NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, the 31 owners and the people who run Green Bay.
Exhibit A was the 2007 season final Saturday night game between the New England Patriots and the New York Giants when New England was on the verge of a 16-0 season. That game was scheduled to be on the NFL Network with just local broadcasts in New York and Boston. The NFL Network was having problems with carriage with various multiple systems operators (including Time Warner, Cablevision and Charter limiting the NFL Network's reach to 43 million households) which meant a great deal of the country could not see the game.
The non-availability of the game caused a stir on the Hill in Washington and by week's end, the game suddenly appeared on CBS, NBC and the NFL Network. When Congress is motivated, things get done in a bi-partisan manner rapidly without rancor.
Particularly in sports.
The NFL blackout rule has been bounced around for six decades. Television is both a blessing and a curse for sports in the minds of some owners and sports officials. What TV really is for sports is a three-hour infomercial selling the product. In this case, the NFL. But in 1950, NFL Commissioner Bert Bell told his owners to blackout home games to get people to buy tickets for home games instead of in front of the television. Bell's plea to his owners came after the Los Angeles Rams ownership saw a 50-percent drop in attendance in 1949 compared to 1948 after the team signed a deal with the Admiral Television Company in Southern California. Admiral was a maker of televisions and used Rams games to sell TVs not unlike David Signoff who put programs on his NBC radio network in the 1920s to sell RCA radios. By 1951, the NFL was in the courtroom defending its blackout policy. In 1953, Judge Allan K. Grim, upheld the league's blackout policy believing that it was not in violation of anti-trust laws.
The blackout problem resurfaced in 1957, when the NFL Championship Game was blacked out in the host city of Detroit despite being a sellout.
Because of the blackout rule, Chicago football fans in the 1950s hardly ever saw a football game. Chicago was the only two-team city in the NFL with the Bears and Cardinals hosting home games on a weekly basis over the course of the 12 game schedule. If the Cardinals and Bears played one another, then one weekend would be freed up for CBS' WBBM in Chicago to televise a game. Eventually the Bidwill family's Cardinals would play two "home" games a year in other locales such as Minneapolis or Buffalo. The NFL finally solved the "Chicago problem" when Bidwill's Cardinals moved to St. Louis on March 13, 1960. The Bidwills went to St. Louis after receiving $500,000 from the Bears, the NFL, and CBS.
Congress really got involved in sports broadcasting in 1961 and changed the sports landscape of the United States. In its early years of television, post World War II, TV contracts were negotiated locally. In the 1950's, the NFL was under a court-ordered injunction that prevented it from signing a single league-wide contract with a network. Instead, each NFL team had a separate deal with a local television station. For instance in 1960, the New York Giants received $340,000 for their deal, but the Green Bay Packers received $105,000. In 1960, the just established American Football League, not limited by the injunction, pooled the broadcast rights and signed a national network contract with the American Broadcasting Company (which was at the time, a limited TV network trying to make inroads against the established Columbia Broadcasting System and the National Broadcasting Company.
On September 30, 1961, President John F. Kennedy signed Public Law 87-331, better known as the Sports Broadcasting Act, which exempted professional sports leagues from antitrust scrutiny allowing them to sell television rights on a league-wide basis.
After President Kennedy signed the bill, the NFL pooled its television rights and signed a deal with CBS for 1962 for $4.65 million annually.
The blackout policy was challenged again in 1962 when the Giants hosted Green Bay in the NFL Championship at Yankee Stadium. Judge Edward Weinfeld upheld the NFL position and denied an injunction, which would have forced CBS to televise the game in the New York City area. The blackout policy would remain in effect until 1973, when Congress passed experimental legislation, which was supposed to have lasted until 1976, that stated that any NFL game that was declared a sellout 72 hours prior to kickoff be made available for local TV.
The NFL renewed its contracts with CBS for the regular-season and the championship games in the years 1964 through 1967. Sarnoff was extremely unhappy with the NFL spurning his NBC network and decided to bankroll the American Football League. The TV monies poured in but owners had to use those funds to hire expensive talent like Joe Namath who signed a $427,000 deal with the New York Jets in 1965. The NBC-AFL partnership would eventually force the AFL and NFL to merge, a marriage that had to be approved by Congress. That happened in October 1966. By 1969, television income had risen to $1.6 million per team in the NFL and $900,000 per team in the AFL.
Once the leagues merged, NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle began dabbling with the thought of a regular Monday night game. In 1966, CBS did two games. But Rozelle thought a regular series would be a ratings grabber. Both William Paley's CBS and Sarnoff's NBC declined because they had hit Monday night programming, but still ratings challenged ABC signed on in 1969 but with the understanding that Monday Night Football would be more than just a game. It had to be entertainment as well, which is why Howard Cosell and Don Meredith became the stars of the show not the players per se. 1969. Monday Night Football debuted in 1970, with ABC acquiring the rights to televise 13 NFL regular-season Monday night games in 1970, 1971, and 1972/
In 1969, four-year television contracts, under which CBS would televise all NFC games (between 1970-73) and NBC all AFC games (except Monday night games), with a division between the networks of the televising of the Super Bowl and AFC-NFC Pro Bowl games, were signed.
Congress created a major revenue source for the NFL by passing the Sports Broadcast Act of 1961 and to this day, both House and Senate members know that. The NFL may be able to fend off Sherrod Brown but what happens if other lawmakers decide this is an issue? If Brown gets addition support on the Hill, Roger Goodell may be explaining why the NFL still needs a blackout rule and how the Giants and Jets haven't sold all of their Meadowlands inventory and yet the league televises Jets and Giants home games in the New York market with less than a full house but San Diego, Oakland and Tampa can't. Things might get nasty later this fall if teams are not selling out but the consumer wants the NFL.
Evan Weiner is an award winning author, radio-TV commentator and speaking on "The Business and Sports of Politics" and can be reached at evanjweiner@yahoo.com
MONDAY, 20 SEPTEMBER 2010 12:59
http://www.newjerseynewsroom.com/professional/will-the-new-york-giants-or-jets-be-blacked-out-on-local-tv-this-season
BY EVAN WEINER
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
THE BUSINESS AND POLITICS OF SPORTS
On the opening weekend of the 2010 National Football League season, neither the East Rutherford-based New York Giants nor the New York Jets sold out the New Meadowlands Stadium. In theory, neither the Giants- Carolina Panthers game nor the Jets-Baltimore Ravens contest should have been seen in the New York area. On over-the-area, cable (ESPN, NFL Network) or satellite (DirecTV) in a 75-mile radius of New York City. But the game was on television despite the fact that the Giants and Jets did not sell out all of their inventory (seats) to the games.
Apparently the failure to sell club seats and luxury boxes, the really big-ticket items, doesn't count when it comes to National Football League blackout rules. So for TV purposes, the Jets and Giants not being able to sell out seats because they were designated as club seats or luxury boxes gives the two teams some leeway. The two teams New York City area fan base is much better off in terms of TV than the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, San Diego Chargers and Oakland Raiders fan bases. Tampa Bay failed to sell out the team's Tampa stadium during the NFL's opening week in a game against the Cleveland Browns.
The Chargers' home game on Sunday against Jacksonville was blacked out in the San Diego market because the stadium didn't sell out.
The Oakland Raiders home opener against St. Louis was blacked out on September 19 because the team did not sell out the Oakland Coliseum. Oakland's last home game telecast in the San Francisco Bay Area was the opening game of the 2009 season against San Diego.
Other teams will probably not sell out games during the 2010 and that has caught the attention of Congress. Ohio Senator. Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown has asked the NFL to take a close look at its blackout policy. The Ohio Senator thinks the league should take into consideration that the country has not recovered from the September 2008 economic meltdown and that people cannot afford pricey tickets.
In 2009, there were 22 blackouts across the league. In 2008, there were just five. The NFL will keep the policy in place even though a Senator is asking them to reconsider. This could get nasty at some point this fall if there is a trend of non-sellouts. Congress created the NFL as the league exists today with the Sports Broadcast Act of 1961 and Congress can make life miserable for NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, the 31 owners and the people who run Green Bay.
Exhibit A was the 2007 season final Saturday night game between the New England Patriots and the New York Giants when New England was on the verge of a 16-0 season. That game was scheduled to be on the NFL Network with just local broadcasts in New York and Boston. The NFL Network was having problems with carriage with various multiple systems operators (including Time Warner, Cablevision and Charter limiting the NFL Network's reach to 43 million households) which meant a great deal of the country could not see the game.
The non-availability of the game caused a stir on the Hill in Washington and by week's end, the game suddenly appeared on CBS, NBC and the NFL Network. When Congress is motivated, things get done in a bi-partisan manner rapidly without rancor.
Particularly in sports.
The NFL blackout rule has been bounced around for six decades. Television is both a blessing and a curse for sports in the minds of some owners and sports officials. What TV really is for sports is a three-hour infomercial selling the product. In this case, the NFL. But in 1950, NFL Commissioner Bert Bell told his owners to blackout home games to get people to buy tickets for home games instead of in front of the television. Bell's plea to his owners came after the Los Angeles Rams ownership saw a 50-percent drop in attendance in 1949 compared to 1948 after the team signed a deal with the Admiral Television Company in Southern California. Admiral was a maker of televisions and used Rams games to sell TVs not unlike David Signoff who put programs on his NBC radio network in the 1920s to sell RCA radios. By 1951, the NFL was in the courtroom defending its blackout policy. In 1953, Judge Allan K. Grim, upheld the league's blackout policy believing that it was not in violation of anti-trust laws.
The blackout problem resurfaced in 1957, when the NFL Championship Game was blacked out in the host city of Detroit despite being a sellout.
Because of the blackout rule, Chicago football fans in the 1950s hardly ever saw a football game. Chicago was the only two-team city in the NFL with the Bears and Cardinals hosting home games on a weekly basis over the course of the 12 game schedule. If the Cardinals and Bears played one another, then one weekend would be freed up for CBS' WBBM in Chicago to televise a game. Eventually the Bidwill family's Cardinals would play two "home" games a year in other locales such as Minneapolis or Buffalo. The NFL finally solved the "Chicago problem" when Bidwill's Cardinals moved to St. Louis on March 13, 1960. The Bidwills went to St. Louis after receiving $500,000 from the Bears, the NFL, and CBS.
Congress really got involved in sports broadcasting in 1961 and changed the sports landscape of the United States. In its early years of television, post World War II, TV contracts were negotiated locally. In the 1950's, the NFL was under a court-ordered injunction that prevented it from signing a single league-wide contract with a network. Instead, each NFL team had a separate deal with a local television station. For instance in 1960, the New York Giants received $340,000 for their deal, but the Green Bay Packers received $105,000. In 1960, the just established American Football League, not limited by the injunction, pooled the broadcast rights and signed a national network contract with the American Broadcasting Company (which was at the time, a limited TV network trying to make inroads against the established Columbia Broadcasting System and the National Broadcasting Company.
On September 30, 1961, President John F. Kennedy signed Public Law 87-331, better known as the Sports Broadcasting Act, which exempted professional sports leagues from antitrust scrutiny allowing them to sell television rights on a league-wide basis.
After President Kennedy signed the bill, the NFL pooled its television rights and signed a deal with CBS for 1962 for $4.65 million annually.
The blackout policy was challenged again in 1962 when the Giants hosted Green Bay in the NFL Championship at Yankee Stadium. Judge Edward Weinfeld upheld the NFL position and denied an injunction, which would have forced CBS to televise the game in the New York City area. The blackout policy would remain in effect until 1973, when Congress passed experimental legislation, which was supposed to have lasted until 1976, that stated that any NFL game that was declared a sellout 72 hours prior to kickoff be made available for local TV.
The NFL renewed its contracts with CBS for the regular-season and the championship games in the years 1964 through 1967. Sarnoff was extremely unhappy with the NFL spurning his NBC network and decided to bankroll the American Football League. The TV monies poured in but owners had to use those funds to hire expensive talent like Joe Namath who signed a $427,000 deal with the New York Jets in 1965. The NBC-AFL partnership would eventually force the AFL and NFL to merge, a marriage that had to be approved by Congress. That happened in October 1966. By 1969, television income had risen to $1.6 million per team in the NFL and $900,000 per team in the AFL.
Once the leagues merged, NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle began dabbling with the thought of a regular Monday night game. In 1966, CBS did two games. But Rozelle thought a regular series would be a ratings grabber. Both William Paley's CBS and Sarnoff's NBC declined because they had hit Monday night programming, but still ratings challenged ABC signed on in 1969 but with the understanding that Monday Night Football would be more than just a game. It had to be entertainment as well, which is why Howard Cosell and Don Meredith became the stars of the show not the players per se. 1969. Monday Night Football debuted in 1970, with ABC acquiring the rights to televise 13 NFL regular-season Monday night games in 1970, 1971, and 1972/
In 1969, four-year television contracts, under which CBS would televise all NFC games (between 1970-73) and NBC all AFC games (except Monday night games), with a division between the networks of the televising of the Super Bowl and AFC-NFC Pro Bowl games, were signed.
Congress created a major revenue source for the NFL by passing the Sports Broadcast Act of 1961 and to this day, both House and Senate members know that. The NFL may be able to fend off Sherrod Brown but what happens if other lawmakers decide this is an issue? If Brown gets addition support on the Hill, Roger Goodell may be explaining why the NFL still needs a blackout rule and how the Giants and Jets haven't sold all of their Meadowlands inventory and yet the league televises Jets and Giants home games in the New York market with less than a full house but San Diego, Oakland and Tampa can't. Things might get nasty later this fall if teams are not selling out but the consumer wants the NFL.
Evan Weiner is an award winning author, radio-TV commentator and speaking on "The Business and Sports of Politics" and can be reached at evanjweiner@yahoo.com
Friday, July 23, 2010
Discarded NFL players are often forgotten in retirement
Discarded NFL players are often forgotten in retirement
FRIDAY, 23 JULY 2010 16:15
http://www.newjerseynewsroom.com/professional/discarded-nfl-players-are-often-forgotten-in-retirement
BY EVAN WEINER
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
THE POLITICS OF SPORTS BUSINESS
As National Football League training camps begin to open up around the country, (the New York Jets in Cortland, N.Y. on Aug. 1, the New York Giants in Albany, N.Y. also on Aug. 1 and the Philadelphia Eagles at Lehigh in Bethlehem, Pa. on Monday) some 2,560 players are getting ready for what has become an annual ritual — two a day sessions upon the broiling sun to prove they belong on the field. Eventually only 1,696 of them will make teams. A number of the 864 players who are "cut" might end up on practice squads where they make a minimum of $5,200 a week to hone their skills. Some of the players will be placed on injured reserve and will either return to the field or get cut when they are deemed healthy. Each team can keep as many as eight players on the payroll (practice squad) which means 256 players might get another shot at a roster spot when a team loses a player to an injury.
Football is a tough game. Americans have been sold on football's brutality since the October 31, 1960 CBS documentary called "The Violent World of Sam Huff" which was narrated by Walter Cronkite. Yes TV networks once did documentaries in a time when TV news did reporting, research and presented facts and not worried about being profitable. In the 1970s, Al Primo convinced TV executives that news could be turned into entertainment and news divisions could make really big money. Cable TV news would take Primo's idea to the next level and began to feature raving lunatics screaming about their viewpoint because it made for "good TV". Huff was a linebacker with the New York Giants and was the first NFL player ever to appear on the cover of Time magazine on November 30, 1959. Huff's job was to "hurt people" because football was a "man's game" according to the accompanying Time magazine column.
The Huff piece came about 10 months after the "greatest football game ever" when Johnny Unitas led the Baltimore Colts to an overtime win over the Giants in the NFL Championship Game, a game that captivated Americans and propelled the NFL from a "mom and pop" operation into the big time. Huff wasn't the best linebacker in the NFL but played for the "glamorous" New York Giants, a team that caught the fancy of Madison Avenue's advertising community and the TV networks which were headquartered in New York. Huff's Giants didn't win the 1958 championship, Baltimore did but Baltimore was led by a quiet crew cut quarterback named Unitas while the Giants had the handsome Frank Gifford and the tough as nails Huff.
Sam Huff became a successful businessman after his career. Unitas didn't. The quarterback who put the NFL on the map couldn't use his right hand as he got older because of a tendon injury he suffered in 1968. He has two knee replacements and heart bypass was denied disability. Unitas died in 2002 but the denial of disability to the quarterback who put the NFL on the map still draws the ire of former players in tough spots.
In 2007, Congresswoman Linda Sanchez, the chair of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Commercial and Administrative Law, held a hearing because she wanted to have "an open discussion on the fairness of the system to severely disabled retired players." It was the start of drawing attention to the plight of retired NFL players. Johnny Unitas' widow Sandra was in Washington watching the hearings.
Huff in his Time magazine interview in 1959 didn't say anything new. A Life magazine had a cover story on December 3, 1971 "Suicide Squad Football's most violent men." Suicide squads have been given a more genteel name — "Special Teams" — but that's where rookies have to first earn their stripes in the NFL. Special teams are the worst assignments on the team and punt returns can be especially dangerous.
Football has been wrestling with players been injured and maimed for more than a century. President Theodore Roosevelt in 1905 told college presidents to clean up the game or he would ban football because of the number of deaths and injuries associated with the game.
New rules were implemented but the game remained violent and more than a century later, it seems that not much has changed. Players are still one play away from ending their career and that leads to the question.
Do the young players and some of the veterans who are about to go to camp know what they are getting into? If you listen to Dave Pear (and other older retired players who suffered life changing injuries playing football), the answer is no. Pear played in the NFL for six years as a defensive tackle between 1975 and 1980 with the Baltimore Colts, Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Oakland Raiders. He played in one Pro Bowl and was a member of the Raiders Super Bowl XV championship team in 1980-81. Despite all of that, Pear wished he never played football.
"They think they are but no they are not," said Pear who broke his neck during his career and is facing hip replacement surgery in the very near future. "I don't begrudge the active players one penny and I suggest to them save as much as you can because when they become 40, 45, 50, 55, if things don't change, they are going to need the money because the union won't support them."
Pear is uninsurable and depends on government support such as Medicare and social security disability for his medical needs. But he might be one of the lucky ones as he has his wife's support and seems willing to take on the NFL and the NFLPA in an effort to get access to his benefits. He is one of the few with George Visger, Brent Boyd, Conrad Dobler and Mike Ditka who are speaking out about what they feel is the NFL and the NFLPA's abandonment of broken down old players who are in need.
But a lot of former players are not talking, partly because they have been trained since junior high school to "suck it up" and "be a man" which is the football mentality. Most players who play college football have no skills when they leave college because they don't get an education as they are too busy playing football. Sunday's warriors have been beaten over their heads since they were small and are team players even in retirement.
Retired players face high rates of divorce, face bankruptcies and have to put up with the pain of serious injuries on a daily basis. Alzheimer's disease and memory-related diseases in former players between the ages of 30 and 49 are 19 percent higher than average in that population pool.
"Football players wear a mask," said Pear. "All people see is a number. We are just a number that is how football works. Nobody knows how many retired players there (in dire straits)."
The House of Representatives has been holding hearings and monitoring the head injuries situation around the NFL. In 2009, several House members did not think NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell or the league has done enough to care for players with head injuries — concussions — and that the league really has not made much of an effort investigating long time damage from concussions suffered by players who worked in the NFL as players.
Pear and other retirees have been after the league and the players association to do more and it wasn't until Congress stepped in and began hearings in 2007 that the league and the players association took notice.
The NFL and researches have been at odds over the sports head trauma and later cognitive degeneration. Researchers looking into the relationship between concussions and cognitive problems have seen a link while the NFL's medical committee on concussions has not. On December 3, 2009, the NFL changed the league's concussion policy telling teams that if a player shows any significant sign of concussion that player must be removed from a game or practice and cannot return to the field on the same day.
New NFLPA Executive Director DeMaurice Smith told the retirees that "the rift is over" between the old players and the union and that help for those in need is on the way. But Pear doesn't see any evidence that the rift is really over. "The NFL grosses about eight and a half billion dollars a year, so where is the dough? (Former Executive Director, the late Gene) Upshaw once said we could not receive a pension and disability. Now we have the Gene Upshaw Dire Need Fund, but nothing has changed. So (to today's players) save every penny because once they realize they need medical insurance and can't get it."
When the cheering stops for a good number NFL players, there is no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Because of the injuries, a good many players became medical liabilities and are uninsurable. The National Football League does not guarantee contracts and if you are a marginal player who was injured, as soon as a doctor pronounces you healthy, you could be cut and your contract just ends with some severance pay.
Players of Pear's era got no severance and there was no guaranteed money given as a bonus. The bonus money is the only payment that a player will get, all players are then on a week-to-week basis. Virtually all of the players are replaceable on the spot.
"I know there is no pot of gold," said Pear. "In football, you are only a number. When you are a professional football player, you think you are invincible but when you get hit in the head, you injure your brain and life becomes different. We want our disability, our pension and future medical benefits. We don't want charity"
The football culture is different than real life. Football players grow up in a paramilitary setting as one long time NFL owner once said. That may explain why the National Football League Players Association has never been as effective as the Major League Baseball Players Association or the National Basketball Players Association or the National Hockey League Players Association in delivering guaranteed contracts to their members. The NFLPA seemingly has been pushing salaries up throughout the last four decades and not worrying about aftercare for former members until recently when the league and the players association were hauled before Congress to talk about the plight of former players.
"What they have done is create a myth," said Pear. "They have misled these young men telling them to be tough and work through injuries. Major League Baseball, the NBA and the NHL guarantee disability, pensions and medical their career. They (the NFL and the NFLPA) have convinced up that we do not deserve it. They have not allowed us access to our benefits which is not right and that has hurt players and players' families."
The National Football league Players Association has not kept records detailing the difficulties former union members have had in their post-football lives. One of the problems is that most players last 3 1/2 years in the league and pensions for players with three years in the league is not much. But the 3 1/2 year average is deceiving. Running backs may last 2.2 years and not be eligible for a pension or benefits as an example. The NFL may be recognized as the National Football League, but people in the NFL know the initials NFL as Not For Long. A good number of players never make it to where they can apply for a pension or disability and by the time they get to the NFL, after surviving high school and college ball, they probably have had some injury baggage. There is a disability benefit plan but according to Pear, it is more lip service than reality.
Congress, for the most part, has left the NFL issue behind although the House could call the NFL and NFLPA before them at any time. Pear is of the opinion that Congress, a class action suit by former players and chipping away at the NFL's image are three areas where the retired players can make the most strides.
The class action suit demanding compensation for injuries would need a law firm with deep pockets willing to take on the NFL and would require players to step up and talk about their problems. It might be easier to find a law firm than getting macho tough guys to go public. There is still a stigma attached even in retirement for players who don't toe the company line. Congress can go after two of the league's antitrust exemptions, the Sports Broadcast Act of 1961 which allowed the NFL to package all of the league's teams (14 in 1961, 32 in 2010) and sell the league to over-the-air and cable TV networks as one entity and undo the 1966 American Football league and National football League merger. That is highly unlikely but the NFL can be vulnerable there. The NFL does a remarkable job selling the product — football — but can the NFL afford images of broken down old stars and grunts who are relatively young, in their 40s and 50s parading around with ailments suffered in games?
It is unlikely that NFL media partners, Sumner Redstone's CBS (or any of the Redstone's holdings including Showtime), General Electric's NBC, Disney's ESPN or Rupert Murdoch's FOX businesses (including Fox News Channel or the FOX Business Channel) would tackle the issue. Newspapers are not partners with the NFL but newspaper sports sections depend on the NFL to fill up space for content and hope that readers will pay attention to ads and some of the ads are football related wrapped around Thanksgiving, weekends and playoff games leading up to the Super Bowl. A reporter sniffing around might lose access to the NFL and most writers would rather give up their right arms than be denied NFL access. The NFL controls the narrative and while Time Warner (the cable TV programmer and channel stock side not the stock side that owns Time Warner Cable) no longer has an NFL TV contract and could do pieces on CNN (a news network that hardly covers news), Time Warner might not want to show the NFL in a bad light. Image or perceived perception is everything to the NFL.
Pear fits into the study of short term memory problems. "There is a problem, you don't know what it is, as a player you are taught to work through it, but as you get older....I wished I never played. I enjoyed playing football when I was not injured. I played with a broken neck for two years. It wasn't worth it."
The image of the NFL, the romance of training camp, the start of the season goes fully on display by Aug. 1. The question for the 2,560 players who are in training camps is simple? Do you know what you are getting into? It is a question that only they can answer and perhaps instead of worrying about how much money they can get in the ongoing collective bargaining agreement, the players should check off safety concerns for both active and retired players (even though retired players don't pay the salaries of NFLPA staff) as their top priority in the next CBA.
Evan Weiner is an author, radio and TV commentator and speaking on "The Politics of Sports Business." He can be reached at evanjweiner@yahoo.com
FRIDAY, 23 JULY 2010 16:15
http://www.newjerseynewsroom.com/professional/discarded-nfl-players-are-often-forgotten-in-retirement
BY EVAN WEINER
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
THE POLITICS OF SPORTS BUSINESS
As National Football League training camps begin to open up around the country, (the New York Jets in Cortland, N.Y. on Aug. 1, the New York Giants in Albany, N.Y. also on Aug. 1 and the Philadelphia Eagles at Lehigh in Bethlehem, Pa. on Monday) some 2,560 players are getting ready for what has become an annual ritual — two a day sessions upon the broiling sun to prove they belong on the field. Eventually only 1,696 of them will make teams. A number of the 864 players who are "cut" might end up on practice squads where they make a minimum of $5,200 a week to hone their skills. Some of the players will be placed on injured reserve and will either return to the field or get cut when they are deemed healthy. Each team can keep as many as eight players on the payroll (practice squad) which means 256 players might get another shot at a roster spot when a team loses a player to an injury.
Football is a tough game. Americans have been sold on football's brutality since the October 31, 1960 CBS documentary called "The Violent World of Sam Huff" which was narrated by Walter Cronkite. Yes TV networks once did documentaries in a time when TV news did reporting, research and presented facts and not worried about being profitable. In the 1970s, Al Primo convinced TV executives that news could be turned into entertainment and news divisions could make really big money. Cable TV news would take Primo's idea to the next level and began to feature raving lunatics screaming about their viewpoint because it made for "good TV". Huff was a linebacker with the New York Giants and was the first NFL player ever to appear on the cover of Time magazine on November 30, 1959. Huff's job was to "hurt people" because football was a "man's game" according to the accompanying Time magazine column.
The Huff piece came about 10 months after the "greatest football game ever" when Johnny Unitas led the Baltimore Colts to an overtime win over the Giants in the NFL Championship Game, a game that captivated Americans and propelled the NFL from a "mom and pop" operation into the big time. Huff wasn't the best linebacker in the NFL but played for the "glamorous" New York Giants, a team that caught the fancy of Madison Avenue's advertising community and the TV networks which were headquartered in New York. Huff's Giants didn't win the 1958 championship, Baltimore did but Baltimore was led by a quiet crew cut quarterback named Unitas while the Giants had the handsome Frank Gifford and the tough as nails Huff.
Sam Huff became a successful businessman after his career. Unitas didn't. The quarterback who put the NFL on the map couldn't use his right hand as he got older because of a tendon injury he suffered in 1968. He has two knee replacements and heart bypass was denied disability. Unitas died in 2002 but the denial of disability to the quarterback who put the NFL on the map still draws the ire of former players in tough spots.
In 2007, Congresswoman Linda Sanchez, the chair of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Commercial and Administrative Law, held a hearing because she wanted to have "an open discussion on the fairness of the system to severely disabled retired players." It was the start of drawing attention to the plight of retired NFL players. Johnny Unitas' widow Sandra was in Washington watching the hearings.
Huff in his Time magazine interview in 1959 didn't say anything new. A Life magazine had a cover story on December 3, 1971 "Suicide Squad Football's most violent men." Suicide squads have been given a more genteel name — "Special Teams" — but that's where rookies have to first earn their stripes in the NFL. Special teams are the worst assignments on the team and punt returns can be especially dangerous.
Football has been wrestling with players been injured and maimed for more than a century. President Theodore Roosevelt in 1905 told college presidents to clean up the game or he would ban football because of the number of deaths and injuries associated with the game.
New rules were implemented but the game remained violent and more than a century later, it seems that not much has changed. Players are still one play away from ending their career and that leads to the question.
Do the young players and some of the veterans who are about to go to camp know what they are getting into? If you listen to Dave Pear (and other older retired players who suffered life changing injuries playing football), the answer is no. Pear played in the NFL for six years as a defensive tackle between 1975 and 1980 with the Baltimore Colts, Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Oakland Raiders. He played in one Pro Bowl and was a member of the Raiders Super Bowl XV championship team in 1980-81. Despite all of that, Pear wished he never played football.
"They think they are but no they are not," said Pear who broke his neck during his career and is facing hip replacement surgery in the very near future. "I don't begrudge the active players one penny and I suggest to them save as much as you can because when they become 40, 45, 50, 55, if things don't change, they are going to need the money because the union won't support them."
Pear is uninsurable and depends on government support such as Medicare and social security disability for his medical needs. But he might be one of the lucky ones as he has his wife's support and seems willing to take on the NFL and the NFLPA in an effort to get access to his benefits. He is one of the few with George Visger, Brent Boyd, Conrad Dobler and Mike Ditka who are speaking out about what they feel is the NFL and the NFLPA's abandonment of broken down old players who are in need.
But a lot of former players are not talking, partly because they have been trained since junior high school to "suck it up" and "be a man" which is the football mentality. Most players who play college football have no skills when they leave college because they don't get an education as they are too busy playing football. Sunday's warriors have been beaten over their heads since they were small and are team players even in retirement.
Retired players face high rates of divorce, face bankruptcies and have to put up with the pain of serious injuries on a daily basis. Alzheimer's disease and memory-related diseases in former players between the ages of 30 and 49 are 19 percent higher than average in that population pool.
"Football players wear a mask," said Pear. "All people see is a number. We are just a number that is how football works. Nobody knows how many retired players there (in dire straits)."
The House of Representatives has been holding hearings and monitoring the head injuries situation around the NFL. In 2009, several House members did not think NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell or the league has done enough to care for players with head injuries — concussions — and that the league really has not made much of an effort investigating long time damage from concussions suffered by players who worked in the NFL as players.
Pear and other retirees have been after the league and the players association to do more and it wasn't until Congress stepped in and began hearings in 2007 that the league and the players association took notice.
The NFL and researches have been at odds over the sports head trauma and later cognitive degeneration. Researchers looking into the relationship between concussions and cognitive problems have seen a link while the NFL's medical committee on concussions has not. On December 3, 2009, the NFL changed the league's concussion policy telling teams that if a player shows any significant sign of concussion that player must be removed from a game or practice and cannot return to the field on the same day.
New NFLPA Executive Director DeMaurice Smith told the retirees that "the rift is over" between the old players and the union and that help for those in need is on the way. But Pear doesn't see any evidence that the rift is really over. "The NFL grosses about eight and a half billion dollars a year, so where is the dough? (Former Executive Director, the late Gene) Upshaw once said we could not receive a pension and disability. Now we have the Gene Upshaw Dire Need Fund, but nothing has changed. So (to today's players) save every penny because once they realize they need medical insurance and can't get it."
When the cheering stops for a good number NFL players, there is no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Because of the injuries, a good many players became medical liabilities and are uninsurable. The National Football League does not guarantee contracts and if you are a marginal player who was injured, as soon as a doctor pronounces you healthy, you could be cut and your contract just ends with some severance pay.
Players of Pear's era got no severance and there was no guaranteed money given as a bonus. The bonus money is the only payment that a player will get, all players are then on a week-to-week basis. Virtually all of the players are replaceable on the spot.
"I know there is no pot of gold," said Pear. "In football, you are only a number. When you are a professional football player, you think you are invincible but when you get hit in the head, you injure your brain and life becomes different. We want our disability, our pension and future medical benefits. We don't want charity"
The football culture is different than real life. Football players grow up in a paramilitary setting as one long time NFL owner once said. That may explain why the National Football League Players Association has never been as effective as the Major League Baseball Players Association or the National Basketball Players Association or the National Hockey League Players Association in delivering guaranteed contracts to their members. The NFLPA seemingly has been pushing salaries up throughout the last four decades and not worrying about aftercare for former members until recently when the league and the players association were hauled before Congress to talk about the plight of former players.
"What they have done is create a myth," said Pear. "They have misled these young men telling them to be tough and work through injuries. Major League Baseball, the NBA and the NHL guarantee disability, pensions and medical their career. They (the NFL and the NFLPA) have convinced up that we do not deserve it. They have not allowed us access to our benefits which is not right and that has hurt players and players' families."
The National Football league Players Association has not kept records detailing the difficulties former union members have had in their post-football lives. One of the problems is that most players last 3 1/2 years in the league and pensions for players with three years in the league is not much. But the 3 1/2 year average is deceiving. Running backs may last 2.2 years and not be eligible for a pension or benefits as an example. The NFL may be recognized as the National Football League, but people in the NFL know the initials NFL as Not For Long. A good number of players never make it to where they can apply for a pension or disability and by the time they get to the NFL, after surviving high school and college ball, they probably have had some injury baggage. There is a disability benefit plan but according to Pear, it is more lip service than reality.
Congress, for the most part, has left the NFL issue behind although the House could call the NFL and NFLPA before them at any time. Pear is of the opinion that Congress, a class action suit by former players and chipping away at the NFL's image are three areas where the retired players can make the most strides.
The class action suit demanding compensation for injuries would need a law firm with deep pockets willing to take on the NFL and would require players to step up and talk about their problems. It might be easier to find a law firm than getting macho tough guys to go public. There is still a stigma attached even in retirement for players who don't toe the company line. Congress can go after two of the league's antitrust exemptions, the Sports Broadcast Act of 1961 which allowed the NFL to package all of the league's teams (14 in 1961, 32 in 2010) and sell the league to over-the-air and cable TV networks as one entity and undo the 1966 American Football league and National football League merger. That is highly unlikely but the NFL can be vulnerable there. The NFL does a remarkable job selling the product — football — but can the NFL afford images of broken down old stars and grunts who are relatively young, in their 40s and 50s parading around with ailments suffered in games?
It is unlikely that NFL media partners, Sumner Redstone's CBS (or any of the Redstone's holdings including Showtime), General Electric's NBC, Disney's ESPN or Rupert Murdoch's FOX businesses (including Fox News Channel or the FOX Business Channel) would tackle the issue. Newspapers are not partners with the NFL but newspaper sports sections depend on the NFL to fill up space for content and hope that readers will pay attention to ads and some of the ads are football related wrapped around Thanksgiving, weekends and playoff games leading up to the Super Bowl. A reporter sniffing around might lose access to the NFL and most writers would rather give up their right arms than be denied NFL access. The NFL controls the narrative and while Time Warner (the cable TV programmer and channel stock side not the stock side that owns Time Warner Cable) no longer has an NFL TV contract and could do pieces on CNN (a news network that hardly covers news), Time Warner might not want to show the NFL in a bad light. Image or perceived perception is everything to the NFL.
Pear fits into the study of short term memory problems. "There is a problem, you don't know what it is, as a player you are taught to work through it, but as you get older....I wished I never played. I enjoyed playing football when I was not injured. I played with a broken neck for two years. It wasn't worth it."
The image of the NFL, the romance of training camp, the start of the season goes fully on display by Aug. 1. The question for the 2,560 players who are in training camps is simple? Do you know what you are getting into? It is a question that only they can answer and perhaps instead of worrying about how much money they can get in the ongoing collective bargaining agreement, the players should check off safety concerns for both active and retired players (even though retired players don't pay the salaries of NFLPA staff) as their top priority in the next CBA.
Evan Weiner is an author, radio and TV commentator and speaking on "The Politics of Sports Business." He can be reached at evanjweiner@yahoo.com
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
Big time college sports: Something is happening around here, what it is ain’t exactly clear
Big time college sports: Something is happening around here, what it is ain’t exactly clear
http://dailycaller.com/2010/05/04/big-time-college-sports-something-is-happening-around-here-what-it-is-ain%E2%80%99t-exactly-clear/
By Evan Weiner - The Daily Caller 05/04/10 at 2:17 AM
If you’re curious as to why your cable or satellite television bill will go up, this column is for you. The people who bring you the National Collegiate Athletic Association’s Men’s Basketball Tournament, the event also known as March Madness, will also be bringing you a higher cable or satellite television bill. But you probably won’t have the rate hike explained to you by your local television provider. The NCAA just got a bump TV contract renewal for one of the crown jewels of American sports – March Madness –and a significant amount of that money will come from the people who pay the bills for cable Internet and wireless video.
You.
There is something happening here, but what it is ain’t exactly clear, to quote Stephen Stills. Big-time college sports is yet again evolving, with the new contract serving as merely a jumping off point. The only certainty is that the cost of delivering college sports to the consumer will be going up, whether it is on cable, satellite TV, or broadband.
The winds of change in big-time college sports will be steered by the jet stream of the recently concluded NCAA-CBS/Turner Broadcasting (Time Warner) agreement that will see the over-the-air network, CBS and the cable/broadband/wireless distributor Turner Broadcasting, showing the Division I Men’s Basketball Championship between 2011 and 2024 on their delivery systems. The distributors, CBS and Turner Sports, will pay the NCAA members about $10.8 billion over the life of that contract. All the tournament games will be shown live across four national networks, beginning in 2010.
CBS Sports and Turner Broadcasting will help out on the NCAA’s corporate marketing program.
The good news for college basketball fans, consumers, alumni and gamblers (Like it or not, the gambling community makes up a sizeable portion of audience that follows so-called student-athletes playing games for colleges) is that all of the games will be available on television at the same time. The bad news is that people with no interest in the games will subsidize the $10.8 billion contract, which means they will be unknowingly subsidizing big time college sports to the tune of $740 million annually through 2024.
The new good news for the big-time college programs, as well as the smaller schools in Division II and III,is that they will get a chunk of that $740 million to underwrite their entire intercollegiate sports program, from football to fencing in both men’s and women’s sports. College sports is a financially losing proposition for most schools, with a handful of exceptions, like Michigan and Missouri. It costs an awful lot of money to run full sports programs, even if the students receive just a scholarship and a chance to get an education if they so desire.
The NCAA released a statement trying to clarify what the $10.8 billion will do by pointing out that “approximately 96 percent of the revenue generated from this new agreement will be used to benefit student-athletes through either programs, services or direct distribution to member conferences and schools. Further, the agreement ensures student-athletes across all three NCAA divisions will continue to be supported in a broad range of championship opportunities, access to funds for personal and educational needs, and through scholarships in Divisions I and II.”
Only football and basketball are sports moneymakers for college and universities that have decided to swim in the very deep end of the pool.
Just how will CBS and Turner Sports pay the actual bill? Sumner Redstone’s CBS has to hope that there will not be a deep recession anytime in the next 14 years which will scare advertisers away from the TV, because over-the-air TV has just one revenue source to cover the bills — sponsorship or marketing partners — while Turner Broadcasting (Time Warner) has a dual revenue stream, user fees and advertising.
Most of the money needed to pay off the cable/satellite TV bill will come from consumers. Although Time Warner will never give exact figures as to how much they charge consumers for TNT, TBS or truTV, those numbers are believed to be a dollar a subscriber for TNT (which has sports content like the National Basketball Association), fifty cents for TBS (which has a Major League Baseball deal in place, a $310 million, seven year agreement which started in 2007 and ends in 2013 for a package of 26 Sunday games during the season and the first round of the playoffs) and about a dime for the ratings-challenged truTV, which used to be the ratings-challenged Court TV.
Those rates will go up and will be passed onto the consumer. Someone has to pay the freight, and it will not be Redstone or Time Warner. They will play with other people’s money.
Time Warner is actually footing the bill, with CBS paying Time Warner back as much as $670 million a year. CBS will show the Final Four until 2015 and then the over-the-air network, CBS and the dual revenue cable company Time Warner, will alternate coverage on an annual basis.
CBS does own College Sports TV or CSTV, which is a digital cable channel, which will not be part of the CBS-Turner Broadcasting-NCAA deal. CSTV has coverage of NCAA Division’s I, II, and III, that features over 35 men’s and women’s college sports, in addition to nine NCAA championships. CSTV has multi–media and marketing rights for the Mountain West Conference, the Atlantic 10 Conference, Conference USA, the Big West Conference, the Historically Black Colleges and Universities and Navy athletics. CSTV is another source of revenue for college programs, but it is not the plum that schools are after.
Conferences want to own a network, like the New York Yankees YESNetwork or the Boston Red Sox-Bruins New England Sports Network or the New York Mets SNY (which is partially owned by Time Warner and Comcast) or the Cablevision New York Knicks-Rangers-Madison Square Garden Network or the Chicago Bulls, Cubs, White Sox, Blackhawks ownership with Comcast of the Chicago Sports Net. Or Stan Kroenke Altitude Sports Network, which features Kroenke Colorado Avalanche, Denver Nuggets and Colorado Rapids sports franchises.
That is where the real money can be made.
There is something happening here, but what it is ain’t exactly clear.
Just how much will consumers have to pay once 2016 rolls around, and will Congress take a look at big-time sports events migrating to cable, along with lesser events? Time Warner will be renewing a good many of the company’s carriage agreements with multiple system operators (MSOs) like Comcast, Cablevision and Cox. Will Time Warner, which is also a multiple system operator, hold up the major and minor MSOs and demand more money from them because of the major investment in college sports? Will the other MSOs say yes and pass the added cost to consumers?
While Time Warner figures out strategy to maximize revenues on this deal, the big-time college conferences may be in an “expansion” mode. The Southeast Conference is eyeing “expansion” just in case. The “just in case” scenario will be played out if the Big Ten (which has a cable TV network with Comcast, the country’s largest MSO) decides to add a number of schools to reach 16 and go beyond the Midwest.
There is a lot of money available from the Big Ten moves east (perhaps Rutgers or Pittsburgh) or south or west from cable TV. The Southeast Conference isn’t hurting for capital as it has a $3 million, 15-year deal with CBS and ESPN for football games. The old argument of why expand because our new partners will take a share of the TV deal will certainly come up at the next SEC meeting in May. This SEC is not the Security and Exchange Commission. It is a college conference looking for more money.
College conferences have been adding schools because of the possibility of more money for the last decade. The Atlantic Coast Conference poached Big East schools and took Miami, Boston College and Virginia Tech, which annoyed Connecticut officials, and the state sued to first block the ACC’s actions and then to get some money for damages. The Big East went after other conference schools to replace the ones that defected. It caused a realignment of conferences.
The Big Ten kicked the tires and thought about adding Rutgers and then Pittsburgh. So far, there is just talk that the Big Ten will go from 11 schools to possibly 12, 14 or 16. To do that, the conference would have to poach possible Big East schools like Rutgers or Syracuse or Pittsburgh or convince Notre Dame to drop being an independent (Notre Dame has a deal with NBC, an entity that will merge with Comcast. Comcast is partners with the Big Ten on a cable TV network) or perhaps go after Missouri of the Big 12 Conference. The college to change conferences will trigger an avalanche of moves, all done for TV revenue, most of which will come from cable TV consumers, whether they like sports or not or watch sports or not.
Something may happen here, but what it is exactly ain’t clear. Big time college sports business is changing or evolving, and because of that it is not out of the question that NCAA officials, over-the-air and cable TV executives and college presidents and chancellors, along with conference commissioners and athletic directors, will be hauled down before Congress to explain the real business of college sports and how “super conferences” could be formed because of TV opportunities. Congress has given big-time college sports a lot of anti-competition protection over the years, including a tax-exempt status.
Evan Weiner is an author, radio-TV commentator and lecturer on “The Politics and Business of Sports” and can be reached at evanjweiner@yahoo.com
Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2010/05/04/big-time-college-sports-something-is-happening-around-here-what-it-is-ain%e2%80%99t-exactly-clear/print/#ixzz0mxcfEskJ
http://dailycaller.com/2010/05/04/big-time-college-sports-something-is-happening-around-here-what-it-is-ain%E2%80%99t-exactly-clear/
By Evan Weiner - The Daily Caller 05/04/10 at 2:17 AM
If you’re curious as to why your cable or satellite television bill will go up, this column is for you. The people who bring you the National Collegiate Athletic Association’s Men’s Basketball Tournament, the event also known as March Madness, will also be bringing you a higher cable or satellite television bill. But you probably won’t have the rate hike explained to you by your local television provider. The NCAA just got a bump TV contract renewal for one of the crown jewels of American sports – March Madness –and a significant amount of that money will come from the people who pay the bills for cable Internet and wireless video.
You.
There is something happening here, but what it is ain’t exactly clear, to quote Stephen Stills. Big-time college sports is yet again evolving, with the new contract serving as merely a jumping off point. The only certainty is that the cost of delivering college sports to the consumer will be going up, whether it is on cable, satellite TV, or broadband.
The winds of change in big-time college sports will be steered by the jet stream of the recently concluded NCAA-CBS/Turner Broadcasting (Time Warner) agreement that will see the over-the-air network, CBS and the cable/broadband/wireless distributor Turner Broadcasting, showing the Division I Men’s Basketball Championship between 2011 and 2024 on their delivery systems. The distributors, CBS and Turner Sports, will pay the NCAA members about $10.8 billion over the life of that contract. All the tournament games will be shown live across four national networks, beginning in 2010.
CBS Sports and Turner Broadcasting will help out on the NCAA’s corporate marketing program.
The good news for college basketball fans, consumers, alumni and gamblers (Like it or not, the gambling community makes up a sizeable portion of audience that follows so-called student-athletes playing games for colleges) is that all of the games will be available on television at the same time. The bad news is that people with no interest in the games will subsidize the $10.8 billion contract, which means they will be unknowingly subsidizing big time college sports to the tune of $740 million annually through 2024.
The new good news for the big-time college programs, as well as the smaller schools in Division II and III,is that they will get a chunk of that $740 million to underwrite their entire intercollegiate sports program, from football to fencing in both men’s and women’s sports. College sports is a financially losing proposition for most schools, with a handful of exceptions, like Michigan and Missouri. It costs an awful lot of money to run full sports programs, even if the students receive just a scholarship and a chance to get an education if they so desire.
The NCAA released a statement trying to clarify what the $10.8 billion will do by pointing out that “approximately 96 percent of the revenue generated from this new agreement will be used to benefit student-athletes through either programs, services or direct distribution to member conferences and schools. Further, the agreement ensures student-athletes across all three NCAA divisions will continue to be supported in a broad range of championship opportunities, access to funds for personal and educational needs, and through scholarships in Divisions I and II.”
Only football and basketball are sports moneymakers for college and universities that have decided to swim in the very deep end of the pool.
Just how will CBS and Turner Sports pay the actual bill? Sumner Redstone’s CBS has to hope that there will not be a deep recession anytime in the next 14 years which will scare advertisers away from the TV, because over-the-air TV has just one revenue source to cover the bills — sponsorship or marketing partners — while Turner Broadcasting (Time Warner) has a dual revenue stream, user fees and advertising.
Most of the money needed to pay off the cable/satellite TV bill will come from consumers. Although Time Warner will never give exact figures as to how much they charge consumers for TNT, TBS or truTV, those numbers are believed to be a dollar a subscriber for TNT (which has sports content like the National Basketball Association), fifty cents for TBS (which has a Major League Baseball deal in place, a $310 million, seven year agreement which started in 2007 and ends in 2013 for a package of 26 Sunday games during the season and the first round of the playoffs) and about a dime for the ratings-challenged truTV, which used to be the ratings-challenged Court TV.
Those rates will go up and will be passed onto the consumer. Someone has to pay the freight, and it will not be Redstone or Time Warner. They will play with other people’s money.
Time Warner is actually footing the bill, with CBS paying Time Warner back as much as $670 million a year. CBS will show the Final Four until 2015 and then the over-the-air network, CBS and the dual revenue cable company Time Warner, will alternate coverage on an annual basis.
CBS does own College Sports TV or CSTV, which is a digital cable channel, which will not be part of the CBS-Turner Broadcasting-NCAA deal. CSTV has coverage of NCAA Division’s I, II, and III, that features over 35 men’s and women’s college sports, in addition to nine NCAA championships. CSTV has multi–media and marketing rights for the Mountain West Conference, the Atlantic 10 Conference, Conference USA, the Big West Conference, the Historically Black Colleges and Universities and Navy athletics. CSTV is another source of revenue for college programs, but it is not the plum that schools are after.
Conferences want to own a network, like the New York Yankees YESNetwork or the Boston Red Sox-Bruins New England Sports Network or the New York Mets SNY (which is partially owned by Time Warner and Comcast) or the Cablevision New York Knicks-Rangers-Madison Square Garden Network or the Chicago Bulls, Cubs, White Sox, Blackhawks ownership with Comcast of the Chicago Sports Net. Or Stan Kroenke Altitude Sports Network, which features Kroenke Colorado Avalanche, Denver Nuggets and Colorado Rapids sports franchises.
That is where the real money can be made.
There is something happening here, but what it is ain’t exactly clear.
Just how much will consumers have to pay once 2016 rolls around, and will Congress take a look at big-time sports events migrating to cable, along with lesser events? Time Warner will be renewing a good many of the company’s carriage agreements with multiple system operators (MSOs) like Comcast, Cablevision and Cox. Will Time Warner, which is also a multiple system operator, hold up the major and minor MSOs and demand more money from them because of the major investment in college sports? Will the other MSOs say yes and pass the added cost to consumers?
While Time Warner figures out strategy to maximize revenues on this deal, the big-time college conferences may be in an “expansion” mode. The Southeast Conference is eyeing “expansion” just in case. The “just in case” scenario will be played out if the Big Ten (which has a cable TV network with Comcast, the country’s largest MSO) decides to add a number of schools to reach 16 and go beyond the Midwest.
There is a lot of money available from the Big Ten moves east (perhaps Rutgers or Pittsburgh) or south or west from cable TV. The Southeast Conference isn’t hurting for capital as it has a $3 million, 15-year deal with CBS and ESPN for football games. The old argument of why expand because our new partners will take a share of the TV deal will certainly come up at the next SEC meeting in May. This SEC is not the Security and Exchange Commission. It is a college conference looking for more money.
College conferences have been adding schools because of the possibility of more money for the last decade. The Atlantic Coast Conference poached Big East schools and took Miami, Boston College and Virginia Tech, which annoyed Connecticut officials, and the state sued to first block the ACC’s actions and then to get some money for damages. The Big East went after other conference schools to replace the ones that defected. It caused a realignment of conferences.
The Big Ten kicked the tires and thought about adding Rutgers and then Pittsburgh. So far, there is just talk that the Big Ten will go from 11 schools to possibly 12, 14 or 16. To do that, the conference would have to poach possible Big East schools like Rutgers or Syracuse or Pittsburgh or convince Notre Dame to drop being an independent (Notre Dame has a deal with NBC, an entity that will merge with Comcast. Comcast is partners with the Big Ten on a cable TV network) or perhaps go after Missouri of the Big 12 Conference. The college to change conferences will trigger an avalanche of moves, all done for TV revenue, most of which will come from cable TV consumers, whether they like sports or not or watch sports or not.
Something may happen here, but what it is exactly ain’t clear. Big time college sports business is changing or evolving, and because of that it is not out of the question that NCAA officials, over-the-air and cable TV executives and college presidents and chancellors, along with conference commissioners and athletic directors, will be hauled down before Congress to explain the real business of college sports and how “super conferences” could be formed because of TV opportunities. Congress has given big-time college sports a lot of anti-competition protection over the years, including a tax-exempt status.
Evan Weiner is an author, radio-TV commentator and lecturer on “The Politics and Business of Sports” and can be reached at evanjweiner@yahoo.com
Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2010/05/04/big-time-college-sports-something-is-happening-around-here-what-it-is-ain%e2%80%99t-exactly-clear/print/#ixzz0mxcfEskJ
Saturday, January 30, 2010
Redstone and CBS Back in a Political Tug of War at the Super Bowl
http://www.examiner.com/examiner/x-3926-Business-of-Sports-Examiner~y2010m1d30-Redstone-and-CBS-back-in-a-political-tug-of-war-at-the-Super-Bowl#
Redstone and CBS Back in a Political Tug of War at the Super Bowl
By Evan Weiner
January 30, 2010
(New York, N. Y.) --- Perhaps Sumner Redstone should just say no to the Super Bowl because it seems Redstone’s CBS television network is always involved in some controversy in the presentation of the Super Bowl. Redstone’s CBS is making news because the network has accepted money from a group that plans to air an anti-abortion commercial during next week’s game but at the same time has rejected an ad from ManCrunch, a gay dating website.
Redstone’s network released a statement explaining why CBS will not show the ad during the Super Bowl.
"After reviewing the ad - which is entirely commercial in nature - our Standards and Practices department decided not to accept this particular spot. As always, we are open to working with the client on alternative submissions," according to the CBS publicity department.
Too bad Redstone’s Standards and Practices department doesn’t review the Redstone-owned MTV show Jersey Shore or some of the other MTV shows that are loaded with sexual innuendos including promoting lesbianism. Redstone bowed to pressure from someone in rejecting the ManCrunch ad but Redstone, CBS President Les Moonvees and the rest of the CBS upper management has no problem with the Focus on the Family, Celebrate Family, Celebrate Life spot featuring college quarterback and Heisman Trophy winner Tim Tebow.
Redstone’s CBS network enjoys a much higher profile than his ratings challenged MTV. Redstone apparently doesn’t care that the New Jersey Italian American Legislative Caucus asked his Viacom company to take Jersey Shore off the air. In a letter to Redstone and Viacom, caucus chairman Joseph Vitale said the show is "wildly offensive."
Jersey Shore is just a cable TV show, nothing more, nothing less on a network that produces minimal ratings. The Super Bowl is American television’s biggest event and Redstone is going to get protests from various groups over his or someone at CBS decisions to air one spot and decline another spot.
Redstone and CBS may have made their commercial decisions with the 2004 Super Bowl in mind. Redstone and CBS had the television rights to the game and Redstone’s MTV cable network produced the halftime show.
The Super Bowl XXXVIII did not start well for political activitists as CBS rejected an ad from the political group, MoveOn.org called “Bush in 30 seconds” under a network policy that apparently dated back to when William Paley owned the network “controversial issues of public importance.”
No one seems to remember that New England beat Carolina in that game but people do remember that the singer Janet Jackson’s breast popped out of her clothes due to what fellow singer Justin Timberlake called a wardrobe malfunction during halftime of that game.
Jackson’s “wardrobe malfunction” lasted scant seconds but it set off a political firestorm even though very few people actually witnessed the event live on TV and it wasn’t until people who TiVo’ed the show and got a glimpse of the “wardrobe malfunction.” The MTV produced halftime show also featured the singer Nelly gesturing towards his crotch and the singer Kid Rock wearing a poncho made from an American flag. There were also a number of strange commercials during the presentation including a guaranteed a cure for erectile dysfunction, and two beer commercials, one of which featured a horse that suffered from flatulence and another that had a dog attacking male genitalia.
Immediately Republican members of Congress jumped into the halftime show “costume malfunction” and some House members stood on the steps in front of the Capitol criticized CBS and the NFL the morning after. Zell Miller, a Democrat from Georgia, took to the Senate floor and took aim at the halftime show saying something about how the “wardrobe malfunction” was a sign or declining morality in America. Political groups seized the incident to gain exposure and the Federal Communications Commission levied a $550,000 fine against Redstone, CBS and 20 TV stations because of the halftime show. FCC fines would rise as a result of the incident from $27,500 to $325,000 per incident.
In Canada, where Global TV used the CBS feed, there were a few complaints but the CTRC let the matter go. The game was televised globally and the “costume malfunction” seemed not to be a problem.
There were other ramifications from the Jackson “costume malfunction.” The NFL decided the halftime show needed a change and “safe” acts were hired beginning in 2005. Those acts included the Beatles Paul McCartney who spent nine days in jail in Japan for possessing marijuana, the Rolling Stones, a group that featured Keith Richards who was busted on a heroin charge in Canada in 1977 and this year, The Who, a group who had two members die of apparent drug use, Keith Moon and John Entwhistle will perform.
MTV was fired as the halftime producer.
Additionally, the NFL dropped Levitra as the league’s erectile dysfunction advertising partner in 2007 and Anheuser-Busch promised it would never make commercial that featured a horse suffering from flatulence or a dog nipping at a male’s crouch or similar commercials ever again.
Television (and radio) also took steps to clean up shows. In 2005, the National Basketball Association suggested to the singer Beyonce Knowles to sing Crazy in Love rather than Naughty Girl at the NBA All-Star Game. Live programming was put on a delay just in case something went awry. The halftime show also impacted network TV soap operas, and award shows such as the Grammy’s and the Academy Awards. Sixty-five ABC TV stations were so concerned about the newly found “indecency” issue that they refused to show the networks presentation of the moving “Saving Private Ryan” because on Valentine’s Day 2004 because of the film’s violence.
Over-the-air TV and radio are subjected to FCC laws, cable TV is not. The American public owes the airwaves, Redstone is merely a steward who oversees a network and network owned and operated TV stations in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia and other cities.
The halftime incident became a political campaign issue. Jackson and Timberlake are still big names in the music industry globally even though they set off a political firestorm in 2004.
Redstone and CBS are still fighting the FCC fines.
The Super Bowl has been sanitized as much as possible because of a less than three second incident in 2004. Redstone and CBS will now face a maelstrom of protests from the left because of their decisions to say yes to Focus on the Family’s spot and no to ManCrunch.
The Super Bowl, which was born in Senate and House chambers in the summer and fall of 1966 as the result of Congress giving the go ahead to the merger of the National Football League and the American Football League, is a potent political force. Arizona now celebrates Martin Luther King Day because the NFL wanted to put the Big Game in Tempe and was forced to pull it from Tempe in 1993 after Arizona refused to recognize the day. The NFL awarded Tempe the game in 1996 after Arizona voters said yes to making Martin Luther King Day a state holiday. The NFL rewards cities that build stadiums with a Super Bowl and the 2004 game changed TV.
Redstone and CBS had the 2004 game and they have it this year and the Redstone and the CBS commercial decisions have ignited political debate. Welcome back to the Super Bowl Sumner Redstone, Les Moonvees and CBS.
evanjweiner@yahoo.com
Redstone and CBS Back in a Political Tug of War at the Super Bowl
By Evan Weiner
January 30, 2010
(New York, N. Y.) --- Perhaps Sumner Redstone should just say no to the Super Bowl because it seems Redstone’s CBS television network is always involved in some controversy in the presentation of the Super Bowl. Redstone’s CBS is making news because the network has accepted money from a group that plans to air an anti-abortion commercial during next week’s game but at the same time has rejected an ad from ManCrunch, a gay dating website.
Redstone’s network released a statement explaining why CBS will not show the ad during the Super Bowl.
"After reviewing the ad - which is entirely commercial in nature - our Standards and Practices department decided not to accept this particular spot. As always, we are open to working with the client on alternative submissions," according to the CBS publicity department.
Too bad Redstone’s Standards and Practices department doesn’t review the Redstone-owned MTV show Jersey Shore or some of the other MTV shows that are loaded with sexual innuendos including promoting lesbianism. Redstone bowed to pressure from someone in rejecting the ManCrunch ad but Redstone, CBS President Les Moonvees and the rest of the CBS upper management has no problem with the Focus on the Family, Celebrate Family, Celebrate Life spot featuring college quarterback and Heisman Trophy winner Tim Tebow.
Redstone’s CBS network enjoys a much higher profile than his ratings challenged MTV. Redstone apparently doesn’t care that the New Jersey Italian American Legislative Caucus asked his Viacom company to take Jersey Shore off the air. In a letter to Redstone and Viacom, caucus chairman Joseph Vitale said the show is "wildly offensive."
Jersey Shore is just a cable TV show, nothing more, nothing less on a network that produces minimal ratings. The Super Bowl is American television’s biggest event and Redstone is going to get protests from various groups over his or someone at CBS decisions to air one spot and decline another spot.
Redstone and CBS may have made their commercial decisions with the 2004 Super Bowl in mind. Redstone and CBS had the television rights to the game and Redstone’s MTV cable network produced the halftime show.
The Super Bowl XXXVIII did not start well for political activitists as CBS rejected an ad from the political group, MoveOn.org called “Bush in 30 seconds” under a network policy that apparently dated back to when William Paley owned the network “controversial issues of public importance.”
No one seems to remember that New England beat Carolina in that game but people do remember that the singer Janet Jackson’s breast popped out of her clothes due to what fellow singer Justin Timberlake called a wardrobe malfunction during halftime of that game.
Jackson’s “wardrobe malfunction” lasted scant seconds but it set off a political firestorm even though very few people actually witnessed the event live on TV and it wasn’t until people who TiVo’ed the show and got a glimpse of the “wardrobe malfunction.” The MTV produced halftime show also featured the singer Nelly gesturing towards his crotch and the singer Kid Rock wearing a poncho made from an American flag. There were also a number of strange commercials during the presentation including a guaranteed a cure for erectile dysfunction, and two beer commercials, one of which featured a horse that suffered from flatulence and another that had a dog attacking male genitalia.
Immediately Republican members of Congress jumped into the halftime show “costume malfunction” and some House members stood on the steps in front of the Capitol criticized CBS and the NFL the morning after. Zell Miller, a Democrat from Georgia, took to the Senate floor and took aim at the halftime show saying something about how the “wardrobe malfunction” was a sign or declining morality in America. Political groups seized the incident to gain exposure and the Federal Communications Commission levied a $550,000 fine against Redstone, CBS and 20 TV stations because of the halftime show. FCC fines would rise as a result of the incident from $27,500 to $325,000 per incident.
In Canada, where Global TV used the CBS feed, there were a few complaints but the CTRC let the matter go. The game was televised globally and the “costume malfunction” seemed not to be a problem.
There were other ramifications from the Jackson “costume malfunction.” The NFL decided the halftime show needed a change and “safe” acts were hired beginning in 2005. Those acts included the Beatles Paul McCartney who spent nine days in jail in Japan for possessing marijuana, the Rolling Stones, a group that featured Keith Richards who was busted on a heroin charge in Canada in 1977 and this year, The Who, a group who had two members die of apparent drug use, Keith Moon and John Entwhistle will perform.
MTV was fired as the halftime producer.
Additionally, the NFL dropped Levitra as the league’s erectile dysfunction advertising partner in 2007 and Anheuser-Busch promised it would never make commercial that featured a horse suffering from flatulence or a dog nipping at a male’s crouch or similar commercials ever again.
Television (and radio) also took steps to clean up shows. In 2005, the National Basketball Association suggested to the singer Beyonce Knowles to sing Crazy in Love rather than Naughty Girl at the NBA All-Star Game. Live programming was put on a delay just in case something went awry. The halftime show also impacted network TV soap operas, and award shows such as the Grammy’s and the Academy Awards. Sixty-five ABC TV stations were so concerned about the newly found “indecency” issue that they refused to show the networks presentation of the moving “Saving Private Ryan” because on Valentine’s Day 2004 because of the film’s violence.
Over-the-air TV and radio are subjected to FCC laws, cable TV is not. The American public owes the airwaves, Redstone is merely a steward who oversees a network and network owned and operated TV stations in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia and other cities.
The halftime incident became a political campaign issue. Jackson and Timberlake are still big names in the music industry globally even though they set off a political firestorm in 2004.
Redstone and CBS are still fighting the FCC fines.
The Super Bowl has been sanitized as much as possible because of a less than three second incident in 2004. Redstone and CBS will now face a maelstrom of protests from the left because of their decisions to say yes to Focus on the Family’s spot and no to ManCrunch.
The Super Bowl, which was born in Senate and House chambers in the summer and fall of 1966 as the result of Congress giving the go ahead to the merger of the National Football League and the American Football League, is a potent political force. Arizona now celebrates Martin Luther King Day because the NFL wanted to put the Big Game in Tempe and was forced to pull it from Tempe in 1993 after Arizona refused to recognize the day. The NFL awarded Tempe the game in 1996 after Arizona voters said yes to making Martin Luther King Day a state holiday. The NFL rewards cities that build stadiums with a Super Bowl and the 2004 game changed TV.
Redstone and CBS had the 2004 game and they have it this year and the Redstone and the CBS commercial decisions have ignited political debate. Welcome back to the Super Bowl Sumner Redstone, Les Moonvees and CBS.
evanjweiner@yahoo.com
Sunday, December 6, 2009
Tiger Woods and Broken Journalism
http://www.examiner.com/examiner/x-3926-Business-of-Sports-Examiner~y2009m12d6-Tiger-Woods-and-Broken-Journalism#
Tiger Woods and Broken Journalism
By Evan Weiner
The United States must not be conducting two wars or trying to get out of a severe recession or trying to figure out how to solve the health care crisis. You see two big name so-called journalists, Bob Schieffer of the CBS television network and the New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd have decided to comment on the golfer Tiger Woods personal problems which means all is well with the world and America.
Schieffer on his CBS-TV Face the Nation public affairs program and Dowd in her New York Times column.
The fact that Schieffer, the one time CBS Evening News anchor, and Dowd are throwing on their two cents on Woods shows just how far journalism has sank. Schieffer, if he has to weigh in on Tiger Woods, should just go back to his Friday night dinners and discussion of fantasy baseball with his brother Tom, the former Texas Rangers President and Rangers Managing General Partner George W. Bush like they did in the 1990s and Dowd, well someone at the New York Times likes her. Hopefully for the columnist that like will still be on display in the future as later this week the New York Times plans lets go of a number of employees.
The Times is hemorrhaging money and has to lay off personal.
The times are a changing and the New York Times is not what it once was nor is CBS News, the home of Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite. Murrow helped bring down Senator Joseph McCarthy on the See It Now show back on March 9, 1954 and Cronkite concluded the Vietnam War was not winnable on February 27, 1968 during a CBS news program which set into motion a series of events that might have had a heavy influence on President Lyndon B. Johnson’s decision not to seek re-election in 1968.
To be fair, both Murrow and Cronkite did preside over a lot of fluff programming as well with Murrow hosting People to People and Cronkite was an anchor at the 1960 Winter Olympics and did the narration of the Violent World of Sam Huff as part of the “The Twentieth Century” series on October 30, 1960.
There is a lot going on in the world. A global climate conference in Copenhagen, more troops will be headed to Afghanistan, unemployment at 10 percent, the on going health care debate and in the sports world, head injuries in football. All of that is significantly more important than whatever is going on between Woods and his wife.
The tearing down of an idol is nothing new in American journalism and now it is Tiger Woods turn to feel the wrath of the jock sniffers who report on sports. Somehow Tiger didn’t level with them, as if the reporters who follow golf deserve an explanation of his exploits. Of course Tiger has never palled around with sportswriters types anyway and now they can even the score since he is not their friend. Hell hath no fury like a sportswriter or sportswriters scorned.
There will be fewer reporters following Tiger Woods around in 2010 as the newspaper industry continues to bleed red ink and the radio/TV industry cuts back on news programming. The funny thing about the entire Tiger Woods coverage is that newspapers, radio and TV are giving the people what they want.
Scandal.
Of course if scandal really did sell, the National Enquirer would not be reeling. The New York Post would be selling millions of papers daily instead of seeing plunging circulation and the Gannett newspapers would not be laying off reporters, closing down printing presses and furloughing employees. The Gannett papers including USA Today, the New York suburban papers including the Journal News and others have ceased to be legitimate publications.
Newspaper executives and newspaper owners like Rupert Murdoch can scream all they want about how Google and the internet have inflicted a great deal of damage on their circulation and advertising but the truth is simple. Newspaper owners, publishers and managers sat snug while people like Craig Newmark came up with a better idea, Craig’s List, which took millions of dollars away from papers by charging far less for classified ads.
It is true advertisers are cutting back because of the economy yet marketers are willing to spend more on web advertising.
Tiger Woods is not going to sell any more newspapers or even more National Enquirers. But don’t tell that to various executives.
At one time, newspapers provided the backbone of publicist for sports. Notre Dame owes a great deal to the writers of the 1920s who sold the public on the mythology of George Gipp, the Four Horsemen and Knute Rockne. Newspapers made Babe Ruth and Red Grange household names in the 1920s and sports has embraced newspapers and sportswriters have gained a sense of entitlement which includes voting for various sports hall of fames and for individual players and manager or coaches awards which impacts on the earnings power of athletes, coaches and sports executives.
Today college students don’t read newspapers and young people get sports information from team websites, league websites, blogs, TV and radio. The golden age of the newspaper in America is gone and AARP members are the last generation that depends on newspapers for information. That is an undisputed fact.
Tiger Woods is a genuine 14 carat superstar with major ability in his field which is golf. Tiger doesn’t need sportswriters around because the truth of the matter is that he doesn’t say very much and his talent is always on display and people who follow Tiger don’t need a sportswriters’ analyst of his ability. They can listen to the former professional golfer who is part of a television network’s presentation of a golf tournament.
By the way, Tiger is not in trouble with the law. The case is closed and done with Tiger playing a small fine. But the media is not done with Tiger, the story they created about Tiger has come undone and it is payback time. Yet Tiger is not going to add to the media bottom line with scandal. It doesn’t work, if it did Confidential magazine would still be in circulation.
Tiger Woods never really sold newspapers but he did draw eyeballs to the TV screen whenever he played in a tournament. Woods sponsors are not fleeing and the Professional Golf Association’s media partners whether it is Summer Redstone’s CBS, General Electric’s NBC (soon to be merged with the Philadelphia-based Comcast, the multiple systems operator which owns the Golf Channel and Versus, which carries PGA shows), Disney’s ESPN and ABC in the US or the Disney-owner TSN in Canada along with RDS and CanWest north of the border and the numerous televisions partners globally can’t wait for Tiger to play in the tournaments they are showing. XM Satellite Radio, another financially struggling entity, is not dissolving its partnership with the PGA because of Tiger’s car accident or apparent National Enquirer fodder lifestyle.
Schieffer should keep his CBS Face the Nation program focused squarely addressing important American issues and Dowd, well she should go back to the Breck Girl (John Edwards) type columns on politics. Tiger will get more viewers for Redstone by playing golf; Tiger will not bring Redstone or Schieffer any new viewers. Dowd’s columns on Tiger will not help bring readers back to the New York Times.
As soon as Tiger is back on the golf course, all will be forgiven. Tiger is just another jock, another human being; although he is a superior golfer and he will make his money which is more than can be said for the New York Times or the National Enquirer.
Tiger Woods and Broken Journalism
By Evan Weiner
The United States must not be conducting two wars or trying to get out of a severe recession or trying to figure out how to solve the health care crisis. You see two big name so-called journalists, Bob Schieffer of the CBS television network and the New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd have decided to comment on the golfer Tiger Woods personal problems which means all is well with the world and America.
Schieffer on his CBS-TV Face the Nation public affairs program and Dowd in her New York Times column.
The fact that Schieffer, the one time CBS Evening News anchor, and Dowd are throwing on their two cents on Woods shows just how far journalism has sank. Schieffer, if he has to weigh in on Tiger Woods, should just go back to his Friday night dinners and discussion of fantasy baseball with his brother Tom, the former Texas Rangers President and Rangers Managing General Partner George W. Bush like they did in the 1990s and Dowd, well someone at the New York Times likes her. Hopefully for the columnist that like will still be on display in the future as later this week the New York Times plans lets go of a number of employees.
The Times is hemorrhaging money and has to lay off personal.
The times are a changing and the New York Times is not what it once was nor is CBS News, the home of Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite. Murrow helped bring down Senator Joseph McCarthy on the See It Now show back on March 9, 1954 and Cronkite concluded the Vietnam War was not winnable on February 27, 1968 during a CBS news program which set into motion a series of events that might have had a heavy influence on President Lyndon B. Johnson’s decision not to seek re-election in 1968.
To be fair, both Murrow and Cronkite did preside over a lot of fluff programming as well with Murrow hosting People to People and Cronkite was an anchor at the 1960 Winter Olympics and did the narration of the Violent World of Sam Huff as part of the “The Twentieth Century” series on October 30, 1960.
There is a lot going on in the world. A global climate conference in Copenhagen, more troops will be headed to Afghanistan, unemployment at 10 percent, the on going health care debate and in the sports world, head injuries in football. All of that is significantly more important than whatever is going on between Woods and his wife.
The tearing down of an idol is nothing new in American journalism and now it is Tiger Woods turn to feel the wrath of the jock sniffers who report on sports. Somehow Tiger didn’t level with them, as if the reporters who follow golf deserve an explanation of his exploits. Of course Tiger has never palled around with sportswriters types anyway and now they can even the score since he is not their friend. Hell hath no fury like a sportswriter or sportswriters scorned.
There will be fewer reporters following Tiger Woods around in 2010 as the newspaper industry continues to bleed red ink and the radio/TV industry cuts back on news programming. The funny thing about the entire Tiger Woods coverage is that newspapers, radio and TV are giving the people what they want.
Scandal.
Of course if scandal really did sell, the National Enquirer would not be reeling. The New York Post would be selling millions of papers daily instead of seeing plunging circulation and the Gannett newspapers would not be laying off reporters, closing down printing presses and furloughing employees. The Gannett papers including USA Today, the New York suburban papers including the Journal News and others have ceased to be legitimate publications.
Newspaper executives and newspaper owners like Rupert Murdoch can scream all they want about how Google and the internet have inflicted a great deal of damage on their circulation and advertising but the truth is simple. Newspaper owners, publishers and managers sat snug while people like Craig Newmark came up with a better idea, Craig’s List, which took millions of dollars away from papers by charging far less for classified ads.
It is true advertisers are cutting back because of the economy yet marketers are willing to spend more on web advertising.
Tiger Woods is not going to sell any more newspapers or even more National Enquirers. But don’t tell that to various executives.
At one time, newspapers provided the backbone of publicist for sports. Notre Dame owes a great deal to the writers of the 1920s who sold the public on the mythology of George Gipp, the Four Horsemen and Knute Rockne. Newspapers made Babe Ruth and Red Grange household names in the 1920s and sports has embraced newspapers and sportswriters have gained a sense of entitlement which includes voting for various sports hall of fames and for individual players and manager or coaches awards which impacts on the earnings power of athletes, coaches and sports executives.
Today college students don’t read newspapers and young people get sports information from team websites, league websites, blogs, TV and radio. The golden age of the newspaper in America is gone and AARP members are the last generation that depends on newspapers for information. That is an undisputed fact.
Tiger Woods is a genuine 14 carat superstar with major ability in his field which is golf. Tiger doesn’t need sportswriters around because the truth of the matter is that he doesn’t say very much and his talent is always on display and people who follow Tiger don’t need a sportswriters’ analyst of his ability. They can listen to the former professional golfer who is part of a television network’s presentation of a golf tournament.
By the way, Tiger is not in trouble with the law. The case is closed and done with Tiger playing a small fine. But the media is not done with Tiger, the story they created about Tiger has come undone and it is payback time. Yet Tiger is not going to add to the media bottom line with scandal. It doesn’t work, if it did Confidential magazine would still be in circulation.
Tiger Woods never really sold newspapers but he did draw eyeballs to the TV screen whenever he played in a tournament. Woods sponsors are not fleeing and the Professional Golf Association’s media partners whether it is Summer Redstone’s CBS, General Electric’s NBC (soon to be merged with the Philadelphia-based Comcast, the multiple systems operator which owns the Golf Channel and Versus, which carries PGA shows), Disney’s ESPN and ABC in the US or the Disney-owner TSN in Canada along with RDS and CanWest north of the border and the numerous televisions partners globally can’t wait for Tiger to play in the tournaments they are showing. XM Satellite Radio, another financially struggling entity, is not dissolving its partnership with the PGA because of Tiger’s car accident or apparent National Enquirer fodder lifestyle.
Schieffer should keep his CBS Face the Nation program focused squarely addressing important American issues and Dowd, well she should go back to the Breck Girl (John Edwards) type columns on politics. Tiger will get more viewers for Redstone by playing golf; Tiger will not bring Redstone or Schieffer any new viewers. Dowd’s columns on Tiger will not help bring readers back to the New York Times.
As soon as Tiger is back on the golf course, all will be forgiven. Tiger is just another jock, another human being; although he is a superior golfer and he will make his money which is more than can be said for the New York Times or the National Enquirer.
Friday, November 13, 2009
Eighteen Regular Season NFL Games? Not So Fast
http://www.mcnsports.com/en/node/7570
Eighteen Regular Season NFL Games? Not So Fast
By Evan Weiner
November 13, 2009
12:00 PM EST
(New York, N. Y.) – John Bogusz is not a name normally associated with the power structure of the National Football League, but John Bogusz is a major player in the NFL. You see John Bogusz is the head of sports sales for one of the NFL’s major financial partners, CBS, and at a Sports Business Journal sports business conference in New York, Bogusz didn’t seem particularly happy with the trial balloon that his partner, the NFL, floated a couple of years ago that the league might add two regular season games.
It is not known how Rupert Murdoch and his henchmen at FOX, another league partner, feels and neither Robert Iger at Disney, the parent company of ESPN nor Jeffrey Immelt have weighed in on the issue. DirecTV’s John Malone has also been silent. The NFL isn’t a real money maker for networks although it can be safely argued that Murdoch’s FOX syndication (technically FOX is not a network) was put on the map by the NFL in 1993 when Murdoch outbid CBS for the National Football Conference national over-the-air TV rights in the United States.
Murdoch may have overspent for the NFL in 1993 from a dollars and cents standpoint on what really is a TV entertainment series, he benefited greatly turning FOX from a ragtag network (syndication arm) with a few shows like The Simpsons and Married With Children into a legitimate entity and along the way he picked up more powerful stations in Detroit and Milwaukee which dumped CBS for FOX and Detroit Lions and Green Bay Packers games.
TV networks use the NFL as a platform to promote other programming, CBS lost that platform in 1993 and the network fortunes plummeted. That is why a guy like John Bogusz should be taken seriously because TV is the NFL’s most important partner.
The NFL was a ragtag, pretty close to semi-pro league, in the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s. The league didn’t stabilize until 1953 when the Baltimore-New York-Dallas franchise returned to Baltimore and even then there were questions about the future of a number of franchises including Green Bay (where fund raisers were held to keep the team going and to build a new stadium) and in Chicago, where the Cardinals could not compete with the Bears forcing the Bidwill family to look at alternative cities like Minneapolis and Buffalo before settling on St. Louis in 1960.
Television made the NFL. In 1950, baseball, boxing and horse racing were the most popular sports in the United States. By 1965, football became the favorite sport among American fans and it had all to do with television.
To that end, the Pro Football Hall of Fame is now reviewing names to put before a committee that selects Hall of Famers. There are numerous people who should be in the Canton, Ohio shrine who built football. People like William Paley, David Sarnoff, Rupert Murdoch, Bill MacPhail, Carl Lindemann, Roone Arledge and Leonard Goldstein. Paley founded CBS and it was Paley’s money that helped solidify the league in the early 1960s and propel the league from a mom and pop store operation to the multi-billion entity it is today.
Leonard Goldstein is not recognized as a football pioneer but he is. Goldstein’s small American Broadcasting Network cut a deal with the upstart American Football League in June 1960. It was a five-year agreement that was worth about $2,125,000, which was an enormous sum for an unproven sports entity in 1960. The eight AFL owners evenly divided the ABC cash and that deal would cause a world of concern in the National Football League which had 13 teams with 13 different TV contracts of various worth with the New York Giants, Chicago Bears and Los Angeles Rams having the most valuable and Green Bay sitting at the bottom. (In 1960, CBS gave the Bidwill family $500,000 after they moved their Cardinals to St. Louis and freed Chicago from having Bears games blackout because the Cardinals were home as under the NFL blackout rules, no home game could be televised in Chicago when either team was home, CBS put together the Bears network. Some of the Bidwill’s “home” games were played in Minneapolis and Buffalo to get around the blackout in the 1950s. The $500,000 was to go to move portable stands from Comiskey Park in Chicago to St. Louis.)
Goldstein put the AFL on the map and that contract had a major implications. The AFL deal more than likely violated American antitrust laws as the league bundled the assets and sold it as one entity. In 1961, Rozelle and the NFL studied the AFL deal and decided that grouping the NFL’s then-14 teams into one package would be far better than having 14 separating networks. On September 30, 1961, Rozelle got the cover he needed to duplicate the AFL deal from President John F. Kennedy who signed into law the Sports Broadcast Act of 1961, which allowed Rozelle and the very established NFL to borrow a page from Lamar Hunt’s new AFL and sell the TV package to either CBS or NBC.
Paley (and McPhail) outbid Sarnoff (and Lindemann) for the 1962 and 1963 for $4.65 million. In 1964, Paley got the better of Sarnoff again and won the NFL rights for $28.2 million for the 1964 and 1965 season. The NFL was flush in money while Goldstein’s old deal dragged down the AFL.
But Sarnoff was not going to be beaten. NBC and Sonny Werblin had a long time relationship and now Werblin was getting a TV deal together for the AFL. Werblin owned the New York Jets. Sarnoff gave his old business partner Werblin a five-year, $36 million deal. Sarnoff’s endowment made the AFL, gave Werblin the kind of money he needed to sign the University of Alabama quarterback Joe Namath to the biggest contract ever given to a player by a football team and set off a series of events including the escalation of players salaries in bidding wars between the two leagues flushed with TV money that ended with the June 8, 1966 merger between the National Football League and the American Football League.
Football ceased being a game between June 1960 and January 1964. Football was a TV show that filled hours on Sunday morning and afternoon in the fall and winter, depending on the time zone. Advertising flocked to games because they could reach young men and middle-aged men, their target audience because they were watching football.
The NFL was CBS and Ford; the AFL was NBC and Chrysler. Even after the merger there were fierce rivalries between the teams, the networks and the sponsors although that died out as the NFL and AFL amalgamation took place over a four-year period.
But the American Football League-National Football League World Championship Game first played in 1967 did not catch on until 1969.
Namath, more than anybody, is responsible for the Super Bowl becoming a quasi holiday and now a National Special Security Event under the aegis of the US Department of Homeland Security. Namath and Muhammad Ali were at the vanguard of the evolving athlete, going from the aw shucks you know I have nothing to say mode like Joe DiMaggio to the brash, I will show you model. Namath had the white shoes, the mink coat, the fu Manchu moustache, what passed for long hair, a perceived perception so to speak built by sportswriters who were divided into NFL and AFL camps instead of sticking to journalism.
Namath was one of those hippies that ruined sports while the crew cut Johnny Unitas of the Baltimore Colts was old reliable.
Perceived perceptions are often wrong.
Sportswriters in NFL cities dismissed the AFL out of hand. Fortunately for football owners, players, coaches, general managers and fans, sportswriters didn’t run TV networks. Paley, Sarnoff and Goldstein did and they were much smarter than the average football writer like Sports Illustrated Tex Maule who was probably the worst offender of the journalistic role of being an impartial observer.
Namath was not the best player on the field in Super Bowl III when the Jets beat the Baltimore Colts but he guaranteed a Jets victory and the Jets did win and that victory would ultimately lead to ABC and Roone Arledge and the NFL agreeing to a pact, which created Monday Night Football in 1970. ABC’s Monday Night Football was not just a game presentation; it had to include an entertainment element to attract non-football fans.
It did.
Television has called many of the shots in football since Goldstein signed that initial contract with Lamar Hunt in 1960. Oddly enough football’s TV success came out of a failed concept, the Continental League, the Branch Rickey-led baseball business that started in 1958 with the hope of establishing a third major league by 1961. One of the Rickey business tenets was that all Continental League owners would share TV revenue equally. One of the owners of the proposed Denver Continental League team was Bob Howsam who also was part of the proposed Denver Broncos franchise of the AFL in 1959. Rickey’s concept ended up as part of the AFL and by 1961 was embraced by Rozelle and the NFL as “leaguethink” a concept that put the good of the league ahead of the individual team owner.
People like Goldstein, Sarnoff, Paley, McPhail, Arledge, Lindemann and yes-even Murdoch (all of whom should be put in the Canton Hall in that media category as they are far more important than any sportswriter) are responsible for the football industry so when a CBS sales guy talks, it is worth more than a casual listen. TV made the NFL and is a huge financial partner and TV may call the shots on the number of regular season games, after all it is THEIR dollars being spent.
eweiner@mcn.tv
Eighteen Regular Season NFL Games? Not So Fast
By Evan Weiner
November 13, 2009
12:00 PM EST
(New York, N. Y.) – John Bogusz is not a name normally associated with the power structure of the National Football League, but John Bogusz is a major player in the NFL. You see John Bogusz is the head of sports sales for one of the NFL’s major financial partners, CBS, and at a Sports Business Journal sports business conference in New York, Bogusz didn’t seem particularly happy with the trial balloon that his partner, the NFL, floated a couple of years ago that the league might add two regular season games.
It is not known how Rupert Murdoch and his henchmen at FOX, another league partner, feels and neither Robert Iger at Disney, the parent company of ESPN nor Jeffrey Immelt have weighed in on the issue. DirecTV’s John Malone has also been silent. The NFL isn’t a real money maker for networks although it can be safely argued that Murdoch’s FOX syndication (technically FOX is not a network) was put on the map by the NFL in 1993 when Murdoch outbid CBS for the National Football Conference national over-the-air TV rights in the United States.
Murdoch may have overspent for the NFL in 1993 from a dollars and cents standpoint on what really is a TV entertainment series, he benefited greatly turning FOX from a ragtag network (syndication arm) with a few shows like The Simpsons and Married With Children into a legitimate entity and along the way he picked up more powerful stations in Detroit and Milwaukee which dumped CBS for FOX and Detroit Lions and Green Bay Packers games.
TV networks use the NFL as a platform to promote other programming, CBS lost that platform in 1993 and the network fortunes plummeted. That is why a guy like John Bogusz should be taken seriously because TV is the NFL’s most important partner.
The NFL was a ragtag, pretty close to semi-pro league, in the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s. The league didn’t stabilize until 1953 when the Baltimore-New York-Dallas franchise returned to Baltimore and even then there were questions about the future of a number of franchises including Green Bay (where fund raisers were held to keep the team going and to build a new stadium) and in Chicago, where the Cardinals could not compete with the Bears forcing the Bidwill family to look at alternative cities like Minneapolis and Buffalo before settling on St. Louis in 1960.
Television made the NFL. In 1950, baseball, boxing and horse racing were the most popular sports in the United States. By 1965, football became the favorite sport among American fans and it had all to do with television.
To that end, the Pro Football Hall of Fame is now reviewing names to put before a committee that selects Hall of Famers. There are numerous people who should be in the Canton, Ohio shrine who built football. People like William Paley, David Sarnoff, Rupert Murdoch, Bill MacPhail, Carl Lindemann, Roone Arledge and Leonard Goldstein. Paley founded CBS and it was Paley’s money that helped solidify the league in the early 1960s and propel the league from a mom and pop store operation to the multi-billion entity it is today.
Leonard Goldstein is not recognized as a football pioneer but he is. Goldstein’s small American Broadcasting Network cut a deal with the upstart American Football League in June 1960. It was a five-year agreement that was worth about $2,125,000, which was an enormous sum for an unproven sports entity in 1960. The eight AFL owners evenly divided the ABC cash and that deal would cause a world of concern in the National Football League which had 13 teams with 13 different TV contracts of various worth with the New York Giants, Chicago Bears and Los Angeles Rams having the most valuable and Green Bay sitting at the bottom. (In 1960, CBS gave the Bidwill family $500,000 after they moved their Cardinals to St. Louis and freed Chicago from having Bears games blackout because the Cardinals were home as under the NFL blackout rules, no home game could be televised in Chicago when either team was home, CBS put together the Bears network. Some of the Bidwill’s “home” games were played in Minneapolis and Buffalo to get around the blackout in the 1950s. The $500,000 was to go to move portable stands from Comiskey Park in Chicago to St. Louis.)
Goldstein put the AFL on the map and that contract had a major implications. The AFL deal more than likely violated American antitrust laws as the league bundled the assets and sold it as one entity. In 1961, Rozelle and the NFL studied the AFL deal and decided that grouping the NFL’s then-14 teams into one package would be far better than having 14 separating networks. On September 30, 1961, Rozelle got the cover he needed to duplicate the AFL deal from President John F. Kennedy who signed into law the Sports Broadcast Act of 1961, which allowed Rozelle and the very established NFL to borrow a page from Lamar Hunt’s new AFL and sell the TV package to either CBS or NBC.
Paley (and McPhail) outbid Sarnoff (and Lindemann) for the 1962 and 1963 for $4.65 million. In 1964, Paley got the better of Sarnoff again and won the NFL rights for $28.2 million for the 1964 and 1965 season. The NFL was flush in money while Goldstein’s old deal dragged down the AFL.
But Sarnoff was not going to be beaten. NBC and Sonny Werblin had a long time relationship and now Werblin was getting a TV deal together for the AFL. Werblin owned the New York Jets. Sarnoff gave his old business partner Werblin a five-year, $36 million deal. Sarnoff’s endowment made the AFL, gave Werblin the kind of money he needed to sign the University of Alabama quarterback Joe Namath to the biggest contract ever given to a player by a football team and set off a series of events including the escalation of players salaries in bidding wars between the two leagues flushed with TV money that ended with the June 8, 1966 merger between the National Football League and the American Football League.
Football ceased being a game between June 1960 and January 1964. Football was a TV show that filled hours on Sunday morning and afternoon in the fall and winter, depending on the time zone. Advertising flocked to games because they could reach young men and middle-aged men, their target audience because they were watching football.
The NFL was CBS and Ford; the AFL was NBC and Chrysler. Even after the merger there were fierce rivalries between the teams, the networks and the sponsors although that died out as the NFL and AFL amalgamation took place over a four-year period.
But the American Football League-National Football League World Championship Game first played in 1967 did not catch on until 1969.
Namath, more than anybody, is responsible for the Super Bowl becoming a quasi holiday and now a National Special Security Event under the aegis of the US Department of Homeland Security. Namath and Muhammad Ali were at the vanguard of the evolving athlete, going from the aw shucks you know I have nothing to say mode like Joe DiMaggio to the brash, I will show you model. Namath had the white shoes, the mink coat, the fu Manchu moustache, what passed for long hair, a perceived perception so to speak built by sportswriters who were divided into NFL and AFL camps instead of sticking to journalism.
Namath was one of those hippies that ruined sports while the crew cut Johnny Unitas of the Baltimore Colts was old reliable.
Perceived perceptions are often wrong.
Sportswriters in NFL cities dismissed the AFL out of hand. Fortunately for football owners, players, coaches, general managers and fans, sportswriters didn’t run TV networks. Paley, Sarnoff and Goldstein did and they were much smarter than the average football writer like Sports Illustrated Tex Maule who was probably the worst offender of the journalistic role of being an impartial observer.
Namath was not the best player on the field in Super Bowl III when the Jets beat the Baltimore Colts but he guaranteed a Jets victory and the Jets did win and that victory would ultimately lead to ABC and Roone Arledge and the NFL agreeing to a pact, which created Monday Night Football in 1970. ABC’s Monday Night Football was not just a game presentation; it had to include an entertainment element to attract non-football fans.
It did.
Television has called many of the shots in football since Goldstein signed that initial contract with Lamar Hunt in 1960. Oddly enough football’s TV success came out of a failed concept, the Continental League, the Branch Rickey-led baseball business that started in 1958 with the hope of establishing a third major league by 1961. One of the Rickey business tenets was that all Continental League owners would share TV revenue equally. One of the owners of the proposed Denver Continental League team was Bob Howsam who also was part of the proposed Denver Broncos franchise of the AFL in 1959. Rickey’s concept ended up as part of the AFL and by 1961 was embraced by Rozelle and the NFL as “leaguethink” a concept that put the good of the league ahead of the individual team owner.
People like Goldstein, Sarnoff, Paley, McPhail, Arledge, Lindemann and yes-even Murdoch (all of whom should be put in the Canton Hall in that media category as they are far more important than any sportswriter) are responsible for the football industry so when a CBS sales guy talks, it is worth more than a casual listen. TV made the NFL and is a huge financial partner and TV may call the shots on the number of regular season games, after all it is THEIR dollars being spent.
eweiner@mcn.tv
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Wednesday is Emanuel Cellar Day
http://www.mcnsports.com/en/node/7545
Wednesday is Emanuel Cellar Day
By Evan Weiner
September 29, 2009
10:00 AM EDT
(New York, N. Y.) -- September 30th is Emanuel Cellar Day around the NFL and NFL owners and players should be celebrating the life of one of the 20 most important people in NFL history. Wait a second, when did Emanuel Cellar play football? Did Emanuel Cellar coach a team? Did Cellar own a franchise? Was he a Commissioner?
The answer to all of those questions is no. Emanuel Cellar never put on a uniform, never patrolled a sideline or ran the NFL yet without Emanuel Cellar, the NFL of today might be a totally different entity. It is conceivable that there would be no Super Bowl without the Brooklyn native, Congressman Cellar.
New York Congressman Emanuel Cellar first entered the House of Representatives in 1923. In 1923, the NFL was a floating craps game with teams scattered throughout the American northeast and Midwest that would come and go. It is unclear if the young Congressman liked football in his early days in office. But the Brooklyn representative's impact on professional football would come nearly four decades later in 1961, when Congressman Cellar authored legislation that would give the NFL tremendous clout with growing television networks: the Sports Broadcast Act of 1961. That summer, both the House and Senate passed Cellar’s legislation, and the Act was signed into law by President John F. Kennedy on September 30, 1961. The Cellar Bill allowed the NFL to market its broadcast rights as a league package, evenly spreading the broadcasting revenues among the franchises and guaranteeing each team substantial annual revenues.
In 1961, the National Football League was still mired in a mom and pop store mentality not long removed from the days of when Chicago Bears owner and Coach George Halas would travel to Wisconsin and lend a hand at Green Bay Packers fund raisers. The NFL was growing in the 1950s because of television exposure but the league owners were extremely cautious in their business decisions and with good reason. The business of the National Football League was strictly a six month a year affair and there was not much financial growth or stability until the mid 1950s.
That all changed in 1959 when Lamar Hunt and Bud Adams were unable to buy the Chicago Cardinals, Hunt wanted to move the franchise to Dallas and Adams wanted to place it in Houston, nor were they able to convince Halas and Pittsburgh owner Art Rooney that the 12-team NFL should expand. So Hunt started his own circuit, the American Football League, got Adams to join up and found six other owners. Hunt's new league, the AFL would start operations in 1960.
In early 1960, Hunt's league or AFL IV (three previous AFLs folded in the 1920s and 1930s) signed a television contract with the rather weak American Broadcasting Company for $2 million per year for the first five years, with each AFL franchise receiving $250,000 per team per year, which was approximately 15% less than received per team in the NFL.
The deal, which was brokered by among others Jay Michaels, the father of Al Michaels who was the announcer of Monday Night Football and now Sunday Night Football, was somewhat astounding as the AFL had no track record but neither did ABC which wasn't even seen in a number of American cities in those days. But ABC needed something and the AFL would be a perfect partner.
Part of the success of the league in attaining coverage was due to New York Titans owner Harry Wismer, who was also a noted sportscaster of the time. Wismer got AFL IV game coverage on the Associated Press and United Press International wires and helped the league land a contract with ABC. History has been unkind to Wismer as the New York Titans franchise skirted with bankruptcy but without Wismer, there might not have been a big TV deal. The AFL pooled its eight teams and sold ABC the league's team as one entity which was against United States antitrust laws. But the AFL was a new business that flew under the radar, at least in legal circles.
The NFL owners and new NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle took note of the AFL-ABC TV deal and wanted the same thing. In 1960, NFL teams were on TV but each of the 13 teams put together a local TV network and the large city teams, New York, Chicago and Los Angeles received far more TV money than Green Bay, Baltimore and Pittsburgh. The inequity of TV revenues could have become a big problem but Rozelle went to work convincing his owners that selling the league as one TV package to either the two big networks at the time, the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) or the National Broadcasting Company (NBC) was the way to go.
In 1961, the 14 NFL owners decided to sell their TV rights as one and give a TV network the right to show all 98 games on the schedule just like Hunt's league was doing (not every one of the AFL's games was shown on ABC in 1960) Rozelle cut a two-year, $9.1 million deal with CBS but the NFL decided to make sure their deal was legal and submitted the deal before Federal Judge Alan K. Grim in Philadelphia.
Justice Grim was very familiar with NFL TV deals. In 1953, Judge Grim handed down a ruling that gave the NFL the right to blackout team's home games which meant that a local fan either had to buy a ticket to a home game to watch the team or travel about 75 miles and watch the game in an out of town bar or hotel and cheer on the home team from there. In the 1960s, it was common for New York Giants fans to travel to Connecticut to watch WTIC, Channel 3 in Hartford if they wanted to see Giants games and could not get a ticket inside Yankee Stadium. In July 1961, Judge Grim decided the NFL-CBS deal violated antitrust laws because the agreement the competition between teams for TV deals. The decision flew counter to the AFL-ABC deal as well as the National Basketball Association's partnership with the National Broadcasting Company
Because the league was under a court-ordered injunction which prevented it from signing a league-wide contract with a network which meant Rozelle had to become a lobbyist and find a sympatric ear in either the House or the Senate. Rozelle found just the man he needed in Congressman Cellar, the Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Anti-Trust and Monopoly. The long time Brooklyn Democrat in the House got a bill through the House and a similar bill introduced in the Senate by one time Vice Presidential candidate, Tennessee Democrat Estes Kefauver pushed a bill through the Senate. The whole process took about a month as Cellar began hearings on August 28. The proceedings took a day.
President John F. Kennedy signed the Sports Broadcast Act of 1961 into law on September 30. The legislation gave both the NFL and AFL cover from the Sherman Anti-Trust Act and gave the same protection to the National Basketball Association as well as the National Hockey League. The American and National Leagues of Baseball already had an antitrust exemption thanks to the Supreme Court decision of 1922 in the Baltimore Terrapins versus the National League case. Congressman Cellar and Senator Kefauver didn't overlook college football in the bill.
There was provision included which precluded the NFL from televising any game on either Friday night after 6 PM or on Saturday between the second Friday in September and ending on the second Saturday in December. This was done to protect college football which had a TV deal in place for Saturday afternoons.
After operating under local contracts for the 1960 and 1961 seasons, the NFL pooled its television rights and sold them to CBS for $4.65 million annually for the league. In 1963, NBC was awarded exclusive network broadcasting rights for the 1963 AFL Championship Game for $926,000, and later signed a five-year, $36 million television contract with the AFL IV to begin with the 1965 season.
In 1950, the most popular sports in the United States were baseball, horse racing and boxing. Within a decade, Americans had falling in love with Sunday afternoon football, with the 1958 NFL title game between the Baltimore Colts, led by a crew cut quarterback named John Unitas taking on the glamour boys from New York. The Giants were led by handsome Frank Gifford and were the darlings of Madison Avenue. The close game went into overtime and with Unitas leading the Colts downfield for a game-winning touchdown. That game changed the course of TV history for the NFL. The Giants would lose the 1959 NFL title game as well to the Colts, but that didn’t diminish TV’s appetite for Giants players. In 1960, middle linebacker Sam Huff was featured on the CBS television show 20th Century with Walter Cronkite providing the narration of “The Violent World of Sam Huff.” TV embraced football, both the National and American Football League. It was the perfect sports event for the small screen.
Public Law 87-331, better known as the Sports Broadcasting Act, is the most important piece of legislation passed by Congress and signed into In 1964, CBS submitted the winning bid of $14.1 million per year for the NFL regular-season television rights for the 1964 and 1965 seasons, and also acquired the rights to the championship games for $1.8 million per game for those same seasons. In 1965, CBS acquired the rights to the NFL regular-season games in 1966 and 1967, with an option for 1968, for $18.8 million per year (an increase of 33% over the prior deal). The NFL later moved to an arrangement in which all of the networks got some of the games, making all networks solely interested in broadcasting the games of the NFL, and not those of a rival league. By 1969, TV income had risen to $1.6 million per team in the NFL and $900,000 per team in the AFL.
The television deals signed by CBS and the NFL solidified the profitability of the NFL and the 1964 AFL-MNC deal enhanced football's popularity. “The TV contract and then the June 1966 AFL-NFL merger made it possible,” said Wellington Mara, the long time owner of the NY Giants, years later in analyzing the NFL's success. “You can't predict what would have happened, but we certainly would not have the league we have today. That was the most important decision ever made in the league.”
After the merger of the AFL and the NFL in 1966 (the television contracts did not expire until 1970), Rozelle thought a Monday Night televised game would be a ratings grabber. After CBS and NBC declined, due to the success of shows such as Laugh-In, Rozelle approached ABC. ABC, which had been struggling in prime time for years, jumped at the chance in 1969. Monday Night Football (MNF) debuted in 1970, with ABC acquiring the rights to televise 13 NFL regular-season Monday night games in 1970, 1971, and 1972. The Jets lost to Cleveland 31-21 in the first Monday Night Football contest, and Howard Cosell and Don Meredith provided commentary. Joe Namath, star Quarterback for the Jets who eventually would be on the MNF crew, could not envision what kind of franchise Monday Night Football would become. “For players back then especially, we didn't realize anything about prime time or how many people would be watching. It was another game for us. It was exciting knowing that you are on television,” said Namath. “Monday Night Football is great for the fans and the players alike. Heck, I didn't have the foresight to see how important that was.”
Congressman Emanuel Cellar has never been honored by the NFL or recognized by the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio but he is as responsible for the NFL's success as much as Rozelle, Halas, Namath, Red Grange and a handful of others including two Presidents Theodore Roosevelt (who single handily saved football) and Ronald Reagan (who signed into law the 1984 Cable TV Act and the 1986 Tax Act which changed sports). Cellar's legislation propelled the NFL and by 1965, pro football eclipsed baseball as America's favorite sport.
eweiner@mcn.tv
Wednesday is Emanuel Cellar Day
By Evan Weiner
September 29, 2009
10:00 AM EDT
(New York, N. Y.) -- September 30th is Emanuel Cellar Day around the NFL and NFL owners and players should be celebrating the life of one of the 20 most important people in NFL history. Wait a second, when did Emanuel Cellar play football? Did Emanuel Cellar coach a team? Did Cellar own a franchise? Was he a Commissioner?
The answer to all of those questions is no. Emanuel Cellar never put on a uniform, never patrolled a sideline or ran the NFL yet without Emanuel Cellar, the NFL of today might be a totally different entity. It is conceivable that there would be no Super Bowl without the Brooklyn native, Congressman Cellar.
New York Congressman Emanuel Cellar first entered the House of Representatives in 1923. In 1923, the NFL was a floating craps game with teams scattered throughout the American northeast and Midwest that would come and go. It is unclear if the young Congressman liked football in his early days in office. But the Brooklyn representative's impact on professional football would come nearly four decades later in 1961, when Congressman Cellar authored legislation that would give the NFL tremendous clout with growing television networks: the Sports Broadcast Act of 1961. That summer, both the House and Senate passed Cellar’s legislation, and the Act was signed into law by President John F. Kennedy on September 30, 1961. The Cellar Bill allowed the NFL to market its broadcast rights as a league package, evenly spreading the broadcasting revenues among the franchises and guaranteeing each team substantial annual revenues.
In 1961, the National Football League was still mired in a mom and pop store mentality not long removed from the days of when Chicago Bears owner and Coach George Halas would travel to Wisconsin and lend a hand at Green Bay Packers fund raisers. The NFL was growing in the 1950s because of television exposure but the league owners were extremely cautious in their business decisions and with good reason. The business of the National Football League was strictly a six month a year affair and there was not much financial growth or stability until the mid 1950s.
That all changed in 1959 when Lamar Hunt and Bud Adams were unable to buy the Chicago Cardinals, Hunt wanted to move the franchise to Dallas and Adams wanted to place it in Houston, nor were they able to convince Halas and Pittsburgh owner Art Rooney that the 12-team NFL should expand. So Hunt started his own circuit, the American Football League, got Adams to join up and found six other owners. Hunt's new league, the AFL would start operations in 1960.
In early 1960, Hunt's league or AFL IV (three previous AFLs folded in the 1920s and 1930s) signed a television contract with the rather weak American Broadcasting Company for $2 million per year for the first five years, with each AFL franchise receiving $250,000 per team per year, which was approximately 15% less than received per team in the NFL.
The deal, which was brokered by among others Jay Michaels, the father of Al Michaels who was the announcer of Monday Night Football and now Sunday Night Football, was somewhat astounding as the AFL had no track record but neither did ABC which wasn't even seen in a number of American cities in those days. But ABC needed something and the AFL would be a perfect partner.
Part of the success of the league in attaining coverage was due to New York Titans owner Harry Wismer, who was also a noted sportscaster of the time. Wismer got AFL IV game coverage on the Associated Press and United Press International wires and helped the league land a contract with ABC. History has been unkind to Wismer as the New York Titans franchise skirted with bankruptcy but without Wismer, there might not have been a big TV deal. The AFL pooled its eight teams and sold ABC the league's team as one entity which was against United States antitrust laws. But the AFL was a new business that flew under the radar, at least in legal circles.
The NFL owners and new NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle took note of the AFL-ABC TV deal and wanted the same thing. In 1960, NFL teams were on TV but each of the 13 teams put together a local TV network and the large city teams, New York, Chicago and Los Angeles received far more TV money than Green Bay, Baltimore and Pittsburgh. The inequity of TV revenues could have become a big problem but Rozelle went to work convincing his owners that selling the league as one TV package to either the two big networks at the time, the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) or the National Broadcasting Company (NBC) was the way to go.
In 1961, the 14 NFL owners decided to sell their TV rights as one and give a TV network the right to show all 98 games on the schedule just like Hunt's league was doing (not every one of the AFL's games was shown on ABC in 1960) Rozelle cut a two-year, $9.1 million deal with CBS but the NFL decided to make sure their deal was legal and submitted the deal before Federal Judge Alan K. Grim in Philadelphia.
Justice Grim was very familiar with NFL TV deals. In 1953, Judge Grim handed down a ruling that gave the NFL the right to blackout team's home games which meant that a local fan either had to buy a ticket to a home game to watch the team or travel about 75 miles and watch the game in an out of town bar or hotel and cheer on the home team from there. In the 1960s, it was common for New York Giants fans to travel to Connecticut to watch WTIC, Channel 3 in Hartford if they wanted to see Giants games and could not get a ticket inside Yankee Stadium. In July 1961, Judge Grim decided the NFL-CBS deal violated antitrust laws because the agreement the competition between teams for TV deals. The decision flew counter to the AFL-ABC deal as well as the National Basketball Association's partnership with the National Broadcasting Company
Because the league was under a court-ordered injunction which prevented it from signing a league-wide contract with a network which meant Rozelle had to become a lobbyist and find a sympatric ear in either the House or the Senate. Rozelle found just the man he needed in Congressman Cellar, the Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Anti-Trust and Monopoly. The long time Brooklyn Democrat in the House got a bill through the House and a similar bill introduced in the Senate by one time Vice Presidential candidate, Tennessee Democrat Estes Kefauver pushed a bill through the Senate. The whole process took about a month as Cellar began hearings on August 28. The proceedings took a day.
President John F. Kennedy signed the Sports Broadcast Act of 1961 into law on September 30. The legislation gave both the NFL and AFL cover from the Sherman Anti-Trust Act and gave the same protection to the National Basketball Association as well as the National Hockey League. The American and National Leagues of Baseball already had an antitrust exemption thanks to the Supreme Court decision of 1922 in the Baltimore Terrapins versus the National League case. Congressman Cellar and Senator Kefauver didn't overlook college football in the bill.
There was provision included which precluded the NFL from televising any game on either Friday night after 6 PM or on Saturday between the second Friday in September and ending on the second Saturday in December. This was done to protect college football which had a TV deal in place for Saturday afternoons.
After operating under local contracts for the 1960 and 1961 seasons, the NFL pooled its television rights and sold them to CBS for $4.65 million annually for the league. In 1963, NBC was awarded exclusive network broadcasting rights for the 1963 AFL Championship Game for $926,000, and later signed a five-year, $36 million television contract with the AFL IV to begin with the 1965 season.
In 1950, the most popular sports in the United States were baseball, horse racing and boxing. Within a decade, Americans had falling in love with Sunday afternoon football, with the 1958 NFL title game between the Baltimore Colts, led by a crew cut quarterback named John Unitas taking on the glamour boys from New York. The Giants were led by handsome Frank Gifford and were the darlings of Madison Avenue. The close game went into overtime and with Unitas leading the Colts downfield for a game-winning touchdown. That game changed the course of TV history for the NFL. The Giants would lose the 1959 NFL title game as well to the Colts, but that didn’t diminish TV’s appetite for Giants players. In 1960, middle linebacker Sam Huff was featured on the CBS television show 20th Century with Walter Cronkite providing the narration of “The Violent World of Sam Huff.” TV embraced football, both the National and American Football League. It was the perfect sports event for the small screen.
Public Law 87-331, better known as the Sports Broadcasting Act, is the most important piece of legislation passed by Congress and signed into In 1964, CBS submitted the winning bid of $14.1 million per year for the NFL regular-season television rights for the 1964 and 1965 seasons, and also acquired the rights to the championship games for $1.8 million per game for those same seasons. In 1965, CBS acquired the rights to the NFL regular-season games in 1966 and 1967, with an option for 1968, for $18.8 million per year (an increase of 33% over the prior deal). The NFL later moved to an arrangement in which all of the networks got some of the games, making all networks solely interested in broadcasting the games of the NFL, and not those of a rival league. By 1969, TV income had risen to $1.6 million per team in the NFL and $900,000 per team in the AFL.
The television deals signed by CBS and the NFL solidified the profitability of the NFL and the 1964 AFL-MNC deal enhanced football's popularity. “The TV contract and then the June 1966 AFL-NFL merger made it possible,” said Wellington Mara, the long time owner of the NY Giants, years later in analyzing the NFL's success. “You can't predict what would have happened, but we certainly would not have the league we have today. That was the most important decision ever made in the league.”
After the merger of the AFL and the NFL in 1966 (the television contracts did not expire until 1970), Rozelle thought a Monday Night televised game would be a ratings grabber. After CBS and NBC declined, due to the success of shows such as Laugh-In, Rozelle approached ABC. ABC, which had been struggling in prime time for years, jumped at the chance in 1969. Monday Night Football (MNF) debuted in 1970, with ABC acquiring the rights to televise 13 NFL regular-season Monday night games in 1970, 1971, and 1972. The Jets lost to Cleveland 31-21 in the first Monday Night Football contest, and Howard Cosell and Don Meredith provided commentary. Joe Namath, star Quarterback for the Jets who eventually would be on the MNF crew, could not envision what kind of franchise Monday Night Football would become. “For players back then especially, we didn't realize anything about prime time or how many people would be watching. It was another game for us. It was exciting knowing that you are on television,” said Namath. “Monday Night Football is great for the fans and the players alike. Heck, I didn't have the foresight to see how important that was.”
Congressman Emanuel Cellar has never been honored by the NFL or recognized by the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio but he is as responsible for the NFL's success as much as Rozelle, Halas, Namath, Red Grange and a handful of others including two Presidents Theodore Roosevelt (who single handily saved football) and Ronald Reagan (who signed into law the 1984 Cable TV Act and the 1986 Tax Act which changed sports). Cellar's legislation propelled the NFL and by 1965, pro football eclipsed baseball as America's favorite sport.
eweiner@mcn.tv
Sunday, March 15, 2009
In Binghamton, what is the cost for March Madness?
http://www.examiner.com/x-3926-Business-of-Sports-Examiner~y2009m3d15-In-Binghamton-what-is-the-cost-for-March-Madness In Binghamton, what is the cost for "March Madness"
March 15, 1:00 PM
Here is hoping that Dr. Lois B. DeFleur and George Pataki are enjoying Binghamton University's first trip to March Madness, the NCAA Men’s College Basketball Tournament, more than say Bryan Steinhauer. Hopefully both Dr. DeFleur, the President of Binghamton University, Pataki, the New York Governor between 1995 and 2007, along with members from both houses of the New York State Legislature who approved Binghamton's step up to Division I men's basketball and allowed some $33.1 million in funds to go into the construction of an new athletic facility, to house the program, will keep Steinhauer in their thoughts.
But why should they? He wasn't a major contributor to Binghamton's success this year. In fact he wasn't even in school this year.
You see Steinhauer will forever be the symbol of what happens when a school chooses to house a big time sports program. The cost is more than just money. In Steinhauer's case, he was left in a coma after one of Binghamton basketball recruit, Miladin Kovacevic got into a bar brawl with Steinhauer in the early hours of May 4, 2008. Kovacevic, who is 6-9 and weighs 260 pounds, got into a fight with Steinhauer who was 5-9 and about 100 pounds lighter. Kovacevic beat Steinhauer into a coma. The only reason Kovacevic, who came from Serbia, was at Binghamton was his ability to play basketball.
Steinhauer finally emerged from a coma but doesn't remember the incident. Meanwhile Kovacevic fled to Serbia after being arrested with the help of the Siberian consulate. United States officials have demanded that Siberian officials return him to New York where he would face a trial, but Serbia claims they cannot do that because Serbia's constitution does not allow for extradition to the United States.
After the beating, Dr. DeFleur and New York Governor David Patterson along with members of the legislature should have suspended the program and looked into what the school got itself into by reaching for the big time. Instead it was business as usual. Prepare for the 2008-09 season and win the America East Conference under Coach Kevin Broadus.
Dr. DeFleur acted like so many other college and university presidents and chancellors. She overlooked the criminal incident like her peers at the University of Nebraska and other big time schools. The thinking seems to be something like this when it comes to the presidents and chancellors. Maybe in due time people will forget that some college athletes act like thugs and are arrested but somehow continue playing sports. Kovacevic lost his scholarship according to school officials before the Steinhauer incident, possibly because he was injured in 2007-08. Coaches can take scholarships away as easily as handing them out.
Binghamton University along with Buffalo, Stony Brook and Albany are the crown jewels of the New York State University system. All have gone Division 1 in many sports. Buffalo and Stony Brook are football schools, Binghamton and Albany are basketball schools. There was no need to go big time in Binghamton, yet in April 2003 when Binghamton was recruiting students, one of the school's selling points at an assembly aimed at parents who were helping their child in the school selection process was the commitment to basketball and that one day Binghamton would beat perennial powerhouse Syracuse in a match up. That is how important basketball became to Dr. DeFleur.
Basketball has become too much of a burden for a school that is rated one of the best academic state colleges or universities in the United States.
Of course it could be argued that Binghamton, a Northeastern rust belt city, has been in a recession after losing IBM and other companies for more than a decade and a half along with a lot of upstate New York municipalities and needed something to attract students other than classes and a few seedy downtown bars and a basketball team competing on a Division 1 level could do just that. Also, with a D-1 school, alumni and boosters would pump more money into the school's sports programs.
But America East schools don't play big time basketball like the Big East, the ACC, the Pac-10 and other conferences. America East schools lose money on sports and America East games are not must see TV even when the few that do get on TV are shown.
That of course leads to the question. Why is Binghamton going full throttle on building a basketball program? Another question. At what price does a school sell its soul?
A few weeks ago, the New York Times wrote a less than flattering article on the whole culture of the Binghamton University basketball program which included the Kovacevic incident and other incidents including a story about Malik Alvin was charged with assault and theft at a local Wal-Mart. Alvin was charged with stealing condoms, an item very much available on campus free of charge. The charges were dropped. In January, Dwayne Jackson was suspended for violating team rules and Devon McBride quit the team for his “loss of interest” in the game. McBride in that article also claimed that his teammates, most of whom were under the legal drinking age of 21 were consuming alcohol and smoked pot, which is illegal.
The mess at Binghamton University is what Dr. DeFleur, a former college basketball player, has on her watch. The mess is what former Governor Pataki has on his watch. Of course, the Binghamton University president has gone on the offensive and told the New York Times that "All of our basketball players are eligible and are making progress toward graduation." Dr, DeFleur also added that "Since we’ve been Division I, all of the players that have stayed in the program have graduated.”
It would be refreshing if in the coverage of March Madness if the National Collegiate Athletic Association's television and broadband partner CBS or its radio partner Westwood One would devote some time to real journalism on the presentation but don't expect that. CBS is paying the NCAA billions and while the network can dictate the times games tip off, they, despite paying all of that money to the NCAA, dare not criticize or even suggest that college sports is plagued with problems like graduation rates, arrests, allegations that professors have been coerced into giving "student-athletes" better grades and a host of other issues including "student-athletes" rights and the fact that coaches make money off endorsements on the players backs. But all CBS Chairman Sumner Redstone, CBS President Leslie Moonves, CBS News and Sports President Sean McManus and other network officials want are good ratings on TV and record numbers of visitors to the streaming videos of the games. There will be fluff pieces on CBS network news programs promoting March Madness, but don't expect any pieces on Kovacevic and the United States Department of State and New York Senator Charles Schumer's attempts to get the Serbian basketball player back to face assault charges. That would get in the way of entertainment and what the big time playing football and basketball schools want.
Fantasyland.
evanjweiner@yahoo.com
March 15, 1:00 PM
Here is hoping that Dr. Lois B. DeFleur and George Pataki are enjoying Binghamton University's first trip to March Madness, the NCAA Men’s College Basketball Tournament, more than say Bryan Steinhauer. Hopefully both Dr. DeFleur, the President of Binghamton University, Pataki, the New York Governor between 1995 and 2007, along with members from both houses of the New York State Legislature who approved Binghamton's step up to Division I men's basketball and allowed some $33.1 million in funds to go into the construction of an new athletic facility, to house the program, will keep Steinhauer in their thoughts.
But why should they? He wasn't a major contributor to Binghamton's success this year. In fact he wasn't even in school this year.
You see Steinhauer will forever be the symbol of what happens when a school chooses to house a big time sports program. The cost is more than just money. In Steinhauer's case, he was left in a coma after one of Binghamton basketball recruit, Miladin Kovacevic got into a bar brawl with Steinhauer in the early hours of May 4, 2008. Kovacevic, who is 6-9 and weighs 260 pounds, got into a fight with Steinhauer who was 5-9 and about 100 pounds lighter. Kovacevic beat Steinhauer into a coma. The only reason Kovacevic, who came from Serbia, was at Binghamton was his ability to play basketball.
Steinhauer finally emerged from a coma but doesn't remember the incident. Meanwhile Kovacevic fled to Serbia after being arrested with the help of the Siberian consulate. United States officials have demanded that Siberian officials return him to New York where he would face a trial, but Serbia claims they cannot do that because Serbia's constitution does not allow for extradition to the United States.
After the beating, Dr. DeFleur and New York Governor David Patterson along with members of the legislature should have suspended the program and looked into what the school got itself into by reaching for the big time. Instead it was business as usual. Prepare for the 2008-09 season and win the America East Conference under Coach Kevin Broadus.
Dr. DeFleur acted like so many other college and university presidents and chancellors. She overlooked the criminal incident like her peers at the University of Nebraska and other big time schools. The thinking seems to be something like this when it comes to the presidents and chancellors. Maybe in due time people will forget that some college athletes act like thugs and are arrested but somehow continue playing sports. Kovacevic lost his scholarship according to school officials before the Steinhauer incident, possibly because he was injured in 2007-08. Coaches can take scholarships away as easily as handing them out.
Binghamton University along with Buffalo, Stony Brook and Albany are the crown jewels of the New York State University system. All have gone Division 1 in many sports. Buffalo and Stony Brook are football schools, Binghamton and Albany are basketball schools. There was no need to go big time in Binghamton, yet in April 2003 when Binghamton was recruiting students, one of the school's selling points at an assembly aimed at parents who were helping their child in the school selection process was the commitment to basketball and that one day Binghamton would beat perennial powerhouse Syracuse in a match up. That is how important basketball became to Dr. DeFleur.
Basketball has become too much of a burden for a school that is rated one of the best academic state colleges or universities in the United States.
Of course it could be argued that Binghamton, a Northeastern rust belt city, has been in a recession after losing IBM and other companies for more than a decade and a half along with a lot of upstate New York municipalities and needed something to attract students other than classes and a few seedy downtown bars and a basketball team competing on a Division 1 level could do just that. Also, with a D-1 school, alumni and boosters would pump more money into the school's sports programs.
But America East schools don't play big time basketball like the Big East, the ACC, the Pac-10 and other conferences. America East schools lose money on sports and America East games are not must see TV even when the few that do get on TV are shown.
That of course leads to the question. Why is Binghamton going full throttle on building a basketball program? Another question. At what price does a school sell its soul?
A few weeks ago, the New York Times wrote a less than flattering article on the whole culture of the Binghamton University basketball program which included the Kovacevic incident and other incidents including a story about Malik Alvin was charged with assault and theft at a local Wal-Mart. Alvin was charged with stealing condoms, an item very much available on campus free of charge. The charges were dropped. In January, Dwayne Jackson was suspended for violating team rules and Devon McBride quit the team for his “loss of interest” in the game. McBride in that article also claimed that his teammates, most of whom were under the legal drinking age of 21 were consuming alcohol and smoked pot, which is illegal.
The mess at Binghamton University is what Dr. DeFleur, a former college basketball player, has on her watch. The mess is what former Governor Pataki has on his watch. Of course, the Binghamton University president has gone on the offensive and told the New York Times that "All of our basketball players are eligible and are making progress toward graduation." Dr, DeFleur also added that "Since we’ve been Division I, all of the players that have stayed in the program have graduated.”
It would be refreshing if in the coverage of March Madness if the National Collegiate Athletic Association's television and broadband partner CBS or its radio partner Westwood One would devote some time to real journalism on the presentation but don't expect that. CBS is paying the NCAA billions and while the network can dictate the times games tip off, they, despite paying all of that money to the NCAA, dare not criticize or even suggest that college sports is plagued with problems like graduation rates, arrests, allegations that professors have been coerced into giving "student-athletes" better grades and a host of other issues including "student-athletes" rights and the fact that coaches make money off endorsements on the players backs. But all CBS Chairman Sumner Redstone, CBS President Leslie Moonves, CBS News and Sports President Sean McManus and other network officials want are good ratings on TV and record numbers of visitors to the streaming videos of the games. There will be fluff pieces on CBS network news programs promoting March Madness, but don't expect any pieces on Kovacevic and the United States Department of State and New York Senator Charles Schumer's attempts to get the Serbian basketball player back to face assault charges. That would get in the way of entertainment and what the big time playing football and basketball schools want.
Fantasyland.
evanjweiner@yahoo.com
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