Only labor strife could cool down the NFL

Friday, February 04 2011

By any reasonable standard, nothing short of catastrophe can upstage the Super Bowl. That goes double for one involving a legendary matchup of Green Bay-Pittsburgh in the opulence of Cowboys Stadium. This article was written by Tom Cowlishaw and appeared in the Dallas Morning News.

Even a thing as stunning as a traffic-stopping ice storm falls short. It was something far beyond the stunning dip in temperatures that wrapped Media Day in an unlikely chill here Tuesday.

The only thing that seems bigger than the Packers’ and Steelers’ pursuit of another Lombardi Trophy is the uneasy feeling about what comes next.

It’s more than this nation’s most beloved sporting pastime that’s threatening to slam on the brakes after Sunday night’s Super Bowl. It’s this country’s most popular ... anything.

The NFL has dominated the sports TV ratings game for longer than most of its fans are old enough to remember. Realistically, Major League Baseball lost the right to call itself the national pastime in the late ’60s — about the time the majority of Americans became happy owners of their first color televisions.

In a flat-screen, HD-soon-to-be-3D world, the NFL is king and then some. The Steelers and Packers helped the league to the highest-rated AFC and NFC title games in 14 years despite the massive expanse of program choices offered since 1997.

Even Sunday’s innocuous Pro Bowl earned its highest rating in a decade.

NBC’s Sunday Night Football is the highest rated show in television. Period.

It’s not just men, either. Among women 18 to 49, it’s the third -highest rated show.

So what’s all this about ... no football after Sunday?

To explain exactly why owners are going to lock out the players starting March 4 if there is no new labor agreement, I’d have to kill you with boring details. That’s enough of an issue for me every time I sit at the keyboard.

Basically, there’s a set of wealthy players with an average salary in the range of $1.7 million that don’t want to return to the days of making $1.2 million. That’s understandable.

Even in a sluggish economy, bottle service at the club isn’t free.

But please don’t put the looming “work stoppage” on players. They want to maintain the status quo. It’s the far wealthier set of owners that seeks to change the system.

The owners still regret the day in 2006 they changed the rules on “designated revenues” and took, essentially, a $1 billion settlement from the players to let them in on all revenues.

It seems these new stadiums that have sprung up around the country and the debt services that go with them are costly to maintain. Darn those taxpayers, anyway, why couldn’t they just pay every cent up front?

Give the owners credit for not crying poor. They aren’t trying to sell the “we’re losing money” refrain that worked so effectively when the NHL shut down for an entire season in 2005 and the NBA skipped about half a year in 1998.

The NFL owners are simply shouting that their profits are slipping and their costs are rising. They would like another $1 billion from the players, and they’ll take it in the form of a reduced percentage, an expanded regular-season schedule ... whatever works.

They’re not picky.

I wouldn’t ask anyone to shed tears for the players’ side, but one would have to be truly delusional to feel for owners who start the year with roughly $95 million in TV money before they sell their first ticket, seat license, foam finger or too-foamy $10 beer.

Here’s the pathetic part.

When I was a Cowboys beat writer in 1987, the last time the NFL actually canceled regular-season games, the league and players were fighting in the courts over a truly divisive issue — free agency.

I remember going into Tex Schramm’s office and asking him why he was willing to not only cancel some games but continue the season with what were called “replacement players” in union-hating Dallas and “scabs” every place else.

“Because I know what the players want,” Schramm said. “Bidding.”

He didn’t say “bidding” so much as he spat the word at me.

That was a real issue, a game-changer that the players needed to and eventually did win.

This is about a percentage of profits.

NFL owners are blessed because they don’t have to deal with guaranteed long-term contracts, arbitration rights and minor league player costs. Or you can call them geniuses because they have so wisely avoided the burdens of others.

But the price for living in a world where profits are more easily maintained than they are in the NBA, NHL or MLB is a heightened sense of infallibility.

TV ratings soar through the retractable roofs. American men love the NFL like nothing else and, good grief, the women have jumped on board, too.

Why worry about what could ever go wrong?

Baseball owners, boxing promoters and the horse track industry once ignored the same question.