THE FANS

During the lockout, everyone loved to be that astute sage who told the room that the NFL doesn’t care about fans, it only cares about money. This, of course, is like saying you always vote for the best candidate. It’s a hollow declaration of the obvious, made to sound noble while veiling the shallowness of one’s knowledge on the broader subject at hand. Maddeningly, it usually works. People often respond by saying something like, “Boy ain’t that the truth” or, “You said it.”

But saying the NFL only cares about money and not the fans is patently illogical. The NFL can only exist because of its fans. Without fans, there is no $9 billion to fight over. Thus, NFL owners and players can only care about money if they care about the fans. We fans are the money.

Owners and players may not care about fans in the same emotional sense that fans care about their team, but name one custom-merchant relationship where personal feelings are expected to be accounted for. You don’t go to a fancy restaurant and expect the chef to care about you because you like his food – you go to a fancy restaurant and expect the chef to just make good food. And if the chef charges a lot for his food, or if the restaurant atmosphere is crummy, you stop being his customer. Or, if the food is good enough to overcome the negatives, you pay to eat anyway. You have a choice. NFL fans have a choice.

Fans who don’t like admitting that their relationship with their favorite team is business not personal try to muddy the picture by griping about how expensive it is to go to a game, order DirecTV’s Sunday Ticket or wear an authentic piece of NFL apparel. But these are not actually gripes against the NFL, they’re gripes against the fundamental rules of supply and demand. These things are expensive because everybody wants them.

When NFL owners decided to lock out, they were simply betting that the fans would be angry, but not angry enough to stop being customers. This is not unlike a movie theatre betting that when it raises the price of refreshments, movie-goers will be angry, but not angry enough to give up soda and popcorn. It’s a winning bet customers might hate that, but they’re the ones who decided the outcome.

So far, what we’ve covered here is commonsense. And yet we still laud Joe Fan for rhapsodizing about how disrespected and small he feels.

Why doesn’t this discussion ever go two ways? Why doesn’t someone complain that fans only care about the NFL because they want to be entertained? Hey Joe Fan, all you care about is your personal entertainment! You don’t give one hoot about how much financial risk is involved with owning a professional sports team! You don’t care whether Roger Goodell goes home a happy man each night. Or whether Jerry Jones finds his life rewarding and fulfilling. All you care about is your entertainment. Your precious entertainment!

Somehow, this argument doesn’t stoke the same kind of fire. And it shouldn’t. It’s ridiculous. But it’s not all that different from the “NFL don’t care about fans” argument. The bottom line is if fans want to get the NFL’s attention, all they have to do is stop giving it theirs.

GOODELL

No one’s reputation seemed to take a harsher blow from the lockout than Roger Goodell’s. Many players don’t like that the sixth-year commissioner served as the owners’ mouthpiece during the work-stoppage. Or that last season he implemented drastic rule changes regarding player safety. Or that he has been the strong arm of the law when it comes to player discipline. But if you dial in on the commissioner’s job description, it’s hard to imagine a more intrepid leader than the one pro football has right now.

The commissioner’s job is to help the owners make as much money as possible. Whether you like this or not, that’s the job. Goodell has done it extremely well. The owners instructed him to oversee a work-stoppage that ultimately led to teams getting a high percentage of revenue than they had in the previous Collective Bargaining Agreement. Because of this 10-year CBA, the NFL’s upcoming new television packages are ensured of being more valuable than ever before.

Unfortunately, in the short-term, Goodell’s prize for getting owners a more favorable deal is to be known publicly as the guy who locked out the fans and presided over the longest work stoppage in NFL history. Goodell knew this fate awaited him heading into the whole ordeal. He still went all-in and never once compromised The Shield in order to save face.

Goodell is now in the unenviable position of working for the owners while having to regulate the players he just spent four months fighting. It’s a complex situation that makes him ripe for second-guessing. Case in point: as the lockout wound down, players started complaining even louder about Goodell’s role as the judge and jury of the NFL’s disciplinary system. But it was the players who, five years ago, applauded Goodell’s new strong-arm tactics when off-field legal woes were giving the league an image problem (remember when the Bengals had over 10 arrests in roughly a one-year span?).

Five years later, players still get arrested, but we no longer hear anyone suggesting that the league is willing to look the other way. When a player runs afoul of the law, the first thing everyone says is, “Uh oh, Goodell could come down hard on the guy.” The public now sees misbehaving players as individuals, not embodiments of the entire league. That’s all any professional sports league could ever ask for.

In matters on the field, Goodell gets blasted by many ex-players and current defensive players over the ambiguity of the new safety rules and the general “softening” of the game. But the alternative to these proactive rule changes is to wait for a non-football governing body (say, Congress?) to keep reading the new brain trauma reports that are coming out and decide that maybe it’s time the sport make some changes. That’s the last thing anyone involved with football should want.

Not to mention, the athletes today are better than the athletes of yesterday. Because of that, they’re more dangerous on the field and need less blood-and-guts practices off it. That’s not “soft”,that’s just evolution. Ex-players will still tell you that the “softening” of the sport has eroded the fundamentals (namely tackling). In actuality, other elements of the game – such as offensive passing design and the speed and versatility of all players – have just been evolving at a faster pace. Goodell understands it’s better to flow with evolution rather than fight for every single old value.

P.S. A big part of the “rule changes” we’re talking about are not actually changes to the rules, but rather, changes to enforcement of existing rules. Prior to last October, it was already illegal to deliver headshots on defenseless receivers. But guys like James Harrison didn’t think a small fine and the chance of a 15-yard penalty were big enough deterrents. Goodell simply said, “Okay, how about a big fine and the assuranceof a 15-yard penalty?” Suddenly a toothless rule had fangs. That’s looking after the sport.

As he gets through the next few months of post-lockout rebuilding, Goodell can take solace in the idea that as Commissioner if the NFL, you’re similar to the President of the United States in that, if everyone is happy with the job you’re doing, you’re probably not doing it very well.

THE DEAL ITSELF

If it weren’t so politically incorrect, the NFLPA and owners would have probably boasted that the lockout was totally worth it. Both sides played their strongest cards throughout the battle and, in the end, both sides made significant gains. The owners got a bigger chunk of the revenue than they had in the previous CBA. The players will still gain more money thanks to an elevated salary floor. And because they implemented a true revenue sharing model (players get an average of 47 percent over the length of the new CBA) instead of the old system that let owners skim $1 billion off the top, the players and owners are now truer partners, which will only help for the growth of the overall league. By the way, that growth is about to sky-rocket now that these partners can sell their television packages in a few years and assure the buyers of labor peace through 2020.

What’s more, the players and owners nailed the ancillary issues. Salaries for rookies were curtailed, which restored value to first-round draft picks and diverted money from unproven newcomers to deserving veterans. The hefty contracts the Panthers gave to Charles Johnson, DeAngelo Williams and Jon Beason, for example, would not have happened if the team had had to pay Sam Bradford-type money to No. 1 overall pick Cam Newton.

Retired players were taken care of in the form of $1 billion worth of benefits. Current players got practices reduced. New stipulations now make it much tougher for players to hold out. And, best of all, the awful idea of an 18-game season was shelved until 2013 and won’t ever come to fruition without the players’ consent.

The only sacrifices for getting what is a near-perfect system in place for the next 10 years were one offseason and Hall of Fame Game. Instead of whining about the alleged greed of both parties –which, by the way, is overblown considering the two sides were fighting only each other about how to simply divide money – fans should be commending them for a job well done. Shrewd business practices are why the NFL has become the success that it has.

Share This!

•