NFL drops ball by blacking out Lions game

In the early 1920s, parents in this country would tell their children to “remember the starving Armenians” as a way to remind them that life could be much worse. Almost a century later, it’s scary to think that the present day equivalent to that statement isn’t referring to people in Africa or Afghanistan or Communist China.

It’s referring to the people of Detroit, as in, “we might be broke, but at least we don’t live in Detroit,” or Delaware’s motto: “we might not have a national park, but at least we’re not Detroit.” That’s how rough things are in the nation’s eleventh largest metropolitan area, where the unemployment rate is about to eclipse 30 percent.

And just to kick a beaten man while he’s down, virtually no one in the city got to see the Lions win for the first time since John Edwards and Rudy Giuliani were still Presidential hopefuls. That’s because the NFL blacks out any local market game that isn’t sold out at least 72 hours in advance. It’s a policy meant to punish fans for not supporting the home team enough to purchase tickets. The league thinks of those people as freeloaders, and you can’t make money off people like that.

Except the NFL does. In fact, it just made $4 billion from DirecTV, which locked up exclusive rights to the league’s Sunday Ticket, the package that encourages fans to stay home and watch every game as opposed to actually going out and buying a ticket.

Of course, not even someone willing to pay $299 for the Sunday Ticket could sneak past NFL blackout restrictions. I learned that today when I spoke with a customer service agent at DirecTV. I wanted to know roughly how many people in Detroit were fortunate enough to watch the Lions win over Washington on Sunday and he informed me that the same rules apply to DirecTV subscribers as everyone else in the area.

“If a team can’t sell out, we can’t show their games locally,” the agent said. “The NFL has rules.”

But in a case like Detroit’s, it’s not about how strict the league is. It’s about how out of touch a multi billion dollar industry is with the people who helped it grow in the first place. Almost a third of these folks can’t find a job, let alone come up with the cash to purchase tickets to a game. That’s rent money. Or food money. These people are forced to be freeloaders. Sorry that helping the Lions sell out isn’t a top priority right now.

Some will say the people of Detroit should be thinking more about finding a job than watching Matthew Stafford play quarterback. You think they aren’t? That doesn’t mean they deserve to be shutout completely.

Sports can play a very powerful role in times like these. No, they aren’t helping anyone find a job or put food on the table, but they can unite a region. Ask someone in New England. Or just ask those that followed Michigan State’s magical run to the Final Four last April.

The games do matter.

Just not to the NFL.

Click here to read the rest of this entry >>

Absurd rookie contracts are a huge problem for the NFL

I’m generally against the NBA’s mandatory-minimum age requirement because I don’t think Commissioner David Stern should be the one deciding what’s best for the urban youth of America, but there is one positive side to the rule: It makes it much less likely that some kid who dominated his city league simply because he was a foot taller than everyone else will enter draft, get insanely rich, and flake out before every paying off for the franchise who drafted him.

Now can that still happen to someone who spends a year in college or even someone who plays four years and earns his degree? Of course. But along with assigning rookies a maximum salary, the minimum-age rule does, in theory, ensure that players will have to earn their right to a huge contract as opposed to just being given millions of dollars without ever proving themselves.

Unfortunately, that isn’t the case in the NFL, where a first round pick usually ends up becoming one of the highest paid players on their team before ever playing a down. Do you realize that Matthew Stafford, this season’s number one pick overall, will receive more guaranteed money than any player in the history of the league? $41.7 million in the bank for a guy that wasn’t even considered the best quarterback in the draft by every team in the league. Had Oklahoma’s Sam Bradford been in the mix, Detroit probably wouldn’t have even had him atop its board.

Maybe that’s the reason we see so many busts early in the NFL draft. These guys all grow up playing football because they love it, but for the tiny fraction of the population that actually has a chance to play professionally, money inevitably becomes a driving force. But when someone gets a Stafford-like contract, what’s motivating them now? Stafford could turn out to be Ryan Leaf and I guarantee he’d still be the wealthiest guy in his neighborhood.

I suppose I could just be a cynical person, but think about this from an every day perspective. If you were handed your college diploma before ever stepping foot onto campus, would you still attend every class and work your butt off to get a decent grade on every paper? Do you even do that now? It takes a lot of integrity to continue to work hard when things are already set in stone.

And by all means, Stafford could be that type of guy. But it has to be a little easier to know that even if he completely fails, he won’t have to worry about earning a second contract.

In the NBA, guys aren’t so lucky.

Click here to read the rest of this entry >>