By:  Joey Bittick

Cue Mood Music….

We NFL fans are living in uncertain times these days (I could go into cliché’ mode and say something Dickensian about the best times and the worst, but I will refrain from going that far). Because of our willingness to buy up any and everything that the NFL has to offer, the League has grown into the single biggest entertainment entity in North America—no small feat given the competition the NFL faces for our hard-earned dollars.  With “America’s pastime” in the MLB, the sport of basketball becoming increasingly popular among America’s athletic elite; the NHL and its relatively small but rabid fan base; and, of course, the so-called “breaking news” news of Lindsay Lohan and yet another stint in the nearest correctional facility, it is easy to see why many Americans have developed a sort of Entertainment ADD.  If something bores us, we grab the remote and find something else. Nevertheless, the NFL has managed to captivate us and hold our increasingly short attention spans. And what have the men who have grown richer and richer by grabbing up every single one of our pennies done to reward us?  Well, they have decided that it may just been time to cancel NFL Football—at least for a season.

Yes, the owners. You know, those for whom it is getting increasingly hard to argue that they have their eyes on anything but their exceedingly large monthly bank statements.  They have decided that getting a large chunk of the revenue generated by the largest moneymaking entertainment enterprise America has ever seen is not enough. Like Augustus Gloop diving face-first into a river of chocolate, they will not be content until they are positively swimming in green, even near drowning in it. So, in order to get even deeper into our pockets, they decided in April 2008 to opt out of their contract with the NFL Players Association in what this writer can only see as an act of complete and utter greed.

While many fans like to rail against a group of grown men getting paid exorbitant amounts of money to “play a game,” it was the owners who opted out of the Collective Bargaining Agreement back in 2008. And why? Because they wanted an even bigger chunk of the massive amount of revenue the NFL generates due to the fans’ willingness to spend like crazed trust fund babies on Spring Break on anything with an NFL logo on it. We, as fans, have basically given the NFL a blank check. We “fanatically” support “our” teams and buy up everything we can to show our fanaticism, but that still isn’t enough for these billionaires. They couldn’t care less about the sole reason for the NFL’s existence, the revenue-generating public; the only part they care about is the revenue part.  When you listen to these men engaged in their “Billionaires vs. Millionaires” battles, rarely is there ever any mention of the fans they have used as a springboard to propel them to what most consider unfathomable riches. Rarely is there a mention of how this is affecting fans, those die-hard football addicts who cannot imagine a Sunday in autumn going by without an NFL game to tune in to.

And, to make things even worse, not only have the NFL owners plotted a course that ultimately leads to a player lockout and no NFL Sundays for at least the 2011 season, but they have also found a way to make sure they can still line their own pockets in the process. Yes, even if there is absolutely no NFL football played in 2011, the NFL has negotiated it into their TV contracts that the NFL will still make 4 billion (yes, with a “B”) dollars from their TV contracts. Dividing that by thirty-two (as there are thirty-two NFL franchises, and TV revenue is split evenly among all owners), that means each owner stands to make $125 million in 2011! I am sure I am not the only one who thinks that is completely outrageous. To put into perspective just how obscene that amount is, the largest contract ever signed by an actual NFL player was a ten-year $130million contract. And that amount was spread out over a ten year period. Every single NFL owner stands to make almost thirteen times that for what? For absolutely nothing! They do not even have to live up to their end of the bargain and put a team on the field. To make matters even worse, the owners also just added a clause to the coaches’ contracts saying that if there is no football in 2011, the coaches do not get a cent of the salary they are owed for that year. Come on! An elite Head Coach in the NFL makes around $5 million a year. That is a measly 4 percent of the $125 mil the owners will make just for having their name attached to the franchise, and they are quibbling over $5 mil?

The fact that the owners have set it up so they will receive billions of dollars between them whether or not football is played shows that they have absolutely no regard for the players and coaches they employ or the fans who have made it possible for them to sit in their mansions and rake in cash for doing nothing more than “owning” a property. Yes, the owners made the initial investment, but it is the fans’ money that the owners have lined their pockets with. It is the players on the field who make the NFL a multi-billion-dollar enterprise—not some rich guy sitting in a luxury suite feigning as if he sees the game being played as anything more than a way to add a few more commas and zeroes to his already mind-blowing bank balance.  Again, yes, I realize that the owners made an investment and are entitled to make a profit, but things are getting a bit ridiculous.

The players are doing their best, though, to try to ensure that the owners are held accountable for this obvious cash grab. The TV revenue generated by the NFL is supposed to be split amongst the players and the owners. It is therefore the owners’ responsibility to seek the most lucrative TV contracts possible. However, the NFLPA contends that the owners took a lesser deal to ensure that they would still get their hands on huge sums of cash in the case of a lockout, cash that will not be shared with the players in the event of said lockout. The NFLPA also states in a legal document that the owners are gearing up for a lockout of not only 2011, but beyond as well! The owners apparently view locking out the players as a show of solidarity, a way of strong-arming the players into agreeing to a more owner friendly financial setup for the league.

Again, the owners should be entitled to make a profit on their investment, but when is enough enough?  According to cnbc.com, the major networks (FOX, NBC, CBS, and ESPN) are paying a combined total of $20.4 billion (again, that is “billion” with a “B”) from 2006 through 2011 (2013 for ESPN) to broadcast NFL games! That total does not account for the $1 billion plus that the NFL is paid by DirecTV for exclusive rights to the NFL Sunday Ticket through 2014. And you can add to that the $7.6 billion that the NFL makes annually from luxury suite sales, tickets, merchandise, and sponsorships. That $ 7.6 billion over six seasons (the amount of time the current TV contract will run) comes out to a total of $45.6 billion—totaling out at an eye-popping total of $67 billion in revenue.

Now, I realize that out of that money, the NFL has to pay its players. That is where the Salary Cap comes into play. The salary cap in 2009 was believed to be around $128 million per team. Keep in mind that NFL franchises are not obligated to spend all $128 million, but that is the maximum they are allowed to spend on players. So, if every team spent every single cent of the allowable amount on players over the six- year period of the current TV contracts that would come out to $24,576,000,000. So, to give the benefit of the doubt to the owners, let’s round that up to $25 billion spent on player salaries if every team spent the maximum allowable amount (keeping in mind that the salary cap was lower in years past). That, over the course of the current TV contract, is a worst-case scenario for the owners. That would leave them with only $42 billion to cover all of their expenses over that time period (because, you know, I am sure that guy who served you your $8 beer is really holding the owner’s feet to the fire demanding an outrageous salary).

So, what does all of this really mean? That leaves these poor guys with only $1,312,500,000 or so to live on over the last six years. How can we expect those poor, unfortunate, hardworking owners to live comfortably on only a $1 billion plus per year? I mean, come on, you might as well ask them to golf at the public course from now on… Oh the horror!  But don’t worry about them.  Just like the aforementioned Augustus Gloop, they will keep digging their piggy little hands into the river of chocolate for as long as we allow them to.