The Mess Called Football

Officials of the National Football League have asked Congress to grant them an exemption from U.S. antitrust laws. While a theoretical case can be made for such an exemption, it would do more harm than good, given the present fiscal realities of professional sports.

Football Commissioner Pete Rozelle argues that an antitrust exemption would protect cities from losing professional franchises to other municipalities, as Oakland lost the Raiders to Los Angeles and Baltimore lost the Colts to Indianapolis. The football league and other professional sports leagues have been unable to prevent such moves ever since the Raiders and the Los Angeles Coliseum Commission successfully sued the NFL under the Sherman Antitrust Act to keep Rozelle from forcing the team back to Oakland.

But the commissioner’s worries about antitrust laws go beyond concern for loyal fans abandoned by a team that moves to greener pastures--although that heart-tugging appeal goes over well on Capitol Hill. The real issue behind his campaign is money. Rozelle and many NFL team owners fear that without an antitrust exemption the league will eventually lose control of its lucrative television contract with the three major networks--a deal that currently provides the NFL with more than 60% of its revenues, almost $400 million this year alone. If a rogue owner can move his team and be upheld by the courts, what if another owner tries to cut his own television deal?

What indeed? Obviously there are dangers inherent in the current wide-open situation, but there are always hazards attendant to operating a business in a free market. If another NFL team were to shift cities tomorrow, the league would be helpless to stop it. But what keeps it from creating another team to take its place? Only the stubbornness of Rozelle--who has kept the league to only 28 teams for several years now, despite requests from several major cities for franchises. And what keeps another football league from filling the void with a team of its own? The financial power of the NFL--which, because of its exclusive contract with all three major television networks, is able to exercise a near monopoly over professional football in this country. Rozelle needs no help from the federal government to tighten that grip.

Professional sports today have little do with theory and a lot to do with hard financial reality. Rozelle and other league officials like to talk about competition, but they overlook the virtues of an open market when it suits their interests. That is how they force top college athletes into bargaining for professional contracts with only one team. It was also evident in the cavalier fashion in which Rozelle refused to consider an expansion team for Los Angeles when the Rams left the Coliseum for Anaheim Stadium. Left with no other option, Coliseum officials went shopping for another tenant, and got the Raiders.

Rozelle got the NFL into its current conundrum through his own inflexibility. It is hypocritical of him to now ask Congress to bail out the league. It is also cynical for league officials to use the threat of team relocations, or the vague promise of expansion, to sway Congress. Is it any surprise that the congressmen most responsive to Rozelle’s appeals are from states that fear the loss of established teams (Pennsylvania and Missouri) or that are angling for new teams (Arizona and Tennessee)? Rozelle had no such soothing words for Los Angeles taxpayers when the Coliseum was left without a football team to help keep it solvent.

The court decisions in favor of the Raiders did leave the tidy little world of professional football in a messy state. But the free market, not Congress, should restore order.