COMMENTARY : It’s Time NFL Acts to Keep Up With Television

Television so completely controls America’s major sports decisions that one has to wonder what the NFL is going to do in order to keep the cash flowing to its teams at record levels. With the league’s contract up for renewal, speculation is rife that changes must be made for the NFL to keep its megabuck image in a changing TV world.

Pro football, of course, was the first American sport to truly understand the power of television. Back in the days when “knowledgeable” people argued for restrictions on the number of televised games in order to protect gates, the NFL offered maximum exposure to its teams in their home markets. The result was that a barely noticeable sport of the 1950s -- you could buy Giants tickets on game day quite easily -- became the spectator giant of the ‘60s.

Now, baseball and basketball, both college and pro, are threatening football’s television pre-eminence. With Major League Baseball looking at $1.5 billion in national television revenues in the next four years, college basketball netting at least a cool $1 billion in the next decade, and the NBA rights at more than $600 million annually, pro football is no longer the unchallenged rights-fee leader.

The NFL’s current TV package funnels about $11 million annually to its teams, but not everything is wonderful about the way that deal works. For one thing, NBC simply doesn’t have the guns to match CBS on Sunday coverage because it is stuck with the weaker American Football Conference. The AFC is not only less attractive on the field, it lacks the major market impact of the National Football Conference, so NBC loses in two ways: audience appeal and potential viewer reach.

In a perfect world, the NFL leaders would recognize the easiest way to solve that problem is realignment. Although there would undoubtedly be much gnashing of teeth, such a straightforward bow in the direction of TV’s needs would probably net the league increased long-range revenues. Not only would it solve the immediate imbalance between CBS and NBC’s properties, but a “made for TV sales” alignment might even entice ABC to bid for Sunday afternoon games, thus driving up the price.

How might such a divisional setup look? Try something like this:

CBS divisions

East: Giants, Jets, Patriots, Eagles, Redskins.

Central: Vikings, Lions, Packers, Chiefs.

West: 49ers, Raiders, Chargers, Seahawks, Saints.

NBC divisions

East: Dolphins, Buccaneers, Falcons, Bills, Steelers

Central: Bears, Colts, Browns, Bengals

West: Rams, Cardinals, Cowboys, Oilers, Broncos.

In such a setup, each network would retain eight “home” teams and acquire six new ones. The keys, obviously, would be the Rams and Bears moving to NBC, giving that network strong attractions in those major markets. CBS would gain a monopoly in New York as partial compensation and would keep the strong San Francisco, Washington and Philadelphia markets.

There is another reason why the NFL ought to consider such an apparently radical change as it heads for the new decade. The growing power of regional sports networks could make them realistic players in the TV rights game by the end of the next decade. It behooves leagues -- right now -- to realign along smart geographic lines to avoid the type of cable TV problems we see in Connecticut, where NBA and NHL territorial rules cause market confusion.

Whether the NFL thinks along these lines or not, the fact is television ratings and markets are the key elements in healthy leagues.

While the above is pure speculation, there is one NFL-TV move that seems quite likely to occur. That’s the expansion of the ESPN cable package from its current eight Sunday nights to a full season of 16. It’s a clear-cut way for the NFL to increase its cable revenue.

The success of ESPN’s NFL coverage was anticipated, of course, but the fact that there has been so little criticism of the league for removing those eight games from “free” television might well encourage further commitments to cable. That’s another reason to plan ahead for the day when regional networks can offer their own megabucks for properties.

Right now, cable remains only a source of additional revenues. Even its most optimistic proponents recognize that the inability to reach the whole nation remains a drawback. The next decade will see cable closer to 75 percent national penetration, but 100 percent coverage seems well into the future.

That’s why the broadcast networks are still so important to major sports, just one more reason why it makes sense for the NFL to deal with the Sunday afternoon imbalance in some concrete way. Realignment of the conferences and divisions is just one of the ways they might come to grips with television’s “real” world of ratings and advertising sales.