COMMENTARY : Existing NFL Teams Ready for Marketing

If you look no farther than the NFL’s latest expansion announcement you’ll think this is only about Jacksonville. It isn’t. Oh sure, Jacksonville is the hot city of the moment, the latest town to feel legitimized by becoming “major league.”

But the moment you begin to read between the lines you also know this is about St. Louis, Baltimore and Memphis on one hand, Tampa, Cincinnati, Anaheim and Foxboro on the other. The real game of hardball is just beginning. Just because St. Louis and Baltimore didn’t get expansion teams Tuesday doesn’t mean they won’t get teams. The NFL isn’t MLB. Football teams move. Football is, “Who’s going to give me money?” Why do you think teams left Baltimore and St. Louis in the first place?

This happens to be a time when there are football teams looking to make a deal and people with the money to woo them. Mike Brown has already made it known, publicly, the Bengals are available. The Rams have been flirting for weeks. The Patriots have been making noise about moving if they can’t have a new stadium. The Buccaneers are now No. 3 in their own state. Do you get my drift?

St. Louis may have been shut out on the expansion front, but Stan Kroenke is still worth $500 million and the city still has a downtown, publicly financed domed stadium under construction. Baltimore may be in full whine (again) but there are three groups -- Malcolm Glazer, Boogie Weinglass and Alfred Lerner lead them -- with hundreds of millions; a new downtown stadium has been approved. Memphis may be angry over being turned away more times over more years than any other suitor, but Billy Dunavant Jr. is still the world’s leading cotton merchant. Everywhere you look, money.

What the NFL did, intentionally or not, was strengthen every weak franchise by leaving available three very attractive cities. One reason the NFL might not have wanted to award two franchises now and two, say, five years from now is that it would have eliminated leverage for existing clubs. If Baltimore and St. Louis are already occupied, what real threat do the Bengals and Buccaneers have? Cities don’t usually call owners and say, “You know what, let’s build you guys a new $150 million stadium at the taxpayers’ expense.” Clubs need leverage. The best leverage is the threat of moving the team. Baseball always leaves at least a couple of attractive cities unoccupied so that existing teams can blackmail their cities. The White Sox, for example, said they were bolting for St. Petersburg a few years back; a new stadium kept them in Chicago. And baseball teams have less mobility because of antitrust laws that are not an obstacle to football teams. If a city blinks, an NFL team -- see Colts, B. Irsay -- could be off in the night in a Mayflower van. Bill Bidwill wanted a new stadium, didn’t get one, and took a deal so sweet in Phoenix the city pays for everything except his dry cleaning.

The Bucs, Rams, Bengals and Patriots will now get virtually everything they want from the cities in which they reside, or move someplace like Baltimore or St. Louis where people will be so happy to have them they’ll pave the roads to new stadiums with money.

You can create a dozen scenarios in which any combination of teams move. Personally, I don’t see why the Bengals have to stay in Cincinnati. It’s not like the NFL needs Cincinnati. Any one of the jillionaires, let’s say one of Baltimore’s (or a merger of two), can lure the Bengals. You think penny-pinching Mike Brown can’t have his grip loosened with the right deal? Do the Buccaneers want to be No. 3 in their own state? For results, it’s one of the worst franchises in NFL history. The team loses 10 games every year, the stadium is half-empty. You know what will happen if the Bucs move to Memphis? They become the toast of the town for at least a half-dozen years, which is 48 more sellouts than the club will get in Tampa. You know what happens if the dreadful Bengals move to Baltimore? Sellouts every week in a new stadium on a fresh grass field for owners who aren’t hamstrung at every turn, that’s what.

The bidding is going to start fairly soon.

You can make the argument that the NFL would hate to leave L.A. in the hands of Al Davis, about whom you just never, ever know; and that the league would never leave open the No. 6 market, Boston, in the country. But the Rams and the Patriots do get lost. Football is No. 4 in Boston and there are always more people inside Disney on a given Sunday than in The Big A.

Which brings us to Jacksonville. There’s no No. 4 in Jacksonville. Actually, there’s no No. 2 in Jacksonville. The Jaguars are it. You want to know why the NFL could select Jacksonville? Weaver looks to be every bit one of their own, a good old boy, and Jacksonville has no competition. It’s Buffalo or Green Bay with sunshine.

I know, you’re waiting for the Jacksonville jokes:

K-Mart is Jacksonville’s Neiman Marcus.

Jacksonville’s idea of a good restaurant is Stuckey’s.

Seriously, the (mis)perception of Jacksonville is that it’s one long, low-rent, honky-tonk dump. In the Florida boom of the ‘70s, Orlando, Tampa and Fort Lauderdale left Jacksonville in the dust. It used to have the fifth biggest bowl game going, the Gator, then it dropped off the radar. Apparently, some of us need to visit.

What we know about Jacksonville is that the city supports football. People showed up at WFL games in the ‘70s and they fought like wild over tickets to USFL games in the ‘80s. Can St. Louis say that? Can Baltimore? You don’t need 10 million people in a city to support football, just 75,000 or so who feel a ticket to pro football is their slice of heaven. There was never anything shaky about Jacksonville’s ownership group, which includes Jeb (Son of George) Bush. Jacksonville never lost a team because of bad ownership or iffy fan support. After being used as a bargaining chip by the Oilers, Colts and Falcons, there’s something sweet and hokey about a middle-market city going from fifth (on Oct. 26) to first.

I, for one, am going to stop laughing at Jacksonville, go out and buy a Jaguars hat. If they could suit up today, they’d probably be a three-point favorite over the Skins.