It’s that time of year when lobbyists for Major League Baseball, the NFL, the NBA, the NCAA, and cable TV companies get back to work and begin assessing what the 110th Congress might have in store for them in 2007 and beyond. The new Congress is in the hands of the Democrats for the first time in 12 years and that could mean significant changes in how sports operate.

Although both the House and Senate have held hearings on steroids usage in sports and how the NCAA functions, Congress has in actuality done very little in the past decade to change the sports world. The House Committee on Government Reform steroids hearings in 2005 might have done more to harm Mark McGwire’s Hall of Fame chances than to implement real change in strengthening testing for baseball players for illegal performance enhancing drugs.

The new committee chair, Rep. Henry Waxman, a Democrat of California, may decide to hold another series of hearings, not because of the ongoing BALCO federal grand jury proceedings, but rather to find out how the NFL did not detect steroid usage by a few Panthers players in 2003 and 2004. The 2003 Panthers won the NFC title and played New England in the 2004 Super Bowl. A South Carolina doctor, James Shortt, pleaded guilty in March 2006 to one federal count of conspiracy to distribute anabolic steroids and human growth hormone to the players and received a 366-day sentence and $600 worth of fines. Waxman in late summer expressed amazement about the case after reading about it in the Charlotte Observer and indicted he wanted to hold more hearings on the steroids issue. Ironically, the 2004 Super Bowl became a congressional issue not for steroids but for indecency, after Justin Timberlake accidentally pulled off Janet Jackson’s top during the halftime show.

Harlem Congressman Charles Rangel may have other plans. The new chairman of the Ways and Means Committee may decide to haul NCAA president Myles Brand, school presidents and chancellors, and others in to Congress to question why the NCAA should continue to enjoy tax breaks not afforded to other businesses. The former chairman of the committee, Rep. Bill Thomas, a Republican of California, who did not seek re-election, sent Brand a six-page letter last fall demanding answers to various questions including, “What benefits does the NCAA provide taxpayers in exchange for its tax exemption?”

“Why should the federal government subsidize athletic activities … when that subsidy is being used to help pay for escalating coaches’ salaries, costly chartered travel, and state-of-the-art athletic activities?”

Brand came up with a strange and rather unspecific answer about the tax-exempt status on November 16 on the NCAA Web site, saying, “The lessons learned on the football field or men’s basketball court are no less in value or importance to those student-athletes than the ones learned on the hockey rink or softball diamond — nor, for that matter, than those learned in theater, dance, music, journalism or other nonclassroom environments.”

This issue could become very contentious should Rangel go ahead and hold hearings on how the NCAA operates, especially if Rangel and his committee colleagues bring up questions about education, paying student-athletes, and why student-athletes are limited in earning money from jobs while theater, dance, music, and journalism students are not held to the same standard.

Eminent domain might get another look from Congress. In June 2005, the Supreme Court ruled that local governments have the authority to seize private land and turn the property over to private developers for economic development. In Brooklyn, Bruce Ratner may be using the decision to help get him the addition property he needs for his arena/office and residential towers project, and in Washington, D.C., officials used eminent domain to seize private land needed for the new Nationals stadium, scheduled to open in April 2008.

The NFL is also in the Senate’s crosshairs. Senator Schumer is pressuring NFL owners to come up with a plan for revenue sharing that will keep small-market franchises competitive with the largerevenue teams in Washington, Dallas, Boston (New England), Houston, and Philadelphia, not to mention, the two New Jersey-based New York teams when the new Meadowlands stadium opens. Schumer is hoping to get support from his colleagues in states with small market teams so that the Buffalo Bills franchise can remain in Orchard Park, N.Y., or eventually move into a new stadium in western New York. He is looking for help from Arizona’s John McCain, along with senators from Florida, Tennessee, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Georgia, North Carolina, Washington, Missouri, and Indiana to make sure the owners preserve the Pete Rozelle-era mantra of “Leaguethink,” whereby the good of the league supercedes the good of the individual owner.

While Schumer is trying to spread out the NFL’s wealth among the owners, Senator Specter is going to introduce legislation that could choke the TV gravy train for NFL owners and possibly for MLB, NBA, and NHL owners as well. Specter wants to undo the Sports Broadcast Act of 1961. The law, which was signed into effect by President Kennedy on September 30, 1961, allowed the NFL and other leagues to pool their resources and sell games to national broadcast networks as a single entity.

The NFL benefited the most of all sports leagues from this act and would be most affected by Specter’s proposed legislation. The NHL would be least hurt as their pooled monies from American national cable TV is a bit more than $2 million a team. NFL franchises get well in excess of $100 million annually from national pooled TV monies.

Congress may take up cable TV reregulation and the question of whether or not cable consumers should be able to pick and choose what cable networks they want to buy instead of forcing people who want basic expanded cable to buy a bundled network package complete with networks they never watch. The à la carte notion frightens sports cable TV networks and sports owners because the buy rate for cable TV sports networks would be incredibly low and everyone connected with sports knows that.

There is more to sports lobbying than just the halls of Congress. In New York, will Madison Square Garden’s James Dolan romance Governor Spitzer and his new administration into building an arena a block west of the now 39-year-old facility? Have MLB commissioner Bud Selig and his associates begun their flirtations with new Florida Governor Crist to get a new ballpark built for the Florida Marlins somewhere in the Miami area. Will NFL commissioner Roger Goodell appeal to Senator Feinstein of California and ask her not to introduce legislation in the Senate that would basically prevent the San Francisco 49ers from using either the city name or the team’s trademark in Santa Clara should owner John York decide to move the franchise there?

It’s a new year, a new Congress with some old faces in new jobs, and a new challenge to keep the status quo.