Off-Field Difficulties Loom for NFL

John Madden once said winning is a great deodorant, as it covers up whatever internal problems a team might be having. On the national level for the NFL, Brett Favre’s retirement has quickly turned into a saga; in the New York area, the decision by the ownership of the Giants to implement a personal seat licensing charge has pushed the league’s real problems out of the limelight. But NFL owners do face some tough issues as training camp opens. The difficulties include a potential labor action obstacle in 2011; the ongoing saga of the Rooney family’s ownership of the Pittsburgh Steelers; Los Angeles’s quest for a team; the globalization of the NFL, and carriage problems for the NFL Network.In May, NFL owners decided to opt out of the current collective bargaining agreement, and there are numerous storm clouds on the horizon, even though owners contend that they want to work with the NFL Players Association and create a settlement before 2010. Should the owners and players not settle by the February 2010 Super Bowl, a new set of rules kick in, which means the 2010 season will be played without a salary cap, and the free agency rights of the players will be severely limited, as a player will have to have six — not four — years of service before he can shop his talents elsewhere.Additionally, two key players in prior negotiations may not be at the table: The owner of the Pittsburgh Steelers, Dan Rooney, and the executive director of the NFLPA, Gene Upshaw. The NFLPA’s board is identifying potential replacements for Upshaw, who has been the association’s executive director since 1983. Upshaw, though, is not ready to step down from his post: He has been able to negotiate new bargaining agreements since 1993, ending more than two decades of hostilities, which included player strikes in 1974, 1982, and 1987, a spate of lawsuits, and a union decertification.Upshaw, though, has been heavily criticized over the years for not challenging NFL owners for better deals and for not getting better benefits for long-retired players and for being overpaid. He doesn’t have an adversarial relationship with the owners, which has been criticized by other sports union leaders.Meanwhile, Rooney is in a battle to keep family ownership of the Steelers. He is the last of the old-guard, inner-circle NFL owners, so highly prized by other owners that they passed a resolution called the “Rooney Rule,” which mandates that teams with head coaching and general manager vacancies must interview at least one minority candidate. Rooney is attempting to buy out his brothers, who might not want to be involved in football ownership anymore, and who could want to concentrate on their gaming holdings, which include Yonkers Raceway and the Empire City casino.In Florida, the owner of the Jacksonville Jaguars, Wayne Weaver, has denied that he is ready to sell his franchise, and that a new owner would move the team to Los Angeles. Ed Roski, who failed in his attempt to get a Los Angeles expansion franchise in 1999, is ready to build a football facility in the City of Industry, which is near Los Angeles. But he won’t commit until an NFL owner reaches him with an expansion query.But, the NFL is more interested in succeeding in London than it is in Los Angeles right now. San Diego will play New Orleans on October 26 in Wembley Stadium, as the NFL continues to market itself in Britain. Also, the league will find out just how successful its foray into Toronto will be in a month, when the “hometown” Buffalo Bills play the Steelers in a pre-season game on August 14. (A regular season game between the Bills and Miami is planned for December 7.) The owner of the Bills, Ralph Wilson, has a deal with the owner of the Toronto Blue Jays, Ted Rogers, to play three pre-season contests and five regular season games through 2012 at the Rogers Centre in an “effort” to continue regionalizing the Bills franchise. Wilson, who is 89, has five years left on his contract to play his home games in Orchard Park, N.Y.The NFL seems to have reached an agreement with the Canadian Football League, whereby both leagues can peacefully coexist in Toronto. But some Canadian politicians could seek publicity in saying that basing the NFL in Canada will ruin the CFL. In 1974, Canadian politicians threatened to enact legislation that would have banned the World Football League from operating in Toronto. But the owner of the Toronto Northmen, John Bassett, moved his team to Memphis, and Parliament backed off.Meanwhile, the league and Comcast have turned to a mediator in an attempt to settle their dispute over carriage of the NFL Network on the cable systems that Comcast acquired from Adelphia Communications in 2005. The NFL sued Comcast in October 2006, after the Philadelphia multisystems operator (MSO) removed the NFL Network from Adelphia’s basic-expanded cable tier to a sports tier. The lawsuit accuses Comcast of “carriage discrimination,” because Comcast operates two of its own sports networks, Versus and the Golf Channel, on a basic expanded tier, while relegating the NFL Network to a less-watched sports tier.Favre and the Giants are great talking points on sports talk radio. But they are only cosmetic issues. There are much more important issues facing the NFL as training camp opens.evanjweiner@yahoo.com

Off-Field Difficulties Loom for NFL

Off-Field Difficulties Loom for NFL

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