The NFL Lockout and Sports Media

Did you know there's an NFL lockout going on? Of course you did, it's the BIGGEST news on the planet according to most sports media outlets. I've stopped watching Sportscenter because of the constant NFL lockout or The Ohio State controversy coverage. There's only so many times I can hear reporter x say, essentially, "Nothing new to report". However, try as I might to avoid being exposed to it, Twitter (or as Ben Bernanke would say, "the tweeter") has made it unavoidable. 

Jason Whitlock and Mike Florio touched on this issue over Twitter and on PFT Live on May 16th. Whitlock started the debate by saying that media members with significant salaries should disclose their biases when covering the lockout. He asserted that the salaries of media members have become so high that the potential risk of losing that salary is affected their coverage of the lockout. Florio then shot back with a personal attack on Whitlock before clearly stating his stance:

Now I have no knowledge of, nor do I care about the salaries involved. From the PFT Live discussion, this seems to be Whitlock's main focus. I think Whitlock has a good point, but he is focusing on the wrong aspect of the situation. To me, the bigger point of contention is that either Florio is lying in the above tweets or he fails to realize how any type of business works. 

For Florio to feel that the long-term growth and interest of the game should be important to him is, using his words, "borderline idiotic". I consider myself a casual football fan and I admit that I have little knowledge on how long PFT has been around. I realize that at the moment it's an incredibly influential website and an essential stop for anyone following the NFL. But let's be realistic, had anyone heard of or used PFT ten years ago? The media, as with any business, changes in completely random and unpredictable ways. Newspapers never imagined that the internet would be as problematic to their business model as it has or else they would have never put content online for free. Similarly, in the past three to four years, Twitter, Facebook, and other social media outlets are completely changing the way everything is covered, just look at Osama Bin Laden's killing. I'd heavily wager against PFT and most other blogs being as influential in five, let alone ten, years as they are today. While every businessman should consider the long run perspective of his actions, for something as random and dynamic as the media, short term interests should be paramount. 

Florio showed how distorted his views are on the PFT Live segment. These are some quotes (paraphrased) from the discussion.

"Don't you think all hell is going to break loose if we miss week 1?"

"The NFL has engineered the schedule to honor victims of 9-11 on the 10th Anniversary. Football was tied into the event as it happened during football season and guys ran out with flags. If games aren't played won't the fans be mad?"

"Football provides a diversion for a lot of people from whatever they do"

In addition to these one liners, Florio continually harped on his desire for football to replace baseball as America's Pasttime. It doesn't take much effort to break these down:

1. No, hell won't break loose if a season, let alone one week of NFL games aren't played. I'd like to think Florio was exaggerating a bit here, but after listening to the whole discussion, I don't think that's the case. The NFL is certainly a large entity with revenue around $8 billion. No one believes football will be going away forever, but it's certainly possible it could be going away for a little while. Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns collectively held about $1 trillion in assets and disappeared essentially overnight. When those two went under, it was a mess, but hell did not break loose. The NFL is pennies compared to that. Most of the world wouldn't notice a thing, hardly anyone's life would be affected. 

2. To invoke 9-11 in this argument is ludicrous and Whitlock immediately fired back criticizing the NFL for marketing a military connection. Florio's use of this argument is just as ridiculous. Did he see the people celebrating Bin Laden's death across the country? The last thing on those people's mind was a football game. To argue that the emotions and feelings on 9-11-11 will be affected by whether or not there are football games is "borderline idiotic".

3. Not much to add here, it's too easy to list a whole bunch of ways people divert themselves from everyday life. 

Another lockout commentary that caught by eye, technically ear, was given by Rich Eisen on his April 5th podcast with Gabe Feldman, the NFL Network's legal analyst. This interview was conducted leading up to Susan Nelson's decision to temporarily end the lockout, so that is where Eisen began. This is what he says about the judge and her future ruling (paraphrased again):

"How much press is she reading? She has to know the magnitude and how many people are on pins and needles...Heads up, this is a pretty damn big deal and people will be stamping their feet for a ruling...Does that affect the speed of a ruling?"

Again, this is almost as bad as Florio. The Judiciary system will treats every case with the upmost importance. Again, to put this in prospective, we are talking about letting people play a game. There have been far more important and far reaching court decisions than Susan Nelson's decision about the NFL lockout. It's incredibly misguided to believe that because people want a ruling ASAP the court will alter its typical way of doing business. To complement Feldman, he did a great job of not pointing out how ridiculous these statements are. But Eisen wasn't done as he got worked up about people saying it's not a big deal that the lockout is happening now because no games are being missed. Not so fast said Mr. Eisen: Tons of stuff, most notably workouts and free agency are going down the tubes. This plays right into Whitlock's argument. Eisen gets paid to cover this stuff, this stuff isn't happening, therefore he's upset. Finally, Eisen concludes by asking Feldman about the National Labor Relations Board's potential involvement. He was not pleased when Feldman said it could take months or years for the Board to conduct an investigation:

"What are they doing? What are they investigating? Hit Lexus-Nexus and get one million articles about it. What's deeper? We know where the relevant parties are, why don't they talk to them?"

The lack of prospective and understanding of how governmental investigations work is almost as astounding as referencing Lexus-Nexus ahead of Google. Needless to say, this was the last Rich Eisen podcast I listened to. 

This discussion brings me to a more general commentary on sports media as a whole. I claim that sports and everything around sports, the media included, is in/has gone through a golden age. Team valuations and in turn league revenues (mainly from TV) have reached previously unthinkable levels. Much like the Dutch tulip craze and the tech and housing bubbles, things do not increase in value forever (unless you invested with Bernie Madoff). It's silly to think that sports are not subject to the same forces. It's possible we have seen the beginning of the downfall as MLB attendance this season is noticeably down for almost every team. It's often said that the top of the bubble is reached when no one thinks it is a bubble and things will continue to move ahead at the status quo or better. This is exactly what is happening in sports. 

The latest sports TV rights contract was between the Pac-10 conference and ESPN and Fox for broadcast rights for football games. The agreement covers 12 years and pays around $250 million per year. People fail to realize how stupid this is on the side of ESPN and Fox as they have committed themselves to this for over a decade. Just go back one decade and imagine what sports coverage was like and how radically different it is now. No one could have predicted how Tivo, the internet, and tablets and smartphones have changed every aspect of the coverage. 

That's just from a macro prospective, but on a micro prospective, this is also a bad deal for the networks. College football could certainly lose popularity and I would argue that based on some of the issues with college sports, let alone the issues specific to football (Bowl System), this is significantly non-zero probability. Any sports team that ties itself to a player for ten years is scoffed at and the contract will likely end up as a net loss for the team, so why should these situations be viewed any differently? 

It's my opinion that every type of media outlet, but specifically sports, is bloated and could trim significant fat without losing much in the way of coverage. The idea that ESPN employees people to scour the internet for sabermetric ideas then "translate and explain" those ideas to the on air "analysts" is laughable. It reminds me of the scene from the greatest movie of all time, Office Space, where Tom interviews with the Bobs:

Classic. A second example that I'm familiar with is the coverage of my favorite baseball team. Despite the hometown newspaper's operating difficulties, it employees three people whose full time job is to cover the team. There are also additional sports editors and columnists who contribute as well. In addition, there are at least eight to ten other fulltime local media members, let alone the national baseball crop. There are twenty five people on a baseball team, but if you listened to or watched the coverage, you'd have a hard time naming six because most of the players don't do anything interesting. It's hilarious to watch the media crowd around one player's locker and ask him hardscrabble journalism questions like, "what were you thinking when that ball was hit?" Nationals outfielder Roger Bernadina recently provided my all time favorite answer to this, "Shit".