In NFL, change isn’t for the better
Congratulations to the NFL, which continues to do the equivalent of using a metal spatula on a Teflon-coated pan, thereby ruining it.
For decades, the NFL has believed itself to be Tefloncoated — impervious to harm, a cash-printing operation that can’t be unplugged. But the league and its billionaire owners are doing their best to make the once-genuflecting public hate the league.
With a Saturday report that Mark Davis will file relocation papers to move the Raiders to Las Vegas (weren’t we expecting this?), the NFL and its owners have potentially destroyed the stability of two of its coolest, most historic franchises in two of its top markets, while ruining the history of its best division, the AFC West.
The Raiders’ move isn’t a sure thing. There’s no overwhelming evidence that Davis has the votes or the financing. And there’s a chance the NFL could actually take the temperature of public opinion and hesitate before moving yet another team.
But here’s the reality: In its singular pursuit of greed, its encouragement for owners to think only about the bottom line, the NFL is flipping off its paying customers. Combined with the scourge of CTE, the lack of accountability on issues like domestic violence, the unwatchability of much of its product, and declining television ratings, the NFL may finally be at a tipping point.
The league has decided that punishing communities that refuse to build disposable billion-dollar buildings with tax money — in communities that don’t have enough tax dollars to fix their roads or shore up their schools — is a successful business strategy.
Congratulations to San Diego and Oakland for refusing to be extorted. And shame on the NFL and its members of the lucky sperm club for failing to value their communities. Dean Spanos is definitely in that club. In Mark Davis’ case, while he’s not a member of the billionaire owners club, his sole source of NFL relevance comes from the death of his father.
The NFL seems fine with abandoning traditional markets in Oakland and San Diego and giving Los Angeles two teams it doesn’t want. Hey, let’s spend a few hours on the freeway to go see mediocre teams that mean nothing to us, when we have thousands of other entertainment options.
NFL teams might technically belong to people who, for the most part, inherited them from their fathers. But really, those teams’ only relevance is because they are part of a community. Because they were cherished and supported by fans who grew up with them and passed along their allegiances.
When Larry Baer says the San Francisco Giants belong to the community, his words might contain a lot of politics and public relations. But they also ring true. Without the fans, the teams are meaningless.
The NFL doesn’t seem to get that. Maybe because its wealth comes from TV ratings, it sees fans not as a community, but as a metric. Maybe that’s because the league hasn’t yet suffered really hard times, as baseball has. But the NFL should be very careful, because you can only alienate your fan base so many times.
Let’s be clear: The NFL is worth billions. It could easily offer more help with the financing and building of stadiums. There are other options for housing its teams; this is not the taxpayer’s job.
Look at the fool’s errand in Atlanta, a city that hosted a playoff game Saturday. The Georgia Dome opened in 1992 and at the time was one of the largest state-funded projects in Georgia history. It is scheduled to be demolished this year, after a mere 25 years of use. It will be replaced by Mercedes-Benz Stadium next door, using $200 million of tax money and potentially hundreds of millions more for maintaining the stadium.
Why do we have disposable stadiums? In England, Old Trafford, home of Manchester United, has been around, with renovations, since 1910. In Spain, Barcelona’s Camp Nou opened in 1957, and Santiago Bernabeu has housed Real Madrid since 1947.
Why is the NFL so wasteful? Why does the league insist on enormous, new palaces when its stadium gameday experience is so poor compared with watching at home? When will the NFL realize that sterile cubes like Levi’s Stadium aren’t worth the destruction of hallowed grounds and a legacy of memories?
The bribe of Super Bowls is held over communities. The NFL just lost one of its great Super Bowl locations, in San Diego. A foresightful league could have helped finance a Super Bowl-worthy stadium there and another in New Orleans, and kept a fanfriendly Super Bowl rotation and stopped putting Super Bowls in places people really don’t want to visit.
But the NFL doesn’t operate that way. It is in the extortion business.
It’s in the business of destroying legacies. Of building structures that are out of date in a decade or two. Of alienating the fans who built the league into what it is.
The Teflon coating is wasting away. Beware.