NFL Lawsuits: Benefitting a City Near You

If you are a football fan in Minneapolis, St. Louis, Los Angeles, Toronto, or Portland you might want to get in contact with the NFL, because they may need you to save them from financial disaster.  At this very moment over 1,000 former NFL players have attached their names to a lawsuit seeking damages from the NFL in excess of $10 Billion.  That’s with a ‘B’.  These former players claim the NFL knowingly refrained from investigating the effects of traumatic brain injuries (TBI’s or simply, concussions) in order to protect their own financial self-interests. 

I am neither a doctor nor a lawyer, so I will not attempt to dissect the merits of the player’s case, but I will guess how the NFL would pay for such a huge verdict or settlement.  Actually, there is already a precedent in American professional sports for dealing with a sizeable legal/financial judgment.  The owners of Major League Baseball, when ordered to pay $280 million to the players for collusion in 1990, simply expanded their league in order to collect money in the form of franchise fees.  That money was then used to pay for their past manipulations of free agent player salaries between 1986 and 1990. 

Prior to MLB expansion in the early 1990's, each of the 26 teams was on the hook for approximately $10-12 million to pay for their past collusion.  Today, that is a 3^rd or 4^th starter’s salary for one season, but in 1990, $10 million would have equaled the average payroll for an ENTIRE team!  Guess who had the highest MLB payroll in 1990….the big spending Kansas City Royals, at a whopping $23 million.  The local TV deals that drive so much of a teams revenue in today's game were not yet up to steam.  The teams were in trouble; the owners needed to find a way to pay their bills, so they simply expanded the league (kind of like selling stock). 

So, you say, what does all this collusion and lawsuit mumbo-jumbo have to do with Los Angeles, Toronto, and Portland?  Well, those are the three largest TV markets in the U.S. and Canada that do not yet have an NFL team to call their own.  Minnesota and St. Louis, two teams currently in danger of losing their teams should rest easy and scuttle any plans to refurbish or fund any new stadiums using taxpayer dollars because the NFL can’t afford to move a team into a new city when they need those markets in order to pay their legal bills.  Rams want to move…let’em try it.  Billionaire owner wants to hold the Minnesota Legislature hostage, let’em.  The NFL is about to lose its shirt because of inattention to the safety of their employees; perhaps the current players would be willing to accommodate the owners on safety if something like the salary cap should disappear.  The owners can either pay for the damage to its current players up front in the form of open-market salaries or pay down the road in the form of a legal settlement.