Sports fans should take a look at a recent article in The Onion. The satirical magazine announces that the New York Yankees have trademarked the phrase, “Yankees Suck.” It would be even funnier if the most recent move by the NFL were not true, and equally ridiculous.

This week, the National Football League sent cease and desist orders to New Orleans vendors selling merchandise emblazoned with the famed Saints rally cry, “Who Dat.” The NFL claims ownership of this phrase due to its association with the Saints franchise.

US Senator David Vitter (R-LA) responded to Roger Goodell with a cease and desist letter of his own. Declaring that the phrase “Who Dat” belongs to the people of New Orleans. Sen Vitter requested that the NFL sue him for printing shirts with the phrase “Who Dat say we can’t print Who Dat!”

This morning, the league backed off its original threat of litigation, however, the NFL feels that the question of ownership remains unresolved.

Friday’s Times Picayune article included a reprint of an advertisement for an 1898 E.E. Rice play. This ad displayed the song title “Who Dat Say Chicken In Dis Crowd.” Are we, as fans, to believe that a governing body in professional sports can own turns of phrase ingrained in a local culture since before the turn of the century?

Today’s Fifth Down blog entry on the New York Times website describes the reaction from vendors and regular fans alike. “One crafty Twitter user created a shirt mocking the NFL on the Web site customink.com. In yellow lettering, the front of the black shirt reads: ‘Who exactly is it that states they are going to defeat the football team from New Orleans?’ The back taunts: ‘Cease and desist this.’”

At the heart of this fracas is the exclusive right to monetize words. Roger Goodell believes that two words first spoken by minstrels in the French Quarter more than 100 years ago are league property. What about Twitter users that post #whodat? What about blogs like WhoDatDish? One would think once they turn a profit, the NFL will go after them as well.

Saints fans deserve the right to display pride for their team without fear of repercussion by a league so greedy, they are willing to bite the hands of the fans that feed them.

The Sports Fans Coalition remains determined to force the FCC’s hand to stand firm in the face of another court case filed by Comcast.  Following the FCC’s 4-1 vote to eliminate the anticompetitive practice of restricting competitors from airing sports programming, Comcast quickly filed an appeal in the name of DirecTV’s Sunday Ticket, ignoring the crucial element of the ruling which sited local abuses on sports fans, consumers which prevents many from accessing sports games on TV. 

The SFC petitioned the FCC effectively to come down hard on this behemoth cable company which owns sports stadiums,  TV networks, and multiple sports franchises seeking to acquire a considerable mass of programming under the umbrella of NBC Universal.  The FCC vote was strategically made prior to the review of the proposed merger by the Department of Justice and the forthcoming Senate anti-trust subommittee hearing to be held on February 4th in which executives from both Comcast and NBC will testify on the proposed merger.

Since local sports exclusives have been ruled illegal by the FCC, Comcast has fought to keep its stranglehold over sports fans in Philadelphia, Portland, and if we don’t do something about it, every major market in the country.  If Comcast triumphs over the FCC in its appeal, not only will it have solidified its headlock on some select markets and won the case for Cablevision in New York City and Cox in San Diego, but it will be on the brink of dictatorship-style rule over sports fans in 11 major TV markets including Chicago, San Francisco, Boston, Washington, D.C., Houston, Miami, Denver, Hartford and Fresno.

While sports fans would love to be consoled recognizing that the DOJ will likely be tough on Comcast and NBC Universal in its review of the merger bid, the Sports Fans Coalition will do no such thing.  In fact, the SFC’s tact is to be vigilant from the outset recognizing the Comcast will stop at nothing to ignore the FCC keeping fans from their games unless Comcast’s price is paid. 

Don’t let Comcast get away with this. 

Sign the Petition demanding to know WHERE ARE MY GAMES?

The following article published by The Nation was co-written by SFC board member Dave Zirin and SFC managing editor Jeremiah Tittle. 

(It can also be found in the NEWS section on this site.)

Call it the Super Bowl for lawyers and the reckoning for football fans. On January 13 the owners of all thirty-two NFL teams asked the Supreme Court to shield them from anti-trust laws. Their argument is that the league does not comprise, despite all evidence, thirty-two individual competing units but is made up of one “single entity.”

This might seem bizarre on the face of it. After all, the 49ers and Cowboys don’t meet on the field to sing “Kumbaya,” and players don’t rotate from team to team. But the NFL has won in court every step of the way, and the outcome of this case could provoke a labor lockout or strike that would shut down the most popular sport in the country.

The legal saga started in 2000, when Reebok signed an exclusive contract to slap the NFL logo on its caps and jerseys for every team in the league. Illinois-based hat manufacturer American Needle was, in turn, left out in the cold, no longer allowed to strike deals with individual teams; so it therefore sued the NFL, claiming that by brokering this deal with Reebok, the NFL had violated the Sherman Act.

To the NFL, it was like discovering penicillin. This small merchandiser had been growing like a pestering fungus until that Aha! moment hit, and the league’s legal team realized the opportunity before it: a chance to knock out competition among apparel providers.

While the NFL repeatedly won the case in the lower courts, American Needle appealed to the Supreme Court for a hearing. The Court first reached out to the Obama administration to weigh in on the matter. Solicitor General Elena Kagan told the justices, “This case would be a particularly unsuitable vehicle to consider the broad rule that the NFL seeks.” Heedless of Kagan’s warning, the Supreme Court took the case, and with the NFL’s support, American Needle’s wish was granted. Now the “single entity” argument will be tested at the highest level, and, like the MLB All Star Game, this time it counts.

To anyone who pays attention to the billion-dollar catfight between Jerry Jones, owner of the Dallas Cowboys, and Dan Snyder, owner of the Washington Redskins, each year, in which a new owner is crowned at the unveiling of the franchise value rankings, the idea that the NFL is one company and not thirty-two competing businesses is just absurd. They are called franchises for a reason. Each franchise makes individual business decisions about how to market its product against opposing franchises wearing different-colored uniforms.

However, the NFL insists that even though it is made up of individual teams with individual profits and losses, it is still that “single entity.” As the sports experts at Forbes wrote, “From a business standpoint, the NFL, like any sports league, has always predominantly acted as a single entity. Teams compete on the field, which does mean bidding on players and coaches. But from a business standpoint, they’re partners above all else.” Forbes, “the capitalist’s bible,” turns collectivist. Why?

It’s simple. The NFL’s collective bargaining agreement expires in March 2011. There will be no salary cap or salary floor in the league if a new deal isn’t reached by March 5, 2010. If the Supreme Court rules that the NFL is a single entity, that changes the way the league negotiates—or doesn’t negotiate—with the players. Teams could slash payroll, violate labor law, and the NFL Players Association would have no recourse. Lockout, here we come.

DeMaurice Smith, NFL Players Association executive director, has told ESPN that he has called upon his players to save 25 percent of their salaries over the next two years: because of uncertainty around salary caps and floors, “I look at the way in which it looks like we’re moving to this lockout, and first and foremost, we have to be in a position where our young men are in a position to be able to take care of themselves and their families.”

New Orleans quarterback Drew Brees took a break from preparing his team’s Super Bowl run last week to deliver some Supreme Court testimony. In an op-ed published in the Washington Post, Brees warned that “if the Supreme Court agrees with the NFL’s argument that the teams act as a single entity rather than as 32 separate, vigorously competitive and extremely profitable entities, the absence of antitrust scrutiny would enable the owners to exert total control over this multibillion-dollar business.”

Serving on the Executive Committee of the Players Association, Brees understands that the players’ collective future hangs in the balance. The owners are looking to knock labor rights back into the Stone Age, or at least back to 1993, before Freeman McNeil, football’s Curt Flood, left a mammoth footprint on the game by fighting for and winning his rights as a free agent. The players sink or swim with the final decision to be delivered this summer.

It would be even worse for fans, and not only because the Sunday entertainment would go the way of Lost.

If owners were emancipated from anti-trust laws, collusion would be the law of the land. After all, they aren’t thirty-two competing entities but one solid corporation. They then could do more than slash payroll. They could raise ticket prices through the roof, and charge $100 for a stocking cap. The NFL-Reebok deal struck a decade ago illustrates quite clearly how the costs of doing business this way are passed on to fans, as “official hats,” Brees notes, “cost $10 more than before the exclusive arrangement.”

Owners could move clubs on a whim, and be protected legally from violating any individual agreements with individual municipalities. After all, they would be acting in the interest of their “one entity.”

In other words, think about everything you despise about the NFL experience: disloyal franchises, overpriced merchandize, unbridled greed, and give it an injection of a Mark McGwire cocktail. The NFL already acts like it has diplomatic immunity. It feeds at the public trough for stadium construction, charges a fortune for tickets, parking, souvenirs and—most tragically—beer, and accepts public input about as well as the CIA does. It is also about as transparent.

In addition, if we’ve learned nothing else from the scandals in banking and on Wall Street, the last thing big business needs in this country is more legal protection and less transparency. We all—fans and players alike—have every right to fear what further legal protection would mean for the future of fandom, no matter what they say at Forbes.

Federal Communications Commission Rule Benefits Sports Fans

Sports Fans Coalition Cautiously Optimistic About FCC Vote

Yesterday, the Federal Communications Commission ruled that cable television providers that have rights to broadcast unique, regional sports programming cannot deny the use of that programming to competing multi-channel content providers. For sports fans living in New York, San Diego, Philadelphia, or any other city where the cable company forces consumers to subscribe to their service to watch games, the FCC commissioners voted 4-1 to end that practice based on the presumption that barring access to regional sports programming restricts competition. Furthermore, the order bars cable companies from withholding programming during program renewal negotiations.

In essence, the FCC scaled back the “terrestrial loophole” by allowing multichannel competitors to file complaints alleging “unfair acts” that “significantly hinder” competition. The ruling states that competitors will be protected against said ‘unfair acts’, and specifically in regard to sports, this added protection will put the burden on cable to prove that protection should not apply to a given event. So, it will be the rule rather than the exception for sports programming, in High Definition as well as Standard Definition, to be made available to media competitors unless the original rights holder is able to demonstrate why protections should not apply.

The vote was “an important step to promote competition,” said FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski. “Viewers should not be unfairly forced to choose between the sports teams they love and the provider they prefer.”

While the ruling has tremendous potential to be a true victory for sports fans across the country, the Sports Fans Coalition is cautiously optimistic that the end result will find sports fans empowered with access to their teams’ games. “The FCC has set up a process to get the right result for fans, and that’s a great step,” said Sports Fans Coalition chairman David Goodfriend. “We still have to see, though, what happens when the first complaint arrives at the FCC’s doorstep. Will they do the right thing? Or will fans miss an entire season while the FCC thinks about it?”

The Sports Fans Coalition approves of the vote and celebrates the decision in favor of sports fans, but will fastidiously follow how sports programming will be delivered to competitors to ensure that sports consumers are getting what they deserve. “The last thing any sports fan should do now is let up,” Goodfriend continues, “Whether it’s the Comcast/NBC merger, sports blackouts, or contract disputes, we want to know: where are our games?”

The Sports Fans Coalition’s agenda advocates that sports fans should be able to watch their local teams play, regardless of how fans get their games. There should be no local sports exclusives. Now that the FCC has voted in favor of the sports fan, the Sports Fans Coalition will be acutely focused on the execution of the ruling.

On January 7th, Sports Fans Coalition joined a group of twenty-five industry associations, labor organizations, and public interest groups in creating an open letter expressing concerns about the proposed merger between Comcast and NBC-Universal citing the practice of blocking content from competitors, and in turn, sports fans.

Now that the SFC can claim victory on this action item, the next battle is just around the corner as the Department of Justice and other government agencies review the application for the Comcast/NBC merger. 

Stay tuned and get your network to join the SFC in the fight for sports fans across the country.  We have rights as consumer, citizens, and sports fans.  We need to be vigilant to protect those rights.  Join us.  

To read the letter, click here.

Sign the petition online here.

Get your network to Join The Coalition here.

San Francisco construction companies will soon be quite busy as the Oakland A’s and San Francisco 49ers are moving.  That is, providing that tax payers agree to subsidize these two new stadiums’ construction. 

Thus far, tax payers have protested the expenses associated with the 49ers heading to Santa Clara.  Just short of a billion dollars, the budget would intimidate even one of the richest markets in our country. 

While the negative reaction of concerned tax payers in Santa Clara has united many against the new stadium deal, the team and stadium subsidizers have devised a sneaky way to get their initiative on voters’ ballots.  That initiative seeks to hide the Environmental Impact Report on the prospective stadium construction and waive the rights of tax payers from recourse once they break ground. 

According to a concerned group of residents in the area Santa Clara Plays Fair, those with financial interests in the new stadium becoming a reality have created a petition for this measure to be on the ballot.  Signiature gatherers are misrepresenting the purpose of the petition, and unfortunately, succeeding in their push to get the line item on the ballot as early as June.

In other Bay area stadium news, a group has been formed to push for a new location and new stadium construction for the A’s called Let’s Go Oakland! 

There is talk of the A’s moving to a site on city-owned land right next door to the San Jose Sharks’ arena which would trigger a taxpayer vote.  Freemont could be the site of the new stadium without any vote necessary and could be more likely given that fact. 

Apparently, Bud Selig and Major League Baseball made the business move of soliciting Freemont to throw their hat in the ring to get an even better deal out of the host city, and in turn, more tax subsidies.

According to FieldofSchemes.com, a group called The Fremont Citizens Network is ready to take down this, the latest effort to move the team at the taxpayers’ expense.  Thank goodness. 

The bottom line is that if you live in the Bay Area, you need to be aware, don’t sign anything unless you know the full story, and research what the public advocacy groups are doing in your area. 

While a new stadium sounds great for sports fans, you have to weigh the consequences as these deals far too often come with a price tag that will hit your bank account mid-April.