This means that Philly fans can’t watch their local teams on DirecTV or DISH Network. Unless they can afford to pay for both Comcast and DirecTV, sports fans in Philadelphia who want to watch DirecTV’s NFL Sunday Ticket so they can see all the NFL games must sacrifice watching Philly teams. As a result, satellite TV providers reportedly only have an estimated 16% share of the Philadelphia market, half of what they have in other markets.

Meanwhile, sports fans in New York have had to endure not just James Dolan’s mismanagement of their beloved Knicks franchise, they’ve also been victims of his strong-arm tactics as President and CEO of Cablevision and Madison Square Garden, Inc. Dolan and Cablevision have withheld MSG Sports programming in HD from New York fans who want to use some other carriers, including Verizon and DISH. And any true sports fan can tell you it’s infuriating to watch a sports game without HD.

Comcast and Cablevision have been exploiting a loophole in the law to prevent its competitors from carrying their respective regional sports networks. Here’s how the AP explains the “terrestrial loophole”:

While content owners generally cannot stop competitors from getting access to its channels, there has been an exception since 1992. If the channel’s signals travel through a land-based network instead of satellite, the owner of that channel doesn’t have to give every rival access. The purpose of the exception was to encourage development of local programming.

Comcast and Cablevision Systems Corp. have counted on that loophole to block access to some of their sports channels by their satellite TV and phone company rivals.

But in January of this year, the FCC closed the loophole (and in March a federal appeals court upheld the decision). Here’s what FCC chairman Julius Genachowski said at the time:

The loophole gives free reign to cable-TV operators to lock up local sports events and other popular programming and withhold them from rival providers … Consumers who want to switch video providers shouldn’t have to give up their favorite team in the process. Today the commission levels the competitive playing field.

To most observers, the FCC’s ruling meant that Comcast now has to offer CSN Philadelphia to its competitors and Cablevision has to offer MSG in HD. Not that that’s happening anytime soon. Both have refused to follow the FCC’s ruling.

DISH Network wrote to Comcast in June requesting to carry CSN Philly and received what it said was an outright refusal from Comcast two days later. DISH subsequently announced plans to file a complaint with the FCC.

Comcast spokesman Tim Fitzpatrick said in a statement:

The FCC’s recent Terrestrial Order does not require Comcast to offer Comcast SportsNet Philadelphia or any other terrestrially delivered network to every distributor. It only allows claims where the provider has suffered a competitive injury, and there is no evidence Dish has suffered such an injury.

Comcast says it will give the rights to CSN Philadelphia if DISH and DirecTV give up the rights to their exclusive content, namely DirecTV’s NFL Sunday Ticket. But there’s quite a difference between not allowing other carriers to show in-market games and withholding out-of-market games.

So for the time being, sports fans will continue to have to choose between watching their teams and satellite service, a choice that, as Genachowski emphasized, no sports fan should have to make.

If the situations in Philadelphia, New York and Portland don’t make sports fans wary of the pending Comcast-NBCU merger, they should. Comcast has used its control over two regional sports networks to withhold sports programming from competitors, thus treading all over consumers. Imagine what it could do with a national broadcast network.

–

Brian Frederick is the Executive Director of Sports Fans Coalition. He holds a Ph.D. in Communication and lives in Washington, D.C. His favorite teams are the Kansas Jayhawks, North Carolina Tar Heels, and whichever team his brother is coaching for. And the underdog. Email him at sportsfanscoalition@gmail.com

Playoff PAC co-founder Chad Pehrson said: “The past six seasons, the BCS doled-out $521 million more to six privileged conferences than to the five other Division I conferences. ‘It’s Fixed’ shows that this $521 million disparity isn’t based on team success, game attendance, or TV ratings. The BCS is little more than a vehicle for delivering legacy entitlements.”

When you consider that in 2009, the winless Washington Huskies took home more BCS money than the undefeated Utah Utes, it’s clear the system is not only broken, it’s fixed.

by Jeremiah Tittle

Look no further than Notre Dame football when weighing the pros and cons of going independent.  Media exposure? Check.  Being a part of the national college football conversation even when your quality of play on the field seldom warrants it? Check.  Flexibility in scheduling to suit the school’s needs? Check. Qualifying for a BCS Bowl? Well, that’s the biggest (pay)check of all!

Yesterday, Brigham Young University announced that it would be joining the West Coast Conference for all sports except one.  Football. The school’s greatest revenue generating sport will not share profits as it has announced its independence.

BYU Football has been knocking on the door of the BCS for many years only to be relegated to lackluster bowls despite its strong record in the non-BCS Mountain West Conference.  Since talks of realignment strengthening in-conference competition, and in turn computer points, have fallen apart, BYU switched its strategy.  They got out of Dodge!

The 2011-2012 season will be different as BYU has followed in Notre Dame’s fighting french footsteps securing control of their own destiny with respect to revenue from television contracts and potential qualification for a BCS Bowl come winter.  That’s right. The same University that prohibited women from wearing jeans in the 70′s and banned Madonna CD’s in the 80′s has ventured down the road not (or rarely) taken.

From the sports fan’s point of view, how will this affect the entertainment factor?  Will this cause roadtrips to be out of reach for college kids and alumni?  Will other schools follow in BYU’s footsteps throwing off the cartel’s stranglehold?  These questions have yet to be answered.

Independence should buy BYU flexibility, but what will the ultimate result be in terms of breaking through the opaque ceiling held steadfast by the BCS?

While the wise path follows Notre Dame, BYU will need to ensure that the University Presidents continue to receive every penny of their expected million dollar paychecks they receive as being part of the cartel.  Plus, they must demostrate that this move won’t catalyze more independence and ensuing anarchy.

The bottom line is the bottom line.  The BCS conferences want the system under their control to stay the way it is.  Why create an equitable method to determine a champion, on the field of play, through a playoff system when it threatens the guaranteed cashflow and conference spots in all the big time bowl games each January?

Jeremiah Tittle is the Managing Editor of SportsFansCoalition.org. Reach him at Jeremiah@SportsFansCoalition.org. Apply for a position with the SFC Sportswriter Fellowship here.

SFC’s offices are in Washington, D.C., but the job will primarily consist of online work so it is not a necessity to live in D.C.

To apply, send a resume and a letter explaining why you’re interested to Brian Frederick at sportsfanscoalition@gmail.com.

Before we go any further, it should be noted that postseason playoffs and bowls are not mutually exclusive. In fact, bowl games would still make a great showcase for those programs that don’t make the playoffs.  This season, 70 out of the 120 teams in the Football Bowl Subdivision (worst moniker ever) will play in bowl games.  If 8 of those 70 teams played in a playoff, there would still be 62 teams that could play in 31 bowl games. Several playoff proposals include using the most prominent bowl games for the playoffs, including a rotating national championship, similar to how the BCS works now.

So this is not a call for eliminating bowl games, but an attempt to show that the BCS’ claim that playoffs would endanger the “great traditions of the bowls” rings hollow. College football and the BCS sold out the “great traditions” long ago in the name of corporate sponsorship and television contracts.

The bowl games are often lampooned – as they should be – for their shamelessness in affixing corporate brand names to their bowl names. Some of the all-time greats include the San Diego County Credit Union Poinsetta Bowl, the Bell Helicopter Armed Forces Bowl and the Poulan Weed-Eater Independence Bowl.  Some bowls don’t even bother with the pretense of maintaining the original name (if there was one). Consider the GMAC Bowl, the Beef ‘O’ Brady’s Bowl (who knows), and the Chick-fil-A Bowl. Even the “Grandaddy of them all” is referred to as the “Rose Bowl presented by Citi.”

Tradition could not save the Bluebonnet Bowl, which was played from 1959 to 1987 in Houston. Indeed, it was the lack of a title sponsor that ultimately did in the bowl. There were no NCAA bailouts for the Bluebonnet in the name of tradition. It wasn’t making money so it folded. That’s the real tradition.

The latest one is the Pinstripe Bowl, which takes place for the first time on December 30 in the lavish new Yankees Stadium. Nothing says tradition like celebrating the successful swindle of over a billion dollars of public money into private hands by hosting a game in a baseball stadium in frigid late December between the sixth-ranked Big 12 team and the third-ranked Big East team. Apparently, someone forgot what happened last time they tried to host a bowl game (1962’s Gotham Bowl) in Yankee Stadium – no one showed up. Or maybe they were inspired by the late Seattle Bowl, which played its inaugural game on the Mariners’ baseball field and folded after two seasons.

If the bowl games feel watered down now, it’s because they are. The NCAA’s decision to add an extra game starting in 2006 meant that teams could now play 12 games, opening the door for teams to be bowl eligible with a 6-6 record. Last season, 8 teams entered bowl games with .500 records overall. Further, 21 teams had .500 records or worse in their conferences. The pinnacle of mediocrity was surely the Insight Bowl which pitted Minnesota against Iowa State – both entered the game 6-6 and 3-5 in their respective conference.

The Insight Bowl itself is just over 20 years old. It originated in Tucson, moved to Phoenix and now is played in Sun Devil Stadium in Tempe. Meanwhile, the Fiesta Bowl started in Tempe but now is played in Phoenix. The actual location of the bowl game itself obviously isn’t fundamental to the “tradition” of these bowl games. In fact, only the Rose Bowl seems truly married to its location.

The “Grandaddy of Them All” has begrudgingly accepted the changes that come with accepting massive amounts of television revenues.  The BCS itself is responsible for ending the tradition of the Rose Bowl being played on January 1 (or the 2^nd if the 1^st is on a Monday). The BCS also hampers the Rose Bowl’s traditional Pac 10- Big 10 rivalry. And ultimately, the mystique of the Rose Bowl, the true granddaddy, died when it became just another cog in the BCS wheel.

So depending on the bowl, the location, name, date and conference ties to the bowl have been sacrificed for the sake of generating revenue and because of the BCS. In fact, the BCS now trumpets the same arguments that were once used against it. Prior to the BCS or its predecessors the Bowl Coalition and the Bowl Alliance, the argument was made that even having one national championship game would hurt the bowl games.

Regardless of whether the BCS has harmed the specific traditions of the bowl games, the BCS does mark a fundamental transformation of the college football postseason landscape. For the first time the system features one game above all the other bowl games. There really is one winner now; not just a group of teams that won their final game. The decision to play one national championship game ended what was once unique about the college football bowl system – that there was no one winner.

The BCS and the NCAA have decided that television revenues trump bowl traditions and that the largest bowls are now just vehicles for showcasing one game above them all. So we might as well fix the system so that these bowl games are used to feature an equitable system of determining a national champion. There’s no sense in pretending that the bowl games have great traditions. The bowl games long ago sold out their images to the highest corporate bidder and the BCS killed the spirit of the whole thing.

–

Brian Frederick is the Executive Director of Sports Fans Coalition. He holds a Ph.D. in Communication and lives in Washington, D.C. His favorite teams are the Kansas Jayhawks, North Carolina Tar Heels, and whichever team his brother is coaching for. And the underdog. Email him at sportsfanscoalition@gmail.com

In recent comments defending the Bowl Championship Series, BCS executive director Bill Hancock stated that college football has the “best, most compelling regular season of any sport.” Hancock was concerned that if college football had a post-season playoff like college basketball, fans would only care about the post-season.

“March is so wonderful, but the regular season is losing its appeal,” Hancock said. “It breaks my heart, but it’s because everything is going into March.

“We can’t take the risk of that happening in football because we have the best, most compelling regular season of any sport.”

Hancock is a good man tasked with the unenviable task of defending a system that has lower public approval ratings than Congress. And one of his primary defenses is the “most compelling regular season” claim.

But there are several problems with that claim.

First, is Hancock really claiming that the NFL’s regular season games aren’t as compelling as college football regular season games? What about Monday night football? Speaking of Monday nights, does Hancock think that Monday night Big East and Big 12 conference basketball games in January aren’t compelling enough?

Essentially, Hancock is arguing that every other sport that has a playoff is getting it wrong?

Second, under the BCS system, once a team falls out of contention for the national championship, don’t their seasons become less compelling than if they were playing for a conference championship or an at-large playoff berth, not only for fans of those schools but for the rest of us?

Take the powerhouses where anything short of playing for a national championship is a wasted season. This year those schools included Florida, Oklahoma and Ohio State. If those schools lose one game – and certainly two – there is no way those schools are playing for a national championship under the current system. While this might make the games up until the losses more compelling, what happens after those teams lose one or two games?

How compelling was the 2009 season for Oklahoma Sooners fans after the team lost their opening game to BYU? A friend who is a Texas alum told me that if UT loses to Oklahoma in the Red River Shootout, he hardly pays attention to the rest of the season after that. Maybe those UT and OU fans still find their seasons compelling, but how about the rest of us? Why was there any reason to watch OU after losing that first game? On the other hand, if a team could still win the national championship in a playoff, the games after one or two losses would still be compelling.

A college football playoff would create a scenario in which a number of teams would still have a shot at winning their conference championship or an at-large berth and thus would still be in the hunt for the national championship.

Third, even if we grant that the college football regular season is more compelling than other regular seasons, what if the cost of saving it is a less compelling post-season? Does the NCAA really think that one national championship game and a few marquis bowl games would get better ratings and be more compelling than a series of playoff games each one becoming increasingly more significant. A 16-team playoff would give college football fans a reason to watch at least 15 meaningful postseason games. (That’s in addition to any bowl games they might be interested in.) How many bowl games did the average fan watch last year? A few?

Bowl games just aren’t that meaningful to any college football fans without a rooting interest. Sure, they can be entertaining (sometimes) but there is no larger post-season narrative. Just a series of random bowl games punctuated by one often-controversial championship game.

Moreover, by sticking with the bowl and BCS system, the NCAA may actually be losing money – a lot of money.  SI.com writer Andy Staples writes:

Even BCS leaders will admit that there’s more money in a playoff. The NCAA basketball tournament brings in an estimated $545 million a year, and college football is exponentially more popular than college basketball. The BCS brings in only $150 million a year, but it funnels most of it to the most powerful conferences. Government intervention would strip those conferences of their power. After that, given a choice between less money and more money, here’s betting college presidents forget about their arguments against a playoff and opt for more money.

It’s clear that the claim that college football has the “most compelling regular season” is simply a sleight of hand to cover up that college football’s post-season is not only problematic and controversial, it’s not even that compelling. That is, unless virtually every other sports league (and the NCAA itself with its Football Championship Subdivision) has it wrong.

–

Brian Frederick is the Executive Director of Sports Fans Coalition. He holds a Ph.D. in Communication and lives in Washington, D.C. His favorite teams are the Kansas Jayhawks, North Carolina Tar Heels, and whichever team his brother is coaching for. And the underdog. Email him at sportsfanscoalition@gmail.com

Forget about Mark Cuban or any other wealthy owner. What if the people of Kansas City owned the Royals?

Initial reactions to this question probably range from “Hell, yeah, let’s run David Glass out of town on a rail” to “That sounds like socialism to me.” To be clear, we are a long way from the day when cities can actually buy the teams they love. And if you’re concerned about socialism, it’s already occurring in baseball – it’s just benefiting David Glass and the other owners. These owners get massive tax dollars to build and renovate stadiums that only end up making them richer.

As Dave Zirin, author of Bad Sports: How Owners are Ruining the Games We Love, explains it, the current ownership system “socializes the debt of sports while privatizing the profits.”

Just look at baseball’s antitrust exemption, which allows only the current baseball owners to monopolize the baseball market.

And if a city ever did try to buy a team, the owners would prevent it, even if the city offered the most money. How’s that for the triumph of capitalism?

But let’s consider for a minute, however, that it was possible for the people of Kansas City to buy the Royals.

Glass purchased the Royals for $96 million in 2000. The franchise is now estimated by Forbes to be worth $341 million, making it the 24^th most valuable franchise out of 30.

Now, it’s clear that the franchise is not worth three times as much 10 years later because of anything that’s happened on the field.

As Forbes put it, and everybody else knows, “Few franchises have squandered the fortune they have gotten from baseball’s revenue sharing system as much as the Royals.”

The team is worth a lot more now, in part, because of the $250 million in renovations to Kauffman Stadium. Those renovations were not paid for by all of Kansas City, but by the people of Jackson County.

But here’s the thing – at the time Jackson County voters approved a sales tax increase to pay for the renovations, the franchise was only estimated to be worth $239 million.

Jackson County citizens could have just bought the Royals from Glass and saved money!

And if all of Kansas City had gotten behind such a purchase, they could have met any asking price from Glass.

Sure, Kauffman Stadium wouldn’t look as nice as it does now, but was it really vital to renovate the old stadium? Couldn’t Royals fans live without the new amenities if it meant getting rid of David Glass?

Of course, there is the matter of operating costs, but those could have been offset by money spent on the Sprint Center, which will likely never see a franchise.

And before you argue that new stadiums and new stadium renovations are good for the Kansas City economy, consider what Roger Noll, coauthor of Sports, Jobs, and Taxes: The Economic Impact of Sports Teams and Stadiums, wrote: “There’s never been a publicly subsidized stadium anywhere in the United States that had the effect of increasing employment and economic growth in the city in which it was built.”

Even if the Sprint Center did have a team, it wouldn’t necessarily be a net plus. Take a study published by the conservative Heartland Institute which found that “professional sports teams generally have no significant impact on a metropolitan economy.”

So if new stadiums and stadium renovations aren’t benefiting the Kansas City economy, what good are they? They’re simply good for further enriching Glass and keeping the team in Kansas City. It’s the same situation faced by sports fans from San Francisco to New York. Build a new stadium (or massively renovate the old one) or lose your team.

It’s time for sports fans to fight back.

Imagine a Kansas City-owned Royals team. The revenues from the club would go back into the community. The team would never be in danger of being hijacked by an owner looking only at his bottom line. And the city could spend as much as it wanted to build a winning team.

A team of the people and for the people.

It’s not that hard to imagine – this is exactly what happens with the Green Bay Packers.  There are more than 100,000 people who own shares of the Packers. And they couldn’t be happier.

Imagine feeling such a sense of optimism about the Royals and their future again.

Kansas City may have missed a chance to buyout David Glass this time, but don’t worry, it won’t be long before he demands more renovations or a downtown stadium.

By then, sports fans need to be ready to trade him away.

–

Brian Frederick is the Executive Director of Sports Fans Coalition. He holds a Ph.D. in Communication and lives in Washington, D.C. His favorite teams are the Kansas Jayhawks, North Carolina Tar Heels, and whichever team his brother is coaching for. And the underdog. Email him at sportsfanscoalition@gmail.com

If you’re looking for more information about Sports Fans Coalition board member Dave Zirin’s new book BAD SPORTS: How Owners Are Ruining The Games We Love, you can purchase the book here and find out more about Dave here.

While you’re here, take a minute and sign up for the Sports Fans Coalition, an organization Dave believes can finally help give sports fans a voice. It’s free and we won’t spam you. The more members we have, the louder our voice. Join us!

The Jets and Giants opened their new stadium last night to the delight of the two organizations. The $1.6 billion stadium, which is the most expensive stadium in the country, was built on the backs of loyal fans, who were forced to cough up a king’s ransom in seat license fees. The Jets were generous enough to spare some fans with upper deck seats from having to pay the seat license fee. However, the Jets are banishing these fans to outer parking areas nowhere near the stadium. The philosophy is that the fans who have contributed toward the building of the stadium through the seat licenses should get special parking perks. The situation creates an even greater gulf between the haves and the have-nots.

Sometimes I get the idea that the owners of sports teams are trying to create the new Candid Camera Show. You know the show where a hidden camera captures people subjected to more and more ridiculous things until finally they are told they’re being duped for television. First, seat licenses. Then, crazy ticket prices. Now, parking hierarchies. I think the next thing will be a fee paid for being allowed to stay and watch the second half of the game. As a fan, I’m okay with all of this as long as it is followed by Woody Johnson jumping out and shouting, “Smile, you’re on Candid Camera!”

Humor aside, all of this is real. Woody won’t be jumping out and shouting anything other than “Show me the money, Jets Fans.” If fans are not represented, the latest parking dis will just be another in a never ending cycle of abuses.

–

Scott Weiss is the Local Chapter Chair for SFC-New York/New Jersey.  He has been involved in the sports fans advocacy movement since 2000.  He is a life long fan of the Mets, Jets, Knicks, and Rangers.

Become a fan of SFC-NY-NY on Facebook.

Follow SFC-NY-NY on Twitter.

ESPN surveyed 135 players from across the country – 72 from BCS schools and 63 from non-BCS schools – and asked them, “Do you want a playoff?” 62.2% of the players said yes, they favor a college football playoff.  (61.1% of BCS players support a playoff, as do 63.5% of non-BCS players.)

Clearly, college football players want a playoff.

The support for a playoff, however, breaks down when it comes to how exactly a playoff would work – and what it would mean for bowl games. The majority of players would rather have the current system than a 16-team playoff and would rather go to three bowl games in their career than one playoff trip. (This latter question seems a bit arbitrary.)

These results aren’t surprising. Basically, players don’t want a playoff to mean that they themselves don’t get to compete in the postseason.

But there’s no reason that college football can’t have a playoff and bowl games. One Big Ten “defensive standout” told ESPN:  “I’ve got the perfect solution. Take the top 16 ranked teams in the country and play it off like the World Cup. Take the next 24 teams with winning records and put them in bowl games.”

Had ESPN asked whether players favored a system with a playoff and bowl games, there would have probably been overwhelming support.

But that’s not what we have now.

No matter how hard the BCS tries to spin these results, the fact remains that college football players – and fans – support a playoff.

–

Brian Frederick is the Executive Director of Sports Fans Coalition. He holds a Ph.D. in Communication and lives in Washington, D.C. His favorite teams are the Kansas Jayhawks, North Carolina Tar Heels, and whichever team his brother is coaching for. And the underdog. Email him at sportsfanscoalition@gmail.com