PRESEASONED FOR YOUR CONVENIENCE

Bryan from Arguing With Signposts is pondering whether the revenue lost by NFL teams when a star player is injured in the preseason is greater than the revenue they gain by playing the preseason games. He writes:

But I have to ask if the revenues generated by these games won’t be more than offset by the LOSS in revenues from an injury to a marquee player like Michael Vick or Chad Pennington? I mean, who in New York is really going to watch the second week game between the Jets and the Dolphins now? Who’s really going to watch the first four weeks of Atlanta’s season now?

Or, another interesting scenario: how long before players start putting clauses in their contracts stipulating the number of plays they will perform in preseason games?

I can’t recall which book it was in (something by Dan Jenkins, no doubt) that mentioned the old tradition in NFL football about preseason games where no one really hit that hard because everyone understood that it was stupid to risk injury in a meaningless game. If possible, players didn’t play because of “pulled groins” or “twisted ankles.”

Maybe the players should take a page from those who played before them. Of course, players today probably have insurance that pays them even with the injury, and the team has disaster insurance as well. The only people who lose out are the fans. And isn’t that always the way?

Well, first of all, unless you’re the Cincinnati Bengals, you probably sell out all your games long before the preseason starts. So it’s not like people can really say, “Chad Pennington’s hurt, so I guess I won’t buy any Jets tickets.” It’s a dead option at this point; the only persons facing a financial consequence from Pennington’s injury are ticket scalpers . . . erm, I mean, ticket brokers. Otherwise, every NFL ticket that’s going to be sold this season has been sold. And the TV networks have some flexibility; they can decide during the season which games they’re going to make national, and which will remain regional. Plus, the teams in the NFL pool the TV money anyway. So Mike Vick’s four-week layoff isn’t going to have a huge effect on the Falcons’ bottom line.

In terms of disaster insurance: maybe the players have it, but the teams don’t. Nor do they need it. The NFL is the only major sports league where player contracts are not guaranteed; if a player fails to meet performance standards, they make less money, period. It would be smart for players to specify a maximum number of preseason plays from a financial point of view, except that (a) it would inevitably lead to a lower overall contract; (b) the last thing a backup player would ever want to do is limit his preseason plays, especially if he’s finghting for his job, and (c) these guys are football players, therefore, they’d never go for it.

Plus, as many wags have pointed out, with free agency and the salary cap in place, it’s fruitless to be a fan of individual players unless they’re megastars like Brett Favre, since your favorite player will change teams every 3-5 years, no matter what. So you might as well just be a fan of the uniform and not the players on the team.

Who would lose the most if the NFL restructured preseason games? Not the fans, most of whom don’t really watch preseason games anyway, but can be counted on to watch their favorite team, even if they’re bound for a 3-13 season. The people most affected by it would be the rookies, journeymen, and reserves, who would lose their only chance to prove what they can do under game conditions if preseason games became little more than glorified scrimmages.