NFL Makes Another Bad Business Decision.

In just a few weeks the call for Major League Baseball teams to report to spring training will happen. I can’t wait. With baseball the only thing embarrassing about the sport is who is on performance enhancing drugs and who isn’t.

With another NFL season over, the obsession the NFL needs to be embarrassed about is that they have become cheap cutthroat mercenaries. I’m not talking about the players. I’m talking about the league office. The NFL has shown a continuous drive into expanding their corporate earnings without spending a moment thinking what it might do their fan base.

The NFL started their war on fans by establishing the NFL Network. Making billions selling television rights wasn’t enough for corporate headquarters. They had to start their own network, the NFL Network, so that they could make still more.

The plan was easy. Take several key games near the end of the season, keep them on an exclusive channel and require fans buy a cable or dish package that included the network or be left out. The cable and dish companies would then have to pay the NFL Network for these airing rights and more money would come into the league office. Of course many fans of the teams playing on the network can’t see their favorite teams play but what the heck, the NFL makes more money so who needs them.

For the most part the fans stayed left out; opting not to bump their cable and dish bills any higher than they already were and that will hurt the NFL in the long run more than it will hurt Dad and little Jimmy who had to find something else to bond about.

The NFL wasn’t done tarnishing their image however. They decided to go after churches and clamped down on community churches throwing Superbowl parties with their congregations.

The concept and rationale are ludicrous. The NFL doesn’t want religious groups to gather to watch their most prized game since most of these churches supplant their own religious messages at halftime rather than show the over bloated and often tawdry extravaganza’s the NFL approves.

The NFL is quick to point out their copyright specifically states that “any commercial use" of the games are prohibited but of course the churches aren’t using the games to make any money so the relevance of their claims are ridiculous.

To show the hypocrisy in the NFL’s stance, sports bars are exempt and that is where the real commercial use of the games comes into play. The NFL exempts them since the bars all show and sell the beers that make up a huge part of the NFL’s income.

The 400 local churches that had to cancel their Superbowl parties over threats from the NFL of a lawsuit are just small, locally scattered religious groups throughout the U.S.A. That makes it obvious that the NFL had to spend time and money seeking out these churches since none of them advertised they were having their parties anywhere but in a local tabloid.

And so the NFL police decided to come down on religious congregations. They left alone all the bars and civic organizations that have bars in their establishments to air the game and in some cases collect money at the door to see the game on a giant screen television. Churches that might want to have the fellowship of their membership watch a sport without the caustic and over indulging advertisements however cannot.

Like I said, “Batter up". At least with baseball the sport is cheating to make themselves better. The NFL is only making themselves look worse by cheating all of us.