Pro football is king. I surrender.
As a longtime baseball junkie who memorized the infield-fly rule before the Lord’s Prayer, I never thought I’d concede. But it’s over. It has been over for a while.
Pro football is king, and even if it doesn’t seem that way in Chicago, you surely can feel it here. Super Bowl XXXII will be staged in something called Qualcomm Stadium next Sunday, and the only local argument is: How much? How much will the mega-event mean to San Diego?
One politician said $225 million. Another windbag begged to differ, pegging the likely profit at $240 million. The boss of the official host committee said they’re both crazy: When the Green Bay Packers and Denver Broncos leave town, San Diego will be worth $250 million more than it is now.
In Chicago, we don’t have to worry about debates like that, because we’ve got Soldier Field. It’s a fleabag and a dump, but hey, it’s got all that history. So let’s keep applying bandages until it finally collapses–hopefully not during a game, so all those people standing in line to use the washroom won’t be injured.
Then maybe the Bears and civic leaders and state bigwigs can at least do lunch. Everybody hates everybody now, a great way not to conduct business. But that’s Chicago, a world-class city with a pigpen for an outdoor facility.
It will cost a lot to replace Soldier Field, although destroying it might be easier than we think. There are times when you feel that if you lean hard on one of those Porta-Potties, the entire building will crumble. What a way to go.
Then again, this idea about spending money to make money has some merit. Unless, of course, Chicago can’t use $250 million from a Super Bowl, or maybe $150 million from a Final Four in a modern, downtown dome.
Thing is, by way of proving that pro football is king, the TV networks recently borrowed from the notion about spending money to make money. Only the TV networks took the practice to another level, by spending money to lose money. The sport is that important.
TV ratings were down this season about 6 percent, and the numbers for the conference championships were even worse. Since September, everybody had been anticipating that NFC showdown between Green Bay and San Francisco, but fewer people watched it than the less attractive Green Bay versus Carolina game last January.
No matter. The TV moguls went nuts anyway, doubling the rights fees. ABC then took a step toward progress by scheduling an earlier kickoff for its Monday Night Football package. Perhaps more fans on the East Coast will stay tuned. What a brainstorm. (Hello, baseball? Are you there?)
Anyway, even if the Bears go 0-16 next season and Soldier Field averages 50,000 no-shows, the franchise will collect $75 million from TV, a boost from $36.6 million. Consider that the next time you write an angry letter or dial up talk radio, imagining that Michael McCaskey will yield to public flogging and suggest the family heirloom be sold.
A goodly portion of that $75 million will go to the players, true, but more than ever, owning in the NFL means never having to say you’re sorry. If you lose money, you’re burning dollar bills instead of logs in the fireplace. At these prices, McCaskey can take a lot of heat.
Probably, he can even take a lot more of Soldier Field. San Diego, which is more a dock than a city, gets its second Super Bowl. And in Cincinnati, where the main industry is chili, the Bengals are headed to their second new stadium. Meanwhile, in Chicago, they lay more sod at the lakefront mausoleum. But who cares? CBS is back.
The NFL is so savvy, the quality of the product is secondary to the manner in which it is marketed. That’s not a knock. That’s a badge of honor. Baseball can’t get out of its own way; football goes to the bank.
It wasn’t always thus. Once upon a time, before the World Series ended at midnight, pro football merely filled the void until spring training. Now it fills pockets. You have to hand it to the NFL, and baseball did, without much of a fight. Long live the new king.
