I’m Not Here To Talk About The Past

With all the attention the presidential candidates have been receiving, it’s only natural that their colleagues in Congress who actually have to do their normal jobs would get jealous. It is times like these that our esteemed elected representatives suddenly discover that they can subpoena prominent sports figures and question them about things that Congress really doesn’t care about. While taking a brisk afternoon walk the other day around Capitol Hill, I happened upon a large pile of discarded boxes, which contained transcripts of Roger Clemens’s and Roger Goodell’s recent meetings with Congress. I’ve excerpted the best parts for your amusement.

Congressman John Tierney (D-MA): Good afternoon, Roger. Thank you for coming to Washington. Do you know why you are here today before the Committee?

Roger Clemens: Yeah, I’m receiving a medal, right?

JT: No, we’re here to discuss your alleged illegal drug use.

RC: Oh, right. That whole thing.

JT: We had Brian McNamee in here earlier and he was quite adamant that he injected you dozens of times with HGH and steroids. He even brought in a bag of old syringes and bloody gauze pads from 2000.

RC: Umm, ok? Doesn’t that seem kind of gross?

JT: He also has photographs of old syringes in a beer can that was taken out of the trash in your New York City apartment. Also, he has skin samples and—

RC: Let me just stop you right there. Are you telling me you are going to believe the word of a man who not only kept a bunch of old syringes in his basement for eight years but also fished a discarded syringe-containing beer can out of the garbage can? Does that seem nuts to anyone in here besides me? You give me a day and I’ll get you a photograph of a bloody knife that I happen to have fished out of Brian McNamee’s garbage can 12 years ago. The very same knife that was used to kill Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman!

JT: Mr. Clemens, I don’t think you understand the severity of the situation here. These are some pretty serious allegations. Do you have anything to say in your defense?

RC: Look, I don’t know how busy you guys usually are, but doesn’t this all seem too much? What are you even going to do if I admit to any of this stuff? Put me in jail? I’m Roger Clemens! I won seven Cy Young awards! My kids’ names all start with K!

JT: Well, if you deny that you used these substances and we find out later that you did use them, then we will charge you with perjury.

RC: Oh wow. So basically you guys want me to lie to you now so you can later charge me with lying?

JT: Our constituents care about the integrity of the game. Your actions are—

RC: Your constituents are all vengeful Red Sox fans who mailed me chopped up Roger Clemens action figures when I signed with Toronto. You can tell them I’m sorry I had to leave Boston, but that was 12 years ago and they need to move on with their lives. They should be celebrating the wonderful season the Pats just had.

….

Arlen Specter (R-PA): Thank you Commissioner Goodell for agreeing to meet with me. As you know, my beloved Eagles lost to the Patriots in Super Bowl 39 and with the recent Spygate accusations, we think that you should further investigate whether the Pats illegally videotaped the Eagles.

Roger Goodell: No, I’m not going to do that.

AS: Why not?

RG: Because there is no evidence of illegal taping, not from three years ago or from this year.

AS: Then what did the Pats actually give you when you requested they turn over all of their alleged cheating materials?

RG: Oh that. No, they didn’t give me anything.

AS: Need I remind you that you are under oath?

RG: No, I’m not. We’re sitting at a table in the International Square food court eating Five Guys. You’re wearing a track suit and you’ve got ketchup all over your fingers.

AS: Look, I’m putting you under oath now, so tell me what happened with those tapes.

RG: Those tapes did not contain any footage relating to football. They were rehearsal recordings of Bill Belichick’s new musical.

AS: Bill Belichick wrote a musical?

RG: I’m afraid so. It is the single worst piece of theater I have ever seen. I vomited three times when he invited me to watch the rehearsals in person.

AS: So this whole Spygate thing was a just a cover so you could destroy Belichick’s Broadway aspirations? No wonder he was pissed off this whole season.

RG: That’s right. I had Eric Mangini catch a fake Patriots cameraman so I could seize everything in Belichick’s office – the scripts, the score - everything. Then I burned it all in a garbage can in an alley in Hell’s Kitchen and dumped the ashes in the East River.

AS: So what was the musical actually about?

RG: It was two hours of Belichick alone on stage, singing songs about Tom Brady and Wes Welker while playing the keytar. Then at the end, he dances with a marionette wearing a Charlie Weis mask. It’s really creepy. Unfortunately, this Matt Walsh character in Hawaii might still have a copy of it, so I’m flying out this afternoon so I can break into his house and destroy this thing, once and for all.

AS: On behalf of the citizens of the United States of America, I would like to thank you for ridding the world of this cultural abomination before anyone else had to suffer through it. You are a true patriot.

Scalping Sunday Ticket

Football season can be a confusing time for those fans away from their home market. The lazy Sunday you used to enjoy is now gone. Instead of being greeted by your team when you roll out of bed at noon and turn on the TV, you are greeted with the horror that is Baltimore v. Tennessee (no offense, Ravens or Titans fans). Of course, the NFL has provided a solution for its displaced fans for many years in the form of the Sunday Ticket package. For $280, DirecTV subscribers get (almost) every game live every week.

But there’s a catch. Unlike the other full season sports packages, NFL Sunday Ticket is only available on DirecTV. With a customer base of 13.5 million subscribers, DirecTV pal es in comparison to the approximately 90 million cable subscribers in the country. This means that a large portion of the television-viewing population cannot get the Sunday Ticket package. Even worse news, don’t expect Sunday Ticket to be available on cable anytime soon. Last year, DirecTV renewed its exclusive Sunday Ticket agreement with the NFL through 2010. The Rupert Murdoch- controlled company will now pay $700 million annually for the rights, while in contrast, CBS and Fox pay $622 and $715 million, respectively, for their games. While cable would have loved to get in on the action, DirecTV’s bid went above and beyond what any of the cable companies were willing to pay.

If this exclusivity deal seems a little monopolistic to you, you’d be right. In fact, one particularly litigious DirecTV customer brought a lawsuit against the NFL in 1998. In Shaw v. Dallas Cowboys, the plaintiff argued that the NFL’s joint agreement with DirecTV was a violation of Section 1 of the Sherman Act. The NFL countered with the argument that the selling of the rights was exempt from antitrust law under the Sports Broadcasting Act, which grants an antitrust exemption to “sponsored telecasts.” Sponsored telecasts refer to broadcasts financed by advertising, which is the category the regular broadcast games fall under. The NFL argued that the games available through DirecTV also fell under the exemption; however, the district court ruled that to apply the exemption to the Sunday Ticket games would effectively make the exception into the rule (this was later affirmed by the Third Circuit).

The suit evolved into a class action encompassing all Sunday Ticket subscribers. The parties eventually settled, with the plaintiffs getting a share of $7.3 million, discounts on NFL merchandise, and the opportunity to buy access to Sunday Ticket on a weekly basis. This initial agreement, however, was rejected by the district court because it was too favorable to the league (the NFL could rescind the weekly Sunday Ticket option after one season), and the attorneys’ fees were too high for the amount the plaintiffs actually received in the settlement (the attorneys got $3.7 million in fees while the 1.8 million members of the class had to split the settlement). The agreement was revised to increase the settlement pool by $1 million and also forced the NFL to offer the weekly Sunday Ticket package up until 2004.

So where does that leave you, the diehard football fan? Pretty much back where you started. For the immediate future, Sunday Ticket will still be in the firm grasp of DirecTV, but there are several possibilities for opening up Sunday Ticket access to the masses. While the simplest solution would be for the NFL to let cable companies offer Sunday Ticket, this could end up hurting cable customers in the long run. With Sunday Ticket available on cable, there would be a mass exodus from DirecTV, which could severely affect the ability of DirecTV to compete with cable. With less competition, cable companies would resort to their old monopolistic ways. This scenario is unlikely, as the NFL would not want to give up a single huge payment for several smaller payments. The NFL is also against the widespread offering of the Sunday Ticket package because it feels it would hurt ratings for the local broadcast games. So, any possible solution would have to balance the concerns of the NFL over local ratings, the necessity of maintaining a legitimate cable competitor, and the needs of the consumer.

Fortunately, a solution that satisfies all three of these concerns is already being utilized by another sport—baseball, with its MLB.TV service. MLB.TV, which, as of last year, already has a subscriber base of 850,000, provides streaming video of live baseball games to out-of-market fans, and this model easily could be adapted for the NFL. Instead of offering access to every game for every team, pricing instead could be on a per-team basis. This would prevent a decrease in local ratings and also insure that DirecTV’s subscriber base remains stable. Watching football is more of a social event than watching baseball, so many fans would prefer to watch the game on a regular television than on a computer. Still, by allowing broadcasting games online, the NFL would be able to give fans who don’t or can’t get DirecTV another viable viewing option.

For now, though, you’ll have to be content with heading out to your local sports bar to get your football fix. And maybe that’s not such a bad thing. Despite the overpriced food and drink, there’s nothing quite like taking in a game surrounded by tons of rabid football fans. Just try not to get into an argument with the guy wearing the Joey Harrington jersey sitting at the table next to you; he’s suffered enough.

Never-before Published Column

Note: I wrote this column about the NFL Draft and then scrapped it in favor of an article I had written in my Writing for Magazines class about Cornell intramurals.

With the NFL Draft this weekend, we’ll be finally rid of those annoying Tom Brady commercials on ESPN. You know the one, “Tom Brady—didn’t even make the All Big 10 First Team, picked 199^th in the 2000 draft, made the team in camp, won three Super Bowls in four years, hosted an awful episode of SNL last weekend, despised by everyone outside of New England. The draft matters! You’d better watch all 2258 hours of coverage on ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNEWS, ESPNU, and check out past year’s drafts on ESPN Classic!”

Thanks for pointing out the obvious, ESPN; that commercial definitely persuaded me to watch all seven rounds of the draft. That way, when the Jets’ sixth-round pick develops into an amazing player in four years, I’ll be able to say, “Hey, I knew taking C.J. Leak was a great move.” I’m surprised that ESPN hasn’t hired a psychic as one of their draft day commentators, so we would immediately be able to find out if Maurice Clarett will be the second coming of Ricky Williams.

The NFL Draft has the distinction of being the second-best draft to watch on television, but this is not that high an honor. First, you’ve got the NBA Draft, which generates so much buzz that we all tune in to watch the draft order a month ahead of time. Plus, it’s much, much shorter. With only two rounds and five minutes to make a pick, the NBA Draft is a sprint compared to the NFL marathon.

The NHL Draft is third on the list. This one is really exciting. Combine foreign players that you’ve never heard of and never seen play with Canadian junior hockey players that you’ve also never heard of and never seen play, and you’ve got all the makings of a ratings hit. (Oh wait, this year’s draft was cancelled a few weeks ago. Never mind). Finally, you’ve got baseball’s draft, which is conducted by general managers over a speakerphone. Plus, it’s a whopping 50 rounds. Yikes.

That brings us back to the NFL. Seven rounds, 15 minutes for each pick, 12 different teams of analysts, and … Mel Kiper, Jr. Yes, it’s going to be an exciting weekend. In the past two years, viewers have been treated to several interesting storylines. Two years ago, the Minnesota Vikings forever cemented themselves in draft day lore when they failed to make their selection in the allotted time. This led to a mad scramble as Carolina and Jacksonville submitted their draft selections in mere seconds, kicking Minnesota down to the ninth pick. Thankfully, this also gave everyone 30 minutes of their life back.

Last year’s draft featured Clarett’s failed legal battle and Eli Manning complaining about going to San Diego. However, with the dust settling on the 2004 NFL season, we can all see that the Chargers’ pick of kicker Nate Kaeding in the third round had much more of an impact on their season than Philip Rivers. What do we have to look forward to this weekend? Umm … the draft’s new location at the Javits Center? When Clarett will be taken? My mouth is watering.

I’m not too concerned what team ends up taking Alex Smith or Aaron Rodgers. In fact, I don’t think I’ll make it to the end of the first round, when the Jets finally get to their first pick. Besides, according to Mel Kiper’s bio, his first-round predictions are sometimes 80 percent accurate. You don’t even need to watch the draft at all with that kind of accuracy. Too bad you’ll have to pay for ESPN Insider to read anything Mel Kiper has written. While we’re on the subject of Mr. Kiper, is there anyone else in the sports world who spends so much time analyzing something that when you think about it is pretty meaningless? I mean, tracking the draft stock of college players is kind of pointless when he could be doing actual analysis during the season. Or, maybe he could be working as an actual scout for an actual NFL team. We don’t have an NBA equivalent of Kiper; maybe because it’s Jay Bilas would rather be doing analysis and color commentary during the college basketball season. Even though he’s not holed up in an office watching games via satellite all season, Bilas still does a great job during the NBA Draft coverage.

So there you have it—the NFL Draft is overrated. There’s no allure to who gets picked first (only two players picked first overall since 1998 are actually bona fide superstars right now) and it’s way too long. Instead of spending four hours inside this Saturday afternoon, I’m going to be at the Cornell-Princeton lacrosse game at Schoellkopf. Maybe you should be too. [I ended sleeping in and not going to the game]