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Could we really lose the Super Bowl?

     

Garth McLennan

Editor in Chief

last NFL game we see for quite

some time. With the expiration
of the current collective bargaining
agreement between the owners and the
NFLPA, and very little, if any, progress
being made on the construction of a new
one, the short and long term future of the
biggest professional sports league on the
planet is very much in doubt.

Now, at this stage, with the Super
Bowl right around the corner, it’s fairly
comfortable to simply believe that the
chief operators of one the most financially
successful sporting juggernauts of all
time will come to their senses, realize
what they have (which is basically a
golden goose-like licence to print money)
in their hands, sit down with the players
and figure everything out. However, we
all (or most of us) said that about the
NHL in 2004, and that was a catastrophic
disaster the league almost didn’t come
back from.

Now to be fair, the NFL is leaps and
bounds ahead of hockey and has been for
quite some time, but that should serve
as even more incentive for the owners
to hammer out a deal in time to prevent
a lockout-shortened, or even cancelled,
season next year. At least with hockey,
basically a third of the league was in dire
financial peril before the lockout, so Gary
Bettman felt he had little choice but to
initiate a work stoppage. With the NFL
though, that isn’t the case.

While there have been a few empty
seats dotting stadiums throughout the
league this year, the NFL hardly has an
unsustainable business model. Quite the

S unday, February 6, could mark the

contrary in fact. The NFL has become an
American institution, and only an idiots,
or in this case a group of 32 idiots, would
risk throwing that all away by severely
alienating the fans.

But let’s say it happens. Let’s say that
the worst comes to worst, the owners and
the players march right up to the abyss
and tumble off the cliff together. What
then? For starters, the bookies would
have a collective heart attack. But what
about the impact of a prolonged and
drawn out work stoppage on the future of
the NFL? Could it come back? Probably,
but at the same level that it is right now,
even if the owners get everything they
desire in collective bargaining? That
question is a bit murkier.

One thing is for certain though;
with the NFL contained to the sporting
sidelines, and with the NBA also likely
due to experience a similar lockout, the
time has never been better for the NHL
and hockey as a whole to step up out of
the niche market and really establish a
foothold on the American sporting scene.
Now, Bettman and the NHL has a long
history of royally screwing up every
positive opportunity that comes their way,
but they’re really have to work to mess a
situation like this up.

So when the Green Bay Packers
and the Pittsburgh Steelers square off at
Cowboys Stadium in Arlington, Texas,
enjoy it. We'd all like to think that the
players and the owners will figure it out,
but then again, history has shown us
otherwise.