VITO'S VIEWS

When a business is hit with a $14.1 billion antitrust verdict, it is usually big news.

But it got little notice when a lawsuit filed on behalf of subscribers to the NFL’s Sunday Ticket were awarded $4.7 billion in damages that are trebled to $14.1 billion because of the antitrust violation. Commercial subscribers were awarded $96 million.

The crux of the case was that the NFL was overcharging for the service to protect the Fox and CBS Sunday packages. In effect, the NFL was selling the rights to the games twice and kept the price high so Fox and CBS didn’t lose too many viewers.

The NFL made a deal last year with YouTube to sell the package of all the games for $349 million. ESPN offered to sell customers one team a year for $70, but the NFL rejected that idea. They also did not want to sell single-game packages.

The NFL still has three shots at an appeal to the presiding judge, the circuit court and eventually the Supreme Court.

If it could lose all the appeals, the NFL teams could have to pay $440 million each, which is a big number even for the NFL.

If they lose the appeals on the first two levels, they still may have a good chance to get it overturned by the conservative Supreme Court.

The NFL already has an antitrust exemption to sell league-wide packages and when the Supreme Court declined to hear the case the first time, Justice Brett Kavanaugh said that if each team had to negotiate individual contracts it could mean “substantial tension” with antitrust principles.

On the other hand, if the NFL loses the appeals, the owners will be unhappy. Whether commissioner Roger Goodell would get some flak if they have to pay $440 million remains to be seen.

Although it may have gone back to Mark Twain, Harry Truman popularized the phrase that there are three kinds of lies – lies, damn lies and statistics.

A fourth category could be NFL quarterback contracts.

Quarterbacks are getting big contracts these days, but they always aren’t what they seem.

The five-year contract extension that Trevor Lawrence signed for $275 million raised a few eyebrows because he suffered four injuries last year and lost his last five starts after an 8-3 beginning. The Jaguars’ only victory the last six weeks came when they beat Carolina with C.J. Beathard at quarterback. It showed the Jaguars still have confidence in him that he will become an elite quarterback.

At first glance, it tied the $275 million deal that Joe Burrow got for a five-year extension for the best deal.

But at a closer look the deal wasn’t as good as the one Burrow signed. Burrow got $219 million in guaranteed money while Lawrence got $142 million in guaranteed money, although injury guarantees bring it up to $200 million.

On top of that, former Green Bay executive Andrew Brandt did a breakdown on the cash Lawrence is getting and it is generally at the bottom of the recent quarterback contracts.

First year: Lawrence gets $39 million while Jared Goff got $80.6 million, Lamar Jackson $50 million, Kirk Cousins $62 million, Daniel Jones $46 million and Burrow $45 million.

Second year: Lawrence gets $76 million the first two years. Jackson and Burrow get $111 million, Goff $98 million, Deshaun Watson $92 million and Cousins $90 million.

Third year: Lawrence gets $114 over first three years. Jackson gets $115 million, Goff $153, Burrow $146 million, Jones $160 million and Herbert $157 million.

Fourth year: Lawrence gets $155 million over the first four years. Jackson $207 million, Golf $193 million, Burrow $181 million Jones $160 million, and Herbert $157 million.

Lawrence still got a good deal  considered considering he was coming off a disappointing third season, but both sides decided to make it look better than it really is by adding two non-guaranteed years at the end worth almost $104 million. There is no guarantee Lawrence will ever see that money.

Now it will be interesting to see what kind of contracts quarterbacks like Tua Tagovailoa, Jordan Love and Dak Prescott get going forward.

Whatever they get, ignore the overall figure. Check the guarantees and the year-by-year cash figure to determine how good their deals are.

There were rumors during the draft that the Minnesota Vikings might take a receiver on the first round and trade John Jefferson.

The Vikings denied that and it never made any sense to let a player of his talent get away.

And they proved they were going to keep him by giving him the best non-quarterback contract ever – a four-year, $140 million deal at $35 million a year.

That will not only reset the wide receiver market but the market for all non-quarterback players. Tyreek Hill is now the fourth-highest paid receiver at $30 million and his agent, Drew Rosenhaus, was quick to notice it is a new market now.

It also changes the narrative that in this passing era teams don’t need high-paid wide receivers. The Chiefs traded Hill and won two Super Bowls without him. Now more receivers are likely to aim for more than $30 million.

It will also make it easier for the players to accept an 18-game schedule. Even though it will not be good for them physically, it will mean more money in their pockets.

There are likely to be a lot of ramifications caused by the Jefferson contract. We can only wait to see how it plays out. 

The siren call of getting a head coaching often lures assistant coaches into taking bad jobs and getting fired a few years later.

Ben Johnson isn’t one of those coaches.

Johnson has been a hot commodity on the coaching market after his success as the Lions’ offensive coordinator. He was courted by the Panthers a year ago and was a candidate for both the Washington and Seattle jobs at the end of the last season.

He decided to remain to remain in Detroit to see, in his words, if he can “reap the rewards a little bit longer” in Detroit.

 “I like the sunshine,” he said at a recent press conference according to NFL.com. “I like what we’ve built here, starting with ownership. the head coach, the GM on down.” 

“Something that really resonates with me is, OK, eight openings this past year. What would you set the over-under (at) in three years?  I’d put the over under at. 4.5 I would say. I would say there is a good chance that five of them will be out of jobs three years from now.”

Now we will see how this plays out. Will he go on to win a Super Bowl ring in Detroit and get to pick his job? Or will the Lions falter and he will no longer be a hot candidate?

Will he have any regrets or will it turn out he made the right decision? He will find out in the next couple of years. 

Meanwhile, you have to admire him for making a mature decision.

When Billie Jean King played Bobby Riggs in the Battle of the Sexes tennis match, Gloria Steinem was watching probably the only sports event she had ever seen in a Manhattan apartment on West 57^th Street shared by writer Jimmy Breslin and his wife, city councilwoman Ronnie Eldridge. That is the kind of detail reported in the new book, “The Big Time: How the 1970s Transformed Sports in America” by Michael McCambridge.

The cover shows six of the figures who played big roles in making the 1970s such an important decade in sports – King, Hank Aaron, Jack Nicklaus, Joe Greene, Julius Erving, and Ali-Frazier. But as the anecdote about Steinem watching the match shows, it is not simply explaining what happened in that decade, but includes a lot of original reporting.

It is a decade I am very familiar with because I started my sports writing career in the 1960s and covered many of the events chronicled in the book including the first Ali-Frazier fight and Greene and the Steelers of the 1970s. Also covered tennis at Forest Hills before the current stadium was built and covered Bill Bradley’s first game at Madison Square Garden and later interviewed him when he wrote his first book. And covered Immaculata College playing at Madison Square Garden at the dawning of the age of women’s basketball.

For anyone over 55, this book will bring back a lot of great memories of the decade when everything changed. For the younger fans, it is a good history of how sports changed.

You have to remember how different sports were before the 1970s. Baseball, college football, boxing and horse racing were in the dominant sports. The NHL had only six teams, now called the Original Six, until the 1967-68 season when it doubled to 12 teams and wasn’t really a national sport in the U.S. The NBA only had nine teams in the mid 1960s. Both sports weren’t money makers for the arenas like the circus and the Ice Capades and teams had to go on the road when the circus came to town.

The NFL had a team actually fold in Dallas in 1952 and finish the season in Hershey as a road team before becoming the Baltimore Colts. In 1958, the NFL took its first big step forward when the Colts beat the Giants in the first overtime title game as Johnny Unitas became a household name when he led a game tying drive in regulation and the game winning drive in overtime.

But the NFL founding fathers who barely survived the depression and World War II and saw the collapse of the team in Dallas in 1952 were cautious. As Art Rooney, the Steeler founder, once said, “The biggest thrill wasn’t winning on Sunday, but meeting the payroll on Monday.” So when Lamar Hunt applied for an expansion franchise, he was turned down so he started the AFL, which led to the merger in 1970 that played a major role as the NFL becoming the dominant sport.

And television had yet to become a big factor in sports. Although the number of households with TV sets had grown from 8000 in 1946 to 45.7 million in 1960 to 60.6 million in 1970 when virtually every household had one, the idea of sports in prime time did not interest the networks. After Pete Rozelle was elected as a compromise candidate to become commissioner in 1963, he tried to dip the league’s toe into prime time in  1966 by pitting the Baltimore Colts vs. the Green Bay Packers on a Saturday night season opener. The game had plenty of star power with Lombardi and Shula as the coaches and Unitas and Starr as the quarterbacks, but the game lost in the ratings to the Miss America Pageant.

Nobody could imagine that happening today.

So when Rozelle decided to try a Monday Night package, CBS and NBC said no. ABC was a struggling network and agreed to do it when Rozelle threatened to put together an independent group of stations and the network feared some of their affiliates would dump their viewing. And Roone Arledge, the head of ABC Sports, made the master stroke of pairing Howard Cosell and Don Meredith together in the booth with Frank Gifford joining the second year and it became a must view TV. And most households only had the three networks because cable TV was in its infancy and ESPN didn’t start until 1979.

Of course so much has changed since the decade of the 1970s that set the table for what today’s sports world is and the book is a sweeping panorama how everything changed from free agency to the rise of women’s sports fueled by the passage of Title 9.

The only time I think the author missed the mark was his description of how Joe Gilliam became the starting quarterback for the Steelers in 1974. In a discussion of how black quarterbacks struggled to get their due, the author said “it was clear” that Gilliam outplayed Terry Bradshaw in camp, it was a bit more complicated than that. As a young player, Gilliam crossed the picket line when the veterans struck and played in rookie games throwing to rookies named Lynn Swann and John Stallworth against rookie corners. And they lit up the scoreboard in those wins.

The author is right that coach Chuck Noll was colorblind and gave Gilliam a chance to start the season, but he was benched after six games despite going 4-1-1 although he was blanked in a 17-0 ;loss to the Raiders . Gilliam never started another game for the Steelers after being benced and his career didn’t survive a drug problem. Bradshaw took over, won two games, and was benched for a game after a loss to Cincinnati for Terry Hanratty, who played poorly in a loss in Cleveland. Bradshaw took over again and the Steelers went on to win four Super Bowls in a six year span to become the team of the decade. They became a big part of the sports scene of the 1970s and built a national following that they still have today even though they have won only two Super Bowls since 1979. The Steelers front four made the cover of Time, Bradshaw shared Sportsmen of the Year honors with Willie Stargell in 1979 and Joe Greene made an iconic Coke commercial that is still remembered today.

We take for granted what sprts is like today but to understand how it happened, it helps to understand the decade of the 1970s. This book captures what was the beginning of the modern era in sports.

The NFL often give lip service to the issue of player safety.

The ignore player safety when they play a full slate of Thursday night games and increase the schedule from 16 to 17 games.

But the NFL did pass two new rules to help make the game safer at the recent league meetings but they probably batted .500 on the issue.

The new kickoff rule inspired by the XFL kickoff rule is a good idea but the banning of the hip drop tackle probably will just create more controversy. It adds another layer of subjective calls by the officials for a play that doesn’t happen that often and caused only 15 players to be injured last year. There will be more controversies about when it is called and when it isn’t.

The new kickoff rule, though, looks like a plus. It will likely cause more returns but without an increase in injuries. It’s also a plus that the NFL is adopting an idea from another league. It is designed to have more returns and turn them kind of into a running play with the violent collisions.

For a standard kickoff, the ball will be placed on the 35 with 10 kickoff coverage players lined up on the opposing 40, five one each side.

The return team would have at least nine blockers lined up in the so called setup zone between the 30 and 35 yard line. Seven of those players have to be touching the 35. Two returners would be allowed inside the 20.

Any kick that reaches the end zone in the air can be returned or the receiving team could take a touchback and get the ball on the 35. A kick that went out of bounds in the end zone or out of the end zone would result in a touchback and possession at the 35.

Any kick received in the field of play would have to be returned. A kick that hits a receiver or the ground before the end zone and goes into the end zone would return in a touchback with possession at the 20.

The players can’t move until the ball hits the ground or is touched by the receiving team.

For free kicks following a safety, the ball will be kicked from the 20 and the kicker can use a tee.

In the fourth quarter the trailing team could declare an onside kick under last year’s rules.  There will no longer be surprise onside kicks in the first three quarters.

 The rule was passed on a trial basis which means it would have to get 24 votes to return in 2025. But the success of the play in the XFL is a sign it may work in the NFL. If nothing else, it’s worth a try by the league.

When Lamar Hunt founded founded the Amercan Football League in 1960, the story goes he lost a million dollars his first year as the owner of the Dallas team that moved to Kansas City in 1963.

His father, H.L. Hunt, one of the richest men in the country at the time, supposedly said that if he kept losing a million a year, he would go broke in 150 years.

Of course, it turned out to be a great investment. The Chiefs are still owned by the Hunt family and are worth an estimated $4.3 billion. Not that the Hunts plan to sell.

But the Chiefs are threatening to move if voters on April 2 don’t approve an extension of a 3/8 cent sales tax that is set to expire in 2031. A yes vote would extend the tax for 40 years and it would give the Chiefs $500 million to help renovate Arrowhead Stadium. The Hunts would chip in $300 million. The Royals would get $700 million towards the building of a new stadium.

Since voters are often reluctant to approve money for stadiums for billionaire owners, the Chiefs decided to play the moving card.

When Chiefs president Mark Donovan was asked what the options would include, he said, “I think they would have to include leaving Kansas City, but our goal here is that we want to stay here.”

Are the Chiefs bluffing? Would they really consider moving and if so, where would they move to?

Now it is up to the voters to decide if they want to find out if the Chiefs are bluffing.

When the Chiefs traded up with the Bills from the 27^th spot on the first round to the 10^th spot in the 2017 draft, it turned out to be one of the best trades in NFL history. 

Kansas City used the pick to take Patrick Mahomes, who has already  has already won three Super Bowls for the Chiefs, so giving up two firsts and a third round pick was an incredible deal.

For the Bills, though, the trade was a disaster.

 When they recently made cornerback Tre’Davious White a designated a June 1 cut, the Bills were left virtually emptyhanded in the deal. The used the 27^th pick in 2017 they got in the deal to take White.

With the 2018 first-round pick, they drafted Tremaine Edwards,who left as a free agent a year ago. And they packaged the 2017 third-round pick to get Zay Jones, who was later traded.  They only player they have left is Tommy Doyle, who was obtained in the Jones trade but he has played in only 12 games.

 Fortunately for the Bills, they got quarterback Josh Allen in 2018.

But they learned that trading down isn’t always a good idea. Even if they didn’t have Mahome rated that highly, they could have taken cornerback Marshon Lattimore, who went to the Saints with the next pick and has gone to four Pro Bowls.

Meanwhile, the Bills have been a contender with Allen at quarterback but have yet to make a Super Bowl with him. And they have twice lost to Mahomes and the Chiefs in the playoffs, including last January.

For the Chiefs, it is the trade that keeps on giving. For the Bills, they are left thinking of what might have been.

The New England Patriots two decades run was certainly good fodder for a TV documentary, which is why Apple TV is running a 10-part documentary on the Patriot dynasty.

What makes it different than most sports documentary is the chronicle of all the off the field stuff. Like Spygate, Deflategate, Bill Belichick’s gruff personality and his decision to bench Malcolm Butler in the Super Bowl loss to the Eagles and Tom Brady’s departure.

But the drama started even before the Belichick was hired in 2000. It started during Bill Parcells’ four year tenure as head coach of the Patriots when Parcells left after a rift developed between the coach and owner Bob Kraft. 

Parcells is still unhappy that Kraft wouldn’t let him run the draft although the series leaves out some of the details.

“Kraft had no real background in football and in his inexperience took the draft away from me,” Parcells said. “I felt some people in the organization that were incompetent were making decisions for the organization.”

Kraft’s take was, “With coach Parcells I didn’t feel he always put the team first.”

Not surprising they were heading for a divorce. “I knew I wasn’t going back to the Patriots,” Parcells said.

Parcells then repeated a line he used at the time, “If they want you to cook the dinner, at least they ought to let you shop for some of the groceries.”

Parcells left after taking the team to the Super Bowl following the 1996 season and losing to the Patriots. It was no secret he was leaving and it almost overshadowed the game. Parcells didn’t even fly back on the team plane. 

As Drew Bledsoe said, “That was a frustrating thing for us to go to the Super Bowl after being the worst team in the league. It was a pretty big accomplishment and that was not the story during the week of the Super Bowl. The story was whether or not Parcells was going to go to the Jets.”

And there was more drama. 

Parcells signed a five year deal when he hired but after the third year, he asked Kraft to chop the final year off the deal because he wanted to leave after his fifth season. Kraft agreed but added a provision that Parcells couldn’t coach anywhere else that fifth year.

Parcells then tried to claim he was free because his contract expired after four years, ignoring the fact that Kraft had added that provision barring him from coaching elsewhere for a year. There was a lot of back and forth in the news media as Parcells insisted he was free to leave to coach somewhere else but Kraft was going to hold him to the contract.

When the Jets tried to hire him, the league back Kraft and the Jets had to give draft picks in compensation. Belichick left the Patriots to be the defensive coordinator for Parcells, who coached the Jets for three years and went 30-20 and kicked himself upstairs and named Belichick the coach. Belichick was supposedly the coach in waiting. But he immediately resigned, citing the fact the Jets ownership was in flux although maybe he wanted to get away from being under Parcells shadow.

Kraft decided to hire Belichick back although this time he had to give the Jets picks. Belichick started out 5-13, but then Bledsoe was hurt and Brady took over and the dynasty began. But the drama never seemed to end despite all the Super Bowl wins. Another team may win six – the Chiefs are halfway there—but no team is likely to duplicate all the Patriots drama.

With all the nonsense talk about the NFL having a script for the Super Bowl, it is ironic that the game did follow the convention wisdom.

Even though they were two-point underdogs and scored only three points in the first half, a good defense and late rally by Patrick Mahomes gave the Chiefs their third Super Bowl win in the last five.

Meanwhile, San Francisco coach Kyle Shanahan lost his third Super Bowl, one as offensive coordinator of the Falcons in the 28-3 game against the Patriots and twice as a head coach. In all three games he had double digit leads and lost.

One of the reasons Shanahan has problems holding the leads is that he is quick to pass instead of emphasizing controlling the clock. In his two Super Bowl losses he ran only 53 times. When his father won two Super Bowls, he ran 75 times. And with a 10-3 lead at halftime, he threw eight of nine plays while going three and out on their first three possessions.

It didn’t help that the Niners had an extra point blocked and had a punt hit the foot of a Niner to set up an easy Chiefs’ touchdown on the next play.

The Chiefs defense also played a key role until Mahomes led a game tying drive with a field goal at the end of end of regulation and won it with a touchdown drive in overtime after the Nines won the toss and took the ball and got a field goal on their first possession.

There was some second guessing that the Niners didn’t kickoff but it was the first time the new playoff rules were used for overtime. The Chiefs said they would have kicked off if they won the toss.

Then all that was left was the Taylor Swift-Travis Kelce kiss on field after the game. She was onscreen for less than a minute total but while her attending Chiefs games may bring in more women viewers, some fans complain about her being shown. Sign of the times.

Meanwhile both teams face challenges next year. The Chiefs are attempting to become the first team to win three Super Bowls in a row. The Packers did it from 1965-67 but the Super Bowl wasn’t created until 1966.

And the Niners are attempting to become the second team since the 1972 perfect Dolphins to win the title after losing the Super Bowl the previous year.

Those are just the beginning for the storylines for next year.