McDonald: Why is NFL king while MLB struggles? Look no further than this week
If you want a stark example of how the NFL has lapped MLB when it comes to fan interest it would be hard to top the news this week.
While MLB owners and the players association engage in a public debate on how to divide millions of dollars, the NFL holds its annual scouting combine and keeps the hype machine churning.
The 49ers are deep into quarterback drama, while the Giants are on hold and the A’s may as well not exist with spring training and Opening Day delayed.
Each league’s network was at work Tuesday. MLB Network was breaking down who gets what in terms of the latest collective bargaining agreement negotiations, while NFL Network was going headlong into the offseason mode with live interviews and potential player movement as teams assemble their 2022 rosters.
At one point, Detroit Lions coach Dan Campbell was talking at the podium and actually uttered the words “They’re football players. That’s what they are.”
While Campbell may have a firm grasp of the obvious, it beat switching channels to get the latest mind-numbing set of arbitration proposals and luxury tax thresholds.
All the fans know is baseball’s player’s union rejected the latest offer after doing some actual negotiating with ownership Monday and that Opening Day has been delayed from March 31 with no plans to make up the missed games.
Back in the day when stories were scarce, some NFL media members talked about “feeding the goat,” a reference to how goats will pretty much consume whatever is put in front of them.
The NFL has created a nation of goats and in so doing enhanced its own bottom line. While baseball fans have been basically been bombarded with labor talk since the World Series ended Nov. 2, football fans become amateur talent evaluators. They break down three-cone drills, 40-yard dash times and the number of bench press reps at 225 pounds.
Mind you the yearly “Underwear Olympics” won’t have a heck of a lot to do with who is drafted and when — and anytime a player’s combine performance trumps actual game film is usually a mistake — but that won’t stop fans from determining how their respective teams will operate.
The real “Field of Dreams,” economically, is football. As actor James Earl Jones said when portraying fictional activist Terrance Mann in the 1989 baseball fantasy, “They’ll pass over the money without even thinking about it.”
The NFL can put a shine in a piece of tin and call it gold. There’s the combine and then the draft, something the league has built from a drab assemblage of talent into its own cottage industry with experts and analysts galore, followed by free agency. The NFL has actually managed to make something as perfunctory as its schedule release into big news.
From the Combine to Champs
: #NFLCombine starting Thursday at 4pm ET on @NFLNetwork pic.twitter.com/B5tpKBMSzm
— NFL (@NFL) March 1, 2022
It’s a league that almost never takes a hit on its bottom line. The Jon Gruden emails, the latest travails of Washington owner Daniel Snyder and legitimate criticism over minority hiring practices are helpless in its wake. Commissioner Roger Goodell fielded a pointed and legitimate question about minority hiring from Jim Trotter, an employee of its own network, and it barely created a ripple. Coach Brian Flores, fired by Miami, filed a class-action suit against the NFL alleging racial discrimination, Count on the NFL working this all out behind the scenes, and that includes allegations by Flores that owner Stephen Ross offered him more money to lose games and improve the Dolphins’ draft stock.
Concussions and health issues haven’t inhibited the NFL’s growth in the slightest.
Once upon a time gambling was considered a possible scourge upon the NFL. Now the Raiders are in Las Vegas and there are commercials featuring the Manning brothers and Steve Mariucci urging people to gamble responsibly. Sort of like how beer companies advocate for responsible drinking and designated drivers while selling as much of their product as they can.
The NFL keeps building on itself to the tune of 112 million viewers on Super Bowl Sunday to see the Rams beat the Cincinnati Bengals. The combine has turned into a yearly media event that outstrips its value. The entire coaching staffs of the Rams and 49ers aren’t even attending, leaving things to their general managers and personnel departments.
It’s good for teams to see top athletes on the field at the same time (when they choose to participate) and the medical evaluations are important.
Other than that, the combine is just another chance for the NFL to make some coaches, general managers and potential future players (who are yet to make a dime) available to the media to keep the public relations machine humming and the dollars flowing. Those interviews will be saved by the reporters who cover the event and be at the ready if and when those players are drafted.
MLB can’t get out of its own way, averaging 11.2 million fans on a per-game basis for its crown jewel event, the World Series. That buzz wore off quickly, with some minor interest in a flurry of free-agent deals before owners imposed the lockout everyone knew was coming. Now, courtesy of the lockout, any kind of buildup MLB could have had as remaining free agents find teams has been put on hold and will be replaced by a mad scramble of talent playing a game of musical chairs once they determine how to divvy up the money.
MLB.TV subscribers have been canceling their accounts, with some estimates being as high as a loss of $200 million.
The NFL, which hasn’t lost a game to a labor stoppage since 1987, has the goose that lays the golden eggs. MLB has a goose too, and fans are getting tired of looking skyward awaiting the next unappealing payload.