insight on sports & everyday life

Jan 6, 2009

Don't bash the Fans...NFL!

It took some last-minute reprieves, but as expected, both the Vikings and the Cardinals sold out their NFL playoff games to avoid blackouts this weekend.

Rather than criticize these fans for their "tardiness" in purchasing expensive playoff tickets after Christmas during a severe recession, let's instead praise fans everywhere for their astounding support. After all, what is surprising is not that a couple teams needed extra time to sell out their games but that this happens seldom enough to be considered newsworthy.

Purchasing playoff tickets is not cheap. Not only are they expensive on an individual basis but many teams require fans to purchase tickets for every potential home game of the entire postseason -- up to 16 games in the NBA and NHL and 10 in baseball. Many game times are undecided at the time of purchase. Yet fans still buy them, not knowing whether they will need to take multiple days off work or arrange sitters for the kids or whether they can attend.

The NFL is worse during the regular season, requiring fans to purchase tickets to meaningless exhibition games at full price in order to buy season tickets.

Yet the league has the audacity to impose its insulting blackout policy? It's one thing to do so if it was playing in privately built stadiums -- but to threaten the very people who paid for the stadiums' construction that they won't be able to watch the game on TV is unconscionable.

Hey, we know your 401K lost half its value this year, you're worried about your job, your kids' tuition is due, the roof needs replacing, your spouse has been begging for a kitchen remodel since Kurt Warner was stocking grocery shelves, the banks that taxpayers bailed out are charging 18 percent interest for your credit card purchases, the public spent $400 million on our stadium and we still gouge you $8 for a cup of beer … but if you don't buy a pair of $150 seats, we're blacking out the game and you can just watch Rachel Ray on your 72-inch plasma screen that you still owe six payments on instead.

I don't want to hear any criticism of the fans in Minnesota or Arizona for not shelling out hundred-dollar bills fast enough to a league that reaps billions of dollars in revenue each year -- especially since those critics almost never are the ones who have to open their wallets.