Decade in Review: 5 biggest NFL stories

Sports Media Watch presents the 5 biggest NFL stories of the past 10 years.

#5: Dominance in the ratings
Ratings dropped for just about every sport during the 2000s. There were record low ratings for the World Series, NBA Finals and Stanley Cup Finals. Even NASCAR, whose ratings rose significantly during the 2000s, suffered steady declines by the end of the decade.

Only one sport was immune to the trend of declining ratings – the 500 pound gorilla of sports, the National Football League.

There were no sharp declines or record lows for the Super Bowl. In fact, three of the five most-viewed Super Bowls ever took place during the decade, including the two most-viewed games in the history of the event.

The Conference Championship games, depending on the matchups, ranged from extremely big draws to astronomically big draws – with the 2007-08 NFC title game between the Giants and Packers drawing the largest non-Super Bowl television audience since the series finale of Seinfeld.

Regular season games dominated the ratings, especially on cable – where ESPN’s Monday Night Football drew 9 of the 10 largest cable audiences of the decade, and 8 of the 10 largest cable audiences of all time.

Overall, the 2000s saw the NFL widen the gap between itself and the other major sports leagues. On a given week, NFL telecasts draw ratings on par with or better than championship events such as the aforementioned World Series and NBA Finals. In 2009, regular season games on NFL Network — which has limited distribution and is by far the least-viewed of the NFL’s television partners — averaged more viewers than the NBA Playoffs on ESPN/TNT and the Major League Baseball postseason on TBS.

#4: Monday Night Football moves to ESPN
After 35 years on ABC, Monday Night Football moved to ESPN in ’06. Relegating arguably the crown jewel of the NFL’s regular season to cable television could have been viewed as a sign of weakness. But the move of Monday Night Football to ESPN (and the corresponding move of Sunday Night Football to NBC) only served to bolster the NFL in primetime.

While the four seasons of MNF on ESPN have been the lowest rated, least-viewed in the history of the franchise, the games have drawn some of the largest audiences in cable television history. MNF currently accounts for the four most-viewed cable television programs of all time, with the top two audiences coming in 2009. Additionally, the games have drawn substantially higher ratings than Sunday night games had previously drawn on ESPN.

Meanwhile, NBC’s Sunday Night Football ratings remained generally on par with what ABC drew for Monday night games – meaning that the NFL’s swap essentially gave the league two marquee, primetime showcases per week.

MNF going to ESPN also legitimized the move of other big-time sporting events to cable – a trend the NBA had already begun in ’02. Following Monday Night Football’s move, baseball moved its Division Series and one League Championship Series to TBS, and the entire Bowl Championship Series is set to move to ESPN in 2011.

#3: Roger Goodell
When NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue announced plans to retire in 2006, then-NFL Executive VP and COO Roger Goodell was at the top of many lists to replace him.

“He’s got something for everybody,” one owner said of Goodell, “He’s got business savvy, he’s a diplomat, and he’ll look out for the low-revenue teams” (SBD, 3/28/06). “He has NFL DNA running through his bloodstream,” added former 49ers President Carmen Policy (SBD, 7/31/06).

The decided front-runner, Goodell was voted NFL Commissioner in August ’06. He quickly began making his mark as the leader of the most powerful league in pro sports.

Barely months into his tenure, Goodell began looking at the NFL’s personal conduct policy, and doled out hefty fines to owners and players for a variety of misdeeds, from criticizing officiating to scuffling during a game. A Sports Business Daily caption said it all: “Goodell Quickly Asserts Authority As NFL Commissioner” (SBD, 11/10/06).

The next year saw the introduction of the aforementioned tougher personal conduct policy, amidst high profile legal issues involving Adam Jones and Michael Vick. Those legal transgressions, as well as allegations that the New England Patriots spied on opposing teams, gave Goodell a platform on which to further assert said authority. Indefinite suspensions and massive fines helped Goodell cement a reputation as a “law-and-order commissioner” (SBD, 11/28/07).

That reputation, combined with the continued success of the NFL and the fact that he has not yet had to deal with many of the trials and tribulations that other commissioners have experienced, is part of the reason why readers of industry publication Sports Business Journal have voted Goodell sports’ most effective commissioner each of the past three years.

#2: Player legal issues
The 2000s began with Ray Lewis being accused of murder and Rae Carruth going to prison for his role in a murder. The decade ended with Michael Vick returning to the league from prison and Super Bowl hero Plaxico Burress beginning a two-year sentence.

Leading up to the institution of the NFL’s ‘07 personal conduct policy, the league had been dealing with multiple arrests by players. “At least 35 NFL players have been arrested this year on charges ranging from disorderly conduct to felony burglary,” the Washington Post noted in ’06 – and while that number was a tiny minority, considering that the NFL has over 1,000 players, it was still a cause of concern.

“I do not want the fans to turn us off because of off-field behavior,” the late NFLPA Exec. Director Gene Upshaw said in ’06, “It has happened in other sports, and I would not want that to happen to the NFL” (Wash. Post, 12/16/06).

Those comments by Upshaw preceded a particularly difficult year. 2007 brought Adam Jones’ incident in Las Vegas, Tank Johnson’s stint in jail, and – most prominent of all – Michael Vick’s dogfighting case.

While those were all highly publicized black eyes, the NFL’s image woes were often overstated. Even before incidents involving Vick and Jones, former ESPN NFL analyst Rush Limbaugh said the league “all too often looks like a game between the Bloods and the Crips without any weapons” (mediamatters.org, 10/12/09). One writer said in late ’07 that “[i]t will take a few more Vicks to turn the [NFL] into the Titanic. But the iceberg is straight ahead as Goodell desperately tries to avoid it” (N.Y. Daily News, 9/6/07).

Of course, the NFL hardly resembled a gang, and the league was not (and is not) in any danger at all of sinking. That being said, perception is often reality – as David Stern can attest to – and Roger Goodell’s personal conduct policy, whether one agrees with it or not, served as a perfect tonic for those who believed the NFL was out of control.

Thanks to that personal conduct policy, which gave the illusion that the league was doing something about a fairly nonexistent epidemic of thuggery (and also because the NFL is Teflon when it comes to virtually every issue), the league was able to avoid having its image permanently stained.

#1: NFL Network vs. cable
NFL Network launched in 2003, but became relevant in 2006 – when the net gained the rights to an 8-game package of primetime NFL telecasts.

NFL Network beat Comcast, which had “bid $400-500 [million] for the package” (SBD, 1/30/06). At the time, NFL Network had just “35 million cable and satellite subscribers,” but with live, regular season games, it was expected that the network would “probably vastly increase its customer base and add cable operators like Time Warner and Charter, which have so far resisted signing on” (New York Times, 1/28/06). The move “immediately boosts network’s value,” Sports Business Daily noted. “We can already hear the phones ringing at the offices of Time Warner and other holdouts from football-hungry cable customers” (SBD, 2/3/06).

The next few years would bring fierce battles between the NFL and cable operators – specifically Comcast, Time Warner and Cablevision. In July ’06, the league began targeting cable operators that refused to carry NFL Network with a $100 million dollar ad campaign “[urging] consumers to switch to satellite TV operators that carry the channel” (SBD, 7/28/06). By the 2007 season, NFL Network was in “15 million fewer homes … than the league had projected” (SBD, 10/24/07).

The biggest fight of all was between Comcast and NFL Network. In May ’07, a New York Court ruled that Comcast could place NFL Network on a sports tier, instead of digital basic (SBD, 5/11/07). The move, which “[reduced] the number of viewers from nine million to one million,” made the NFL “furious” (SBD, 11/21/07). Additionally, the NFL hinted that it believed the move was retaliation for not putting the Thursday/Saturday package of games on Comcast’s Versus (SBD, 6/26/08). In November ’07, the league was said to be “looking forward” to the expiration of its carriage deal with Comcast in April 2009, as it would be an “opportune time to increase negotiating leverage” (SBD, 11/21/07).

In 2008, the New York Supreme Court “reversed [the] ruling that would have allowed Comcast to tier the channel,” sending the case back to court. (SBD, 2/27/08). While that legal matter was ongoing, NFL Network filed a “formal complaint with the FCC, alleging that Comcast has engaged in anti-competitive practices” by moving NFL Network to a sports tier while keeping the channels it owned on “expanded basic tiers” (SBD, 4/18/08).

The FCC sided with the NFL, ruling that Comcast “should carry the league’s NFL Network on its popular digital cable package” (SBD, 10/13/08). Then, an FCC administrative law judge rebuked the FCC for siding with the NFL, “[saying] a full hearing will be needed to sort out the facts” (SBD, 11/20/08).

With less than a month to go before its carriage agreement with Comcast was set to end, NFL Network said it would “not cut a new deal” that would keep the network on a sports tier (SBD, 3/11/09). With just hours to go before Comcast would drop NFL Network entirely, the two sides agreed to continue negotiating – keeping NFL Network on the air in the process. In May ’09, they finally came to an agreement – NFL Network dropped its license fee, and Comcast agreed to move the network onto the digital basic tier. Additionally, the “pending legal actions in a New York state court and at the FCC” were dropped. (SBD, 5/19/09).