NFL Preseason: Should The League Trade It for More Money?

As the August heat wears on NFL training camps across America and preseason games spring into action, a hot issue, for a third straight year, is what the NFL should do about the preseason schedule.

It is becoming more and more inevitable that the league will cut back from four preseason games and tack on more regular season games, but the logistics of such schedule alterations aren’t straightforward.

We are inside a year of the current collective bargaining agreement expiration date—March 2011—and the owners and players union continue to play a game of chicken over revenues.

Commissioner Roger Goodell, the man in charge of maximizing fan experience while making sure there is football to play next fall, knows changes are coming.

“The fans have made it incredibly clear that they don’t like preseason games,” Goodell told profootballtalk.com’s Mike Florio last week on The Dan Patrick Show. “So the idea of taking two preseason games and converting them to regular season has a lot of appeal. But you have to do it in a comprehensive fashion that is going to ensure that the game stays safe for our players.”

Yes, the players union has expressed concern that adding more regular season games significantly increases the risk of injury for players, but that’s not the hang-up on the issue. The hang-up, of course, is money.

The talk of shortening the preseason schedule is nothing new, as owners have been talking about the subject for a couple of years now. But what the players get out of it is the question.

A 2007 Sports Business Daily report estimated that preseason ticket sales generate approximately $400 million league-wide, making them a cash cow for owners. How so?

According to the Sports Business Daily report, season-ticket holders pay the same price for a preseason game as they do for a regular season game. There is no discount regardless of the fact that fans won’t get to see star players for more than a half, maybe a little more, at any one time during the preseason.

In the fourth preseason week, teams don’t care about the game; they only care about getting to Week One healthy.

Players, on the other hand, don’t get a large cut of the preseason revenue. Their contracts are spread out over a 17-game regular season schedule, so they are not taking in a regular-season game check in any game prior to Week One of the regular season.

Players receive a stipend for playing in the preseason, and that’s it. The rest of the money fattens owners’ pockets. Owners and front office personnel acknowledge this but maintain the stance that preseason games are imperative for the team.

“We make money off preseason games, but we need them for our evaluations,” San Diego Chargers GM A.J. Smith said a couple years ago.

Commissioner Goodell likes the idea of sticking with the 20-game format, but going with 17 or 18 regular season games and three or two preseason games, respectively.

The NFL already generates more than $6 billion annually, and that would only increase with more regular season games.

But players want to be better compensated for those extra regular season games because they aren’t falling for the “20 games is 20 games” trap that the league tries to sell. Starting players play limited minutes in preseason games, if they play at all, so four preseason games isn’t close to the same beating they take in four regular season games.

Naturally, increased player compensation isn’t exactly what the owners have in mind. One issue with the ongoing CBA talks is that the league wants the players to take an approximately 18 percent cut in revenue.

At a time when money has never been more abundant for the NFL, it’s idiotic to ask players to reduce their earning power while increasing the amount of time spent banging bodies at full speed.

All fans would prefer more regular season games. Preseason games are boring and meaningless. The only reason the Hall of Fame game gets any ratings is because football fans have been starving for their sport ever since the clock ran out on the Super Bowl in February.

But if the preseason was completely done away with, even, there would be no love lost amongst fans. Give them full schedules on Sundays, games that mean something, and they will be happy.

The league can continue to talk about all the great things they are going to do for fans by shortening the preseason and giving them more of the star players, but it’s all irrelevant until a new CBA is worked out.

Why the owners want to play hardball with the players is a mystery. The owners have more to lose, as it’s the players who drive the league. With no players, there’s no NFL, and there’s no revenue.

Once the league and union work out a new CBA and agree on compensation going forward, then Goodell can turn his attention to revamping the preseason docket and increasing the quality of the league.

Everybody will be happy and open to changes that make the NFL an even more desirable experience for its fans. The owners will, ultimately, get the increased revenues that they desire.

Yes, we may have fewer than four preseason games in August 2011.

We also may not have any games at all.

Follow Teddy Mitrosilis on Twitter. You can reach him at [e-mail].