Build it, and we will succumb.
That’s all there is to say about the noble proposal for a new professional football league, as concocted by those twin purveyors of public service, NBC and Turner Sports.
This concept is particularly exciting for Chicago, as witnessed by the gleeful reaction from Mayor Richard Daley, who has tried to like Michael McCaskey and failed. The Bears’ tweedy president is a tough egghead to crack, especially on the subject of that lakefront mausoleum, Soldier Field.
However, a rival league could jostle the arrogant and monopolistic NFL. At best, on the local level, competition might nudge the Bears toward improving the product. At worst, Chicago will have two sickly franchises, instead of one, without a decent place to play.
Your initial instinct, upon hearing of this latest brainstorm, is to laugh uncontrollably. Who needs more tedious games performed by more mediocre teams made up of more ill-prepared athletes?
The answer is television. There is never enough programming to satisfy the bottomless pit, a fact reinforced only the other day when ESPN was forced to televise a spelling bee. This is a cable outfit pledged to glorify blood, sweat and beer, with Chris Berman as chief linguist.
Yet, on a slow afternoon in athletics, with no arrests or drug busts to report, ESPN shows something that has nothing to do with the infield fly rule. There’s a 12-year-old girl actually displaying intelligence, tact and grace under pressure. Oh, how we pined for a familiar face.
Moderator: “Can you spell diptych?”
Albert Belle: “Yeah. Kiss my d-i-p-t-y-c-h.”
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Anyway, these seemingly absurd ideas tend to bear fruit, or at least fungus. The American Football League begat Joe Namath, then a merger. The American Basketball Association had Julius Erving, until the NBA had to have him too. The World Hockey Association stole Bobby Hull in 1972; the Blackhawks are still trying to recover by buying son Brett.
All of the above innovations were supposed to die of fiscal exhaustion, and all did, but not before supplying just enough TV swill to wreak havoc. Now it is the networks themselves attempting to bypass middlemen by paying for the helmets and shinpads instead of those grotesque rights fees.
Dick Ebersol, the boss of NBC sports, is one smart fellow who bowed out of the latest bidding war that yielded $18 billion for the NFL contract. His counterpart at Turner Sports is Harvey Schiller, whose Olympic background qualifies him as an expert on broadcasting bogus events for profit.
However, the star of a new football league could be the one and only Ted Turner, who gave us CNN when almost nobody asked for it and when almost everybody thought it wouldn’t fly. It not only flew, but exploded worldwide. The man’s a genius.
Turner’s baseball team, the Atlanta Braves, benefited mightily when he turned things over to savvy baseball people such as John Schuerholz and Bobby Cox. Meanwhile, Ted seeks global peace through the Goodwill Games and a better bottom line by owning a league instead of supporting it.
The high price of major-league mediocrity is such that NBC and Turner envision marketing an alternative brand, slightly inferior. Meanwhile, two networks that helped drive up the NFL fee will bow out of bidding, thus lowering demand for the supposedly superior product.
In time, it all becomes a blur. Eddie Einhorn made a killing as a TV mogul “by packaging my crap better than the other network’s crap.” He sold, but didn’t want to stray too far from home, so he then bought into the White Sox.
But ordinary sells and what’s bad for the consumer is good for Mario Mendoza, the former Pittsburgh Pirate who was such a banjo hitter that he lent his name to baseball’s barometer for futility, The Mendoza Line.
That was then, though. Against today’s improbable pitchers in 1998, what would Super Mario bat? I say .280.
Can you spell dilution? That’s what we’re watching, with more of less on the way.