Mark Leibovich - Big Game - The NFL in Dangerous Times

League meetings also give ­people—­needy billionaires in this ­case—­a chance to sort of come together. Would they ever choose one another as business partners? Probably not, but that’s the nature of a cartel. You don’t always get to choose. NFL owners are stuck in a vicious marriage, but no one wants a divorce and why would they?

Really, what signature player of the ­twenty-­first century would not want a piece of the Shield? Put it on TV, and people will watch; stick it on a jersey, they will wear it. The price of television ads during the Super Bowl has increased by more than 75 percent over the last decade.

If greed is ever a topic among owners, the conversation is mostly rhetorical. Is it worth more ­pie—­maybe another billion or two of dollars in annual revenue for a ­league—­for a franchise (say, the Oakland Raiders) to rip the hearts out of some of the most devout fans in the country to grab a much sweeter deal in a city like Las Vegas? Is it the league’s problem that Vegas is willing to shell out three-quarters of a billion dollars to build a stadium even though its schools are underfunded and its roads are medieval? Takeaway: Rhetorical quandaries are tiresome. And they can cost you money.

“You guys are cattle and we’re the ranchers,” the late Dallas Cowboys president Tex Schramm once told Hall of Fame offensive lineman Gene Upshaw during a collective bargaining negotiation. It is an ­oft-­quoted line that encapsulates the whole setup. Players get prodded, milked for all they’re worth, sold off, put out to pasture, and slaughtered. Implicit also here is that the cattle’s time is fleeting, like Not for Long football careers. “And ranchers can always get more cattle” is how Schramm’s quote concludes.

Likewise, the Patriots can always get another defensive lineman, which is why Nick Fairley, a veteran free agent previously of the Rams, was being whisked through the Boca Resort. Fairley is the rare cattle to be seen at this ranchers’ convention. Bill Belichick, the head coach, will inspect the livestock here along with the rest of the New England brass. (Fairley wound up signing with the Saints.) Upshaw said he had considered writing a memoir about his union ­activities—­joking that its working title was “The Last Plantation.”

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