Pending resolution to lockout keeps NFL from losing games

The four-month lockout of its players by the National Football League in 2011 will never go down in history as good times for the richest league in North American sport.
Yet the fact that a settlement is imminent after weeks of constructive, behind-the-scenes negotiations should shape the way we perceive the NFL, a $9 billion a year sport industry sector that has overtaken baseball as America’s pastime and is the single biggest sports marketing juggernaut on the continent.

It’s important because it appears that the NFL will once again avoid losing games to a work stoppage, something that cannot be said of the other three major North American leagues, especially over the past 24 years since football's last work stoppage in 1987.

The NBA is in its second lockout in 13 years and third in history, with the most recent one having cost pro basketball 32 regular season games in 1998-’99. The NHL has lost a season and a half in the past 17 years, including 2004-’05 when the full season and Stanley Cup playoffs were cancelled due to its second lockout in the span of a decade. Finally, Major League Baseball saw its World Series classic cancelled on account of the players strike of 1994, the last time two leagues were in concurrent work stoppages.

Yet the NFL appears to know better. Outside of 1987, in which it lost one game and played three others with replacement players , the NFL has a relatively unblemished record when it comes to losing games to labour crises and has never done so through a lockout. It is true it lost seven weeks on a player strike back in 1982, but that season was salvaged with a 16-team playoff tournament. In 1974, a players strike was resolved before training camps began.

In 2011, with television ratings and revenues at an all-time high, it was a risky proposition to chance the NFL's future growth, let alone its status as the biggest sport in North America.

Neither the NFL nor the NFLPA should feel proud of failing to get a deal done before the CBA expired in March. That represented a failure on both sides.

Yet kudos should go to both the owners and the players for understanding what kind of impact cancelled games could have had on the privileged position all parties involved hold in the fantasy world of professional sport. And it is exactly that - privileged.

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One-two punch of CFL and NHL free agency make Canada Day hot

Basketball fans can't jump in as much this year on account of the NBA lockout triggered last night, but nonetheless, Canada Day is carving itself a niche as a hot day on the Canadian sports calendar.The one-two punch of the kick-off to a new Canadian Football League season and the media and fan frenzy that is free agency in the National Hockey League make July 1st one of the most intriguing sports days each year, on and off the field of play.

It's been cranked up a few degrees in fan attention thanks to the increasingly explicit positioning of the CFL kick-off around Canada Day weekend. Made more formal over the past two years, it is part of CFL Commissioner Mark Cohon's smart campaign to promote the CFL on the strength of its Canadiana and heritage. A kick-off on Canada Day is as natural as maple syrup and it goes a long way towards driving home that "CFL as Canadian culture" message.

By definition, TSN becomes the fulcrum for a lion's share of the interest. It is the exclusive English-language home of the CFL on TSN and its hockey panel is the most-watched for coverage of day one of NHL free agency. It's certainly one of the biggest days of the year for the 27-year-old all-sports network and its French-language counterpart, RDS.

In fact, TSN and RDS are arguably front-and-centre on two of the biggest days in Canadian sport each year - the CFL's Canada Day Doubleheader on July 1st and the biggest single-day annual event in our landscape, the Grey Cup on the final Sunday in November (both the CFL's Grey Cup and the NFL's Super Bowl are in the 6 to 7 million range as the top annual events in terms of average national audience on Canadian television).

Only January 1st rivals July 1st as fixed-day destination television, although even that is not as "fixed": Witness the NHL's decision to move its NBC Winter Classic to July 2nd next year and let the NFL do its playoff thing on New Year's Day (assuming, of course, that saner heads prevail and the U.S. football season goes on without a lockout hitch).

For now, July 1st is truly Canada Day when it comes to sports, sports television and the sports web.

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