Football leaves the West

I was taking a look at the map of the United States the other day and discovered something I had not thought much about until this week. There are very few professional football teams west of the Mississippi River. In fact, of the 32 teams in the National Football League only nine are located in the western half of the nation, and three of those are within 250 miles of the "Big Muddy." This leaves a lot of empty space between the remaining six teams isolated from the rest of the country playing pro football. It is probably why these teams have almost disappeared from the national media discussions on a week to week basis. No one talks up the Seattle Seahawks, the San Francisco 49ers, Oakland Raiders, San Diego Chargers or Arizona Cardinals these days. Denver gets a mention because Pat Bowlen, the team's owner, is one of the three most powerful owners in the League along with Jerry Jones and Robert Kraft. These are the guys who started the NFL Network in an effort to harness even more money for themselves from advertising revenues predicated on high interest in the product they sell.

It is also curious to note that for NFL franchise worth, as determined by the people at Forbes Magazine, only Denver from the western half of the US is in the top ten team valuation. Kansas City is listed as the thirteenth most valuable franchise and Seattle clocks in at the nineteenth spot. The three teams in California rank 26th for San Diego, 28th for Oakland and 30th for the 49ers. According to to the Forbes article, the Dallas Cowboys and Washington Redskins are worth almost double what the San Francisco franchise is worth. In a state with the most population, the largest state economy and the most valuable real estate outside of Manhattan it is strange to see how little the California teams are worth in the eyes of the Wall Street evaluators.

It also interesting to note the NFL will play a game in London this coming week with the New York Giants meeting the hapless and winless Miami Dolphins. Another terrific piece of NFL scheduling designed to win over new fans in a big way. You know the suits that put together this match-up looked at their marketing brochures and picked Miami and New York because they are the most frequented cities by foreign travelers. Los Angeles is actually the number two most frequented city, but LA has no team and so Miami and New York get the nod to represent America's game.

There is some talk that the NFL is looking to grow and expand its game outside of the US, because there are no cities in the western half of America which meet all the criteria for putting another franchise in place for the exclusive private equity club of NFL ownership. Major cities in the west cannot seem to find the votes to have the public further subsidize some of the richest people in America by building at tax payer expense new stadiums for these owners to net all the proceeds from.

Las Vegas would love to be a player in the NFL market, but not when confronted with abandoning its sports book business by the League. The American Gaming Association reported that $2.46 billion was wagered last years on sports. The Super Bowl game generated $93 million in wagering business for Nevada. Of course it is estimated that $8 billion was wagered on the game, and that legal bets accounted for only 1.5% of all bets placed. It is more about image than reality with the NFL anyway, so do not look for Las Vegas getting a team anytime soon.

Since Los Angeles is already out, with Portland and Salt Lake not large enough media markets, and Honolulu is too far away for all the eastern teams, or 75% of the NFL, pro football in the west continues its decline. Minor league pro football just died this past year when the World League folded from diminished interest. But hope persists in expanding to Europe for NFL executives who have turned their backs on America's west.

Although no NFL executive will listen, your game of ultra-violence does not translate well to the more sophisticated and discerning European with enough disposable income to generate your big bucks. Football is just another war game complete with infantries of behemoth linemen slugging one another in a desperate attempt to club a smaller individual who carries some symbol of value back and forth. Since the western coastline is predominately what America sells to the rest of the world in terms of unique coolness, eastern big-money-mayhem for a liberal Europe exhausted from our culture of perpetual war violence will be one tough sell.