Expansion May Solve Nfl’s Problems

Blame the NFL, not Art Modell, for the Browns’ abandonment of Cleveland.

Modell would have to be nuts or incredibly loyal to his fans - and he’s neither - to turn down the millions Baltimore is throwing at his feet. Heck, if Browns fans were offered that kind of money, they’d move to Baltimore, too.

In a hotel room in Phoenix eight months ago, Modell spoke passionately to his fellow owners about the dangers of teams abandoning major cities for the lure of sweet stadium deals laden with luxury boxes.

He joined 20 other owners that day in voting against the Rams’ move from Los Angeles to St. Louis, just as he had once voted against the Raiders’ move from Oakland to Los Angeles. He argued that it hurt the league, and he promised a stiff legal fight to prevent it. By following that reasoning, he should vote against himself now because it’s in the league’s interest to keep the Browns in Cleveland.

The NFL, for all its talk about opposing franchise free agency, could have pre-empted the Browns’ move simply by expanding to the city of lost Colts anytime in the past 10 years.

The league might yet be able to stop it with a quick double reverse play. Baltimore pays the Browns $50 million to stay home instead of moving. Call it a “franchise fee.” The Browns take that money, throw it in with the deal Cleveland is offering, and build the cash cow stadium of Modell’s dreams. Baltimore puts together its own ownership group and gets a free franchise starting next year.

Everybody’s happy.

Expansion - not toothless votes, endless lawsuits or federal legislation - is one sure way the NFL can stop owners from fleeing cities in pursuit of ever sweeter stadium deals.

New teams in Nashville and Orlando would put more than a crimp in the Houston Oilers’ and Tampa Bay Buccaneers’ traveling plans. If the league also awarded expansion teams in the next few years to Los Angeles, Toronto, Vancouver and a couple of other cities on the short list of those that could support a franchise, the league’s vagabond days would soon be over.

By embracing expansion vigorously, the NFL removes the leverage that teams now have over cities. It’s hard to threaten to leave if there’s no place to go.

Why then should teams vote for expansion? Because it’s good business for the league. It opens new markets for television, boosts sales of licensed products, and brings in franchise fees from football wannabes.

There is certainly no shortage of players to stock a half-dozen more teams over the next few years. Carolina, in beating the Super Bowl champion 49ers, proved how quickly an expansion team can become competitive in the age of free agency with the help of lucrative stadiums.

Players don’t come cheap these days, and Modell is right when he says teams need all the luxury boxes, club seating and other goodies they can get in modern stadiums designed just for football.

“Cleveland is not unlike many professional sports teams,” says Steve Matt of accounting giant Arthur Andersen in Dallas. “They find themselves in an antiquated facility that doesn’t generate revenues like teams do in a state-of-the art stadium. Combine this with a less than great lease and it’s virtually impossible for a team to be competitive.”

Teams with the best stadiums and leases, like St. Louis, Carolina and Jacksonville, take in $30 million to $50 million more in revenue, Matt said, than those with the worst, like Cleveland, Cincinnati, Houston and Tampa, even if every game is a sellout.

But voters all over the country have repeatedly shown a reluctance to pay for stadiums with tax dollars. Studies show that stadiums are a poor investment for cities and states compared to, say, industrial parks.

“No one should look at stadiums as a way for cities to make a lot of money from tourism, new businesses coming in, or anything else,” said economist Robert Baade.

The new stadiums are profitable - for the teams. They should be the ones putting together private financing packages to build their own stadiums, getting help from cities or states for routine items like land, road improvements, and tax breaks.

The bigger risk for the teams, and for the NFL as a whole, is that by continually holding up cities or moving from one to the other, the traditions and goodwill of decades will be destroyed.

And loyalty is not easily transplanted, as the Raiders found out in Los Angeles and as the Cardinals are finding out in Arizona.

People who aren’t even fans of Cleveland associate the city with the Browns, the Dawg Pound, crazy guys without shirts in freezing weather. It’s part of the game, part of the color, one of the elements that make NFL football exciting.