Welcome into the Olive Garden Alderness Set. It's a Wednesday edition of PFTPM. I'm trying to do this once per week during the off season, ideally on Tuesday, sometimes on Wednesday. One of the key ingredients is I have to remember on Tuesday to do it. Yesterday, had a doctor's appointment, get your skin checked once a year, go to a dermatologist, make sure that every little thing, because you never know what that little thing that you think is nothing could become. It's worth it. It's worth your time, even though it is a pain in the ass to fit it in to your work day. It is pain free, though, unlike other diagnostic tools, unless of course they find something, they have to freeze it off or shave it off. And I've been there and I've done that. I've got multiple different scars from different things that have been checked over the years, and I've had at least one melanoma scare. So it is worth your while. It could save your life. Okay, that's the extent of the PSA for today. If you watch PFT live, you know that I'm on stomach bug watch because a virus has ripped through the family. We were all together here at the house on Easter and one at a time, they're all getting it. And my wife got it overnight and on the clock, waiting to see whether or not that moment comes in. You know when that moment comes, there's nothing you can do about it other than deal with it. So there is still a chance that that moment is going to come during the taping of this PFT PM podcast, but hopefully we will cut to black before any graphic developments may occur. I hope I at least have enough of a warning that I can begin the race to the facilities. Okay. So the man of Mendoza will not be racing to Pittsburgh later this month. He will not be attending the draft. First time since 2021, when the first pick will not be present, Trevor Lawrence was not at the draft that year. That year I think it was in Cleveland. That was the year after the virtual draft doing the first year of the pandemic. That doesn't mean anything on the surface, but it does take a little sizzle away from the NFL's ultimate reality show about nothing because what else is there other than the prospects? You've got the commissioner and you've got the prospects on the first day of the draft by the second or the third day of the draft. They have other people who come in and do the picks. You'll get great players. You'll get personalities that riled the crowd up. Remember when Drew Pearson was in Philadelphia? What's that been now? Eight years ago, nine years ago, got them all riled up before the Eagles that ever won a Super Bowl ring and Drew Pearson could brag about his that same year that equals got there first. So it would have been 2017. So there are moments like that, but for the first night of the draft, it's about the prospects giving and getting bear hugs. Maybe the commissioner getting lifted off the ground, whatever the case may be, the commissioner getting booed as he always does. But the top pick, if Fernando Mendoza is the top pick and there's no reason to think he won't be, he won't be there. It'll be a cut to wherever he's having his draft party. And hey, you know where I stand on this. I'm a firm believer that the players should get paid. Not we'll pay for your flights. We'll pay for your hotel. We'll treat you well while you're here. They are the actors in the reality show. And I think every player who's invited to the draft should be willing to say, I'd like to get some compensation for my name, image, and likeness for boosting your broadcast. Now we've all been conditioned and the players particularly to believe that this is the moment their lives had been leading up to. It's the honor and a privilege to be part of the Harry Potter sorting hat ceremony. And I don't have any times I say it. Number one, it's always going to be true. And number two, the kids coming into the draft aren't going to listen to it because they're not thinking of it that way. They're young. They're idealistic. I was talking to a reporter about this. First three years in the league, player doesn't think of it as a business. After about year three or during year three, that's when all of a sudden they realize it's a business. But for the NFL, the business has been cheap because the players happily show up in exchange for the travel expenses. The players deserve to be paid for being props in the NFL's ultimate reality show about nothing. And Mendoza, I assume, will still be on camera wherever he is. I think the only guy that completely checked out was Joe Thomas. Remember that? He was 17 when fishing with his dad, but we still saw images of him fishing with his dad. So the draft will go on without Mendoza there, but the first pick will be a little less special without the first pick there to come out and get his hug, give his hug, put on his Raiders hat, hold up his Raiders jersey, be interviewed by the various networks that are there, make the rounds that way. But it's his choice. It's his choice. And whatever the player chooses to do, we should respect that. And it's easier to make that choice if they're not offering you a significant amount of money to show up and be part of the NFL's ultimate offseason tentpole reality show. Now, before I move on, we have no reason to think Fernanda Mendoza will be anything other than the first overall pick in the draft. Chris and I talked about this today on PFT Live. Is there any reason to believe the Raiders won't take him? I still hate to assume it's a given. We've seen things that we expected to happen, not happen. We saw it last month. Max Crosby trade. Everybody expected it to happen. Didn't happen. And that was announced. Sort of. It was announced by the player. The teams didn't say anything until it fell apart. That's when the Raiders issued that perfunctory tweet that the Ravens had backed out and shocked everyone. So are we setting ourselves up for another unexpected surprise? What else would the Raiders do? I guess they could dangle that pick to someone else who has decided they absolutely love Fernando Mendoza. Now they would have to come to that conclusion without having a pre-draft meeting because he's only visited one team, the Raiders, and he did it on Tuesday. And Tom Brady made the trip from Miami to be part of it. Let's assume that everyone says, this is the guy we want. But I don't know. What if somebody just caught a vibe that made them uncomfortable? I don't know because we weren't in the room for the meeting. We weren't privy to the conversations or the communications. And again, we don't know what someone else may do by way of making the Raiders an offer that they would stand back and look at and say, okay, this is what a team is willing to give us. And you're not trading up to have the first overall pick. You're trading up for a player. And it can be any player. It could be a team absolutely wanting R-Vel Reese, who's expected to go second over all to the Jets. We want to get Reese. We'll trade up to number one. That could happen. That could happen. You could have, in theory, you could have the Raiders go down just a few spots and maybe still get Fernando Mendoza. Who knows? We just can't assume with certainty that it's going to happen because if we do, we're setting ourselves up for a shock. But that's part of what we like about the draft. We like to be shocked. We like to be surprised. Are you not entertained? That would be entertaining if it did happen. No reason to think it won't. But every reason to at least keep on the edge of the radar screen, just a tiny little blip, blip, blip, that it could happen. It could. Don't expect it, but it could. Speaking of blips on radar screens, no business wants its business to be the federal government's business. The NFL has enjoyed a broadcast antitrust exemption since 1961. Here's what it does. It allows the NFL to go to the various networks and sell the games as a block. You can't just cherry pick the teams that you want to televise. You can't just do a Notre Dame type of a deal like NBC has had for 30 plus years with the fighting Irish. You can't do that with the Cowboys. You don't only get the Cowboys games at home because I think that's how it would work. Everybody sells the rights to their home games. You'd have the Cowboys at one end of the spectrum. You'd have the least popular teams at the other. No, the NFL decided the key to long term growth and viability was number one, have the ability to sell all the rights together and number two, convince the teams to share that money equally. The popular teams at the time, the Giants, for example, they had to be willing to prop up the league by accepting the fact that they're going to get less value for their TV rights than what the Giants alone would get if they were doing their own deals. The NFL has enjoyed that for years, for decades. The NFL has an exception to the antitrust laws. Under that provision, the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961, the NFL gets a pass because the NFL is a collection of independent businesses. The American Needle Case from 2010 made that as clear as it can be. They are competing businesses. Yes, they're in the same league. Yes, it's a unique industry, but they are right now 32 distinct and independent businesses. They can't come together and determine prices. The only reason they can do it as to the players is because all of the independent businesses, the NFL, are party to what's called a multi-employer bargaining unit through the NFLPA. That's how they're able to set rules and salary caps and other things that ordinarily 32 distinct businesses in any industry would not be allowed to come together and do. You're able to do it through a multi-employer bargaining unit. That's on the labor side. On the TV side, you need the exemption. A lot of people are making noise about the exemption on both sides of the aisle. Republican Senator Mike Lee, you've got Democratic senators, you've got FCC chair Brendan Carr, who's part of the Republican machinery. You've got people asking the question of whether or not the NFL should continue to enjoy an NFL Trust exemption for broadcast. It all flows from the idea that they got the exemption as part of this effort to serve the public with free football games. Back in the days of the birth of the exemption, you put the rabbit ear antennas on your TV set or you had the big antenna that was perched on top of your house or both, pull that signal in for free. If you had a TV, you were able to watch any of the games that were being offered by the broadcast network. So the free TV aspect of it, that disappears as the NFL puts more and more of its games on streaming and there's a balance to be struck there. And I think that this current assault against the antitrust exemption is coming from fears that the NFL is skewing too far toward the streaming option. We've had cable for 40 years now. We've had satellite for the Sunday ticket package, which is now a streaming package. But with more and more of these games landing on streaming, there's going to be a tipping point. That's what Brendan Carr said. There's a point where the NFL will collapse its antitrust exemption. There could already be an argument that any of the efforts to sell packages beyond the three letter over the air free broadcast networks doesn't comply with the exemption. It goes beyond the limits of what the NFL is allowed to do. That argument has never been made. It sounds like the other argument is going to be teed up whether or not the whole thing should just go away. Has the time come to get rid of the antitrust exemption? There may be a hearing coming up this summer on the issue and the NFL just can't be happy with any of this. You don't want your business to be on the radar screen of the FCC, Congress or anyone. You want to be able to go about your business with minimal attention, distraction and possibility that is going to be a fundamental change to your business model. And that's what would happen if it would go away. Boom. Let's assume it's gone. Cowboys. What would they get for their eight home games or nine depending upon whether it's an even numbered year or an odd numbered year? Even numbered years under the current formula. NFC gets nine home games. AFC gets eight. They flip it in the odd numbered years. That will only be relevant until there's 18 regular season games. What would they get? What would the Jaguars get? What would the Cardinals get? You can ask that question for any team. And for some teams, it'll be driven by how well they're currently doing. There would have been a time 10, 15, 20 years ago. The Chiefs wouldn't be nearly as attractive as they are now. It's going to rise and fall based upon how well teams are doing. It's going to put greater pressure on teams to be good. The better you are, the more you're going to make. The problem is the sharing of the revenue. I believe cannot say, and this would be an easy solution, well, we're going to sell all of our rights individually, but we're still going to pour it all into the same bucket and share it. I think that's an antitrust violation without the exemption. Because you've got 32 businesses pulling their total revenue that they go out and independently get and then they carve it all up. I think that would be a problem. So let's assume that is a problem. Let's assume they can't do it. Here's what happens. You've got some teams making a ton of money on their TV rights. You've got other teams at the other end of the spectrum. All that money is going into the pot that determines the salary cap. So you're going to have a salary cap number that reflects everything. And for the teams making a lot of money, that's going to be a pretty good number because it's held down by the teams that aren't making as much on their TV deals. For the teams that are making the least amount on their own TV deals, the salary cap is going to be artificially inflated by the teams that are making more. You're going to have the profit margins of the lesser teams imploded, which could cause the league to fracture. You could have two different leagues. Hell, you could have a form of relegation, driven not by wins and losses, but driven by the value of your TV contract. We're going to have 16 teams in the league that is getting at least $2 billion a year. And we're going to have 16 teams in the league that is getting under $2 billion a year. I don't know. I don't know what would happen. But the NFL surely doesn't want it to happen to the point where the NFL can't be happy that it's being discussed. So why is it being discussed? Well, there are suspicions, and those suspicions were confirmed last week when Rupert Marroch's Wall Street Journal posted an editorial raising the question where the NFL should continue to have an antitrust exemption. The NFL is trying to go back to the table with all of its partners, networks and Amazon, and ESPN eventually, but ESPN's current deal runs a year longer than everyone else's. So for NBC, CBS, Fox, Amazon, YouTube TV for Sunday Ticket, the deals run through 2029 because the NFL has the ability to pull the plug four years early on deals that on paper go through 2033. The NFL is clearly going to do it. The moment the NBA got its new deals, it was obvious the NFL is going to pull the plug effective at the end of the 2029 season, which ends with NBC's next Super Bowl. So the league has exercised its right to reopen the contract with CBS because of a change in control provision in the CBS deal, and all the deals have it. A new company owns CBS now. It gives the NFL the prerogative to go back to the table. And the thinking is that CBS is eventually going to give the NFL more, not starting later, starting now. That's where this is different from past NFL media deals. You do a new deal, let's say you got two years left, and they do new deals. These are true extensions. The current numbers stay on the books. The new contract kicks in after the current contract expires. What the league's trying to do now is go back to CBS, for example, which is paying 2.1 billion for the Sunday afternoon package, and bump it up reportedly to 3 billion, almost 50% increase. And the thinking is they'll do it with CBS, and then they'll move on to Fox, the other Sunday afternoon provider. They'll move on to NBC, they'll move on to Amazon. Eventually they'll get to ESPN, which the NFL now partially owns. And that's how you get all the deals done. There's a question, though, as to whether or not at some point the networks and Amazon will just say we're not going to do it. John Orand, a puck, has raised that as a possibility. And I think it's something we have to have our eyes on, just the possibility. Not saying it'll happen. Hell, I don't know. But CBS could gladly pay 3 billion. That doesn't mean everybody else. There we go. It doesn't mean everybody else. I've got to watch the whole Italian habit of every once in a while, hit some microphone. But anyway, it doesn't mean that CBS doing a deal is going to result in Fox automatically opening the coffers. They're pushing back through the political levers that are available to Rupert Murdoch. So it's something that is interesting. It could change the way that fans consume games, especially if the NFL pushes too far. That's the danger. If they push too far and the antitrust exemption goes out the window, everything changes. And you're going to have, for example, the Cowboys on Fox, the Patriots on NBC, the Chiefs on CBS, the Bears on Amazon, and then it would all fracture and splinter among the others. And in theory, you could have a network that buys two teams' rights for home games. That gets you a full season package. Get the Giants and the Jets together. And in theory, you got a game every week like the networks currently do. But it's been churning and percolating, and I just wonder where it's going to go. And I also wonder, has the NFL set the stage for a money grab that is not going to be able to successfully accomplish? Then how do you find your way out of that maze? If you paint yourself into a corner that you're going to get a 50% increase, and all of a sudden after CBS says yes, everybody else says no, we'll see you in 2029 when these deals expire, what happens? What's the alternative? Yeah, there are other companies out there that don't have packages like YouTube and Netflix and Apple. Do they want full packages? It seems like YouTube and Netflix want slivers, big events, special events, Christmas games, first game of the season. If the first one is being being being being being being being being being being being being being being being being being being being being being being being being being being being being being being being being being being being being being being being being being being being being being being being being being being being being being being being being being being being being being being being being being being being James. And I think we aren't there yet largely because of the turmoil that's happened at the NFL Players Association over the last year. I had one source tell me at the league meetings that the NFL's business has been quote unquote constipated. I may have already shared that lovely image with you in the past here. So I'll apologize a second time for it. But now that the union has a new executive director, the question is when do they make their move and remember, remember Super Bowl 62 February 2028 until there is a date until they tell us it's going to happen on February 13, which is exactly the day it will happen under the current model until they tell us that 18 is in play for 2027. And so that's all happening as the NFL is trying to get more from the networks. And then the question becomes if they can come to the table with 18 games, or if they just have the extra inventory that they can use to peel off a little here and peel off a little there, you take your 272 games at 16 more, that's 288 up from 256. When there were 16 games, and with two buys, that's 20 weekends. So it's more standalone games. You've got the prime time games Thursday, Sunday, Monday, you've got all the other special events that they're going to drop in. There's a way for the NFL to play this and significantly increase their revenue and we all know that they will they always do. I think we're getting close to a point in time where the NFL could overreach and and kill the golden goose. The NFL's broadcast partners are the flock of golden geese that are producing the golden eggs for the NFL. You may end up strangling them. I think that may be the concern if the NFL pushes too far, but we'll see how it goes. Alright, last topic for today. And I got some emails from people asking why we didn't raise this on PFT live this morning. We wrote a post last night at pro football talk.com not long after the story came out from page six of the New York Post. I didn't know at first how to handle it because I'm a big believer that people's private lives are private. When I saw that Patriots coach Mike Vrabel, athletic NFL insider Diana Rossini and the athletic had issued statements about the photos that had been secured by page six of the New York Post of Vrabel and Rossini in Arizona. Reportedly at a resort some two hours away from Phoenix where the league meetings were there was resort in Sedona where there were photographs. Once I was out there, once they issued a statement, they're already public figures once they issued the statement that it's fair game to post about it. I thought that the subject isn't conducive to riffing. It's not it's not conducive to extemporaneous speech. And I've got a narrow list of subtopics I want to get to but you know it's it's it's delicate and it's sensitive for a variety of reasons but it's still extremely newsworthy and it's very unusual to the things that we're accustomed to coming from the broader NFL news machine. That's one of the reasons why there's so much interest in the story. Yes, it's salacious. Yes, it's got a tabloid quality to it, but it's something we haven't seen before. It's something that hasn't played out the way it's playing out and that's where my questions are. Look, as it relates to what we already have seen, the photos are the photos. The denials are the denials. The reporting from page six of the New York Post is what it is. That's for you, the reader, to make your conclusions based upon the information that's available. What I'm interested in is where this goes from here. Starting with how we even got here. How did the New York Post even know to be looking into this? I can't imagine that some random photographer was hanging around an adults-only retreat in Sedona, Arizona, just taking pictures of birds and cacti and whatnot. Somebody tipped them off. That's my conclusion. That's common sense. Somebody told the New York Post that there is reason to devote resources to seeing whether or not there's something to this. Somebody heard something. Somebody said something and the New York Post decided it was tangible enough to justify this effort to find these photos. Now, hey, it's possible it was just some dude with a smartphone, Peter Parker taking pictures of Spider-Man. It just feels like it was more than that. It feels like the post was tipped off and the post mobilized to capture the visual evidence that became the subject of the story that landed on Tuesday. And my question is, and my curiosity is whether there will be reporting about how that happened. If that happened, it's irrelevant to where we are, sort of, but I think it's also very relevant to know who it was that decided this is something that should be done. Possibly it did happen spontaneously. Possibly it was a guy who was bird watching. Possibly someone told the post. This is something you may want to look into. It sure feels like that. It feels like when you see the photos, it feels like someone was deliberately trying to capture images of something. That it wasn't random. That it wasn't spontaneous. And then it wasn't, oh, hey, well, that's interesting. I'll start taking pictures of it. So that's one of the issues to keep an eye on. The other practical reality of this, and I suspect that folks who cover sports media will be doing this, taking a closer look at any of the reporting from Diana Racini as it relates to the Patriots, as it relates to my variable, both now and in the past, when he was fired by the Titans, when he was with the Titans, that's just fair game. People are going to look into that to see whether or not there's anything there that would make people go, aha, aha. That's going to be part of it. And I've seen bits and pieces. We haven't written anything about that angle yet at PFT, but I suspect at some point, someone's going to do a deep dive, probably not the athletic, but somebody's going to do a deep dive on the breadcrumbs that were already out there. And the other side of that is moving forward. Anytime there's any reporting involving the Patriots, roster moves, whatever, anything, there's going to be a suspicion that is coming straight from Vrable. That's a complication that we'll see how that plays out, but you know how that goes. Everyone's going to be watching now. Another point that I'm curious about, and it's unrelated to the photos that came out yesterday and the denials that were provided by the various parties, but there's a podcast that Diana Rossini was on with the athletic called Scoop City, and it's just disappeared. It's gone. It's been gone since right before free agency, and it had been around consistently multiple episodes a week for over a year, and it just disappeared. I don't know what happened to it, but that's one of the things that I assume someone will get to the bottom of work. I don't know who to contact from a PR standpoint at the athletic. I'm trying to find that out. You know, it's not a major media outlet where everybody knows who contact when there's news about that outlet, but it's a separate issue, but it gets pulled under the big top now that this thing is out there like what happened to that podcast? Where did it go? Is it coming back? And it's going to be a different, especially the first episode back, it's going to be a different vibe than it's been. Last point. I mentioned that someone undoubtedly will be doing an exhaustive report about past reporting and where are the breadcrumbs and the athletic probably won't be the entity to do it. You've got aspects of that operation as it has grown and grown and it's now folded into the New York Times. My good friend Pablo Tore, this is the kind of thing that is right in his wheelhouse. Pablo Tore finds out everything that anyone would be curious about as it relates to these photos, how they came to be, how the post got the tip, whether or not the denials hold water relevant to the photos. Is there something more? Think about all the great work that he did last year. Once the whole Bill Belichick, Jordan Hudson thing hit critical mass with the softball interview from CBS that Jordan Hudson and Bill Belichick regarded as a high and inside fastball and it all kind of went from there. There's a lot of stuff there that Pablo can report on, but his podcast is now distributed by the athletic. What's going to happen there? Andrew Marchand covers sports media. His catchphrase, everybody wants to cover sports media. Is he going to cover a fairly significant sports media story involving his own shop? It'd be interesting to see where this goes. And again, look, private lives are private, but for public figures, there's a point at which the private life becomes public. And the New York Post reporting has put this thing in a position where people are curious, people have questions, people are going to have questions about the reporting, people have questions about how this all came to be, and this is how the media business works. We're here to answer the questions that the audience has. And again, both have become public figures. How? I'm a public figure. You make yourself a public figure when you do podcasts and you go on shows and you have a public platform. It's not just the coach who's the public figure in this equation. So we'll see where it all goes. I want to do at least address it and I wanted to do it in a setting where I'm able to choose my words as carefully as possible because we want to be respectful to everyone involved, but we also want to be respectful to you, the audience, because people out there want to know more about this. They want to know what I think about it. And I've laid out the things that I'm curious about as this thing moves forward and specifically how this thing even came to be. I think the most interesting angle to this is how did the New York Post know to go looking for these photos and did they get tipped by someone? If so, who or was it just completely spontaneous? Was it George McFly birdwatching? So that's it for this week's edition of PFT PM. We'll have weekday editions every morning of PFT Live. Chris will be with me on Thursday. Michael Holly for Run PFT slash Run KFC on Friday. And we'll be back for emergency episodes of PFT PM based upon any and all developments that may happen. Maybe I'll be doing one soon on the Raiders Trading Number born overall pick. Who knows? I'm kidding. I think have a great day.
