‘NFL Fans Should Worry About More Than One Kind of “Blackout”‘ … today at Beyond Chron

When the National Football League and its players announced that the lockout was over, the head of a fledgling organization called the Sports Fans Coalition couldn’t wait to get its message out. “NFL Lockouts End, Blackouts Won’t,” blogged its executive director, Brian Frederick.

Frederick made the same narrow point last September in a piece for Huffington Post under the headline “Ahead of Possible Lockout, NFL Owners Giving Big Bucks to Politicians.” Frederick cited research by the Center for Responsive Politics showing the unsurprisingly large NFL lobbying presence in Washington and campaign contributions by NFL owners.

But in case you were wondering, the “blackouts” to which the Sports Fans Coalition refers are not the ones causing early and violent deaths of football players and diminishing the mental health and future productivity of American youth. No, siree. Frederick is talking about the league’s policy of blacking out local-market telecasts of home games of teams that didn’t sell out their stadiums in advance.

CONTINUED TODAY AT BEYOND CHRON, THE SAN FRANCISCO ONLINE NEWSPAPER:

http://www.beyondchron.org/articles/NFL_Fans_Should_Worry_About_More_Than_One_Kind_of_Blackout__9373.html