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For the better part of the last 63 years, the NFL has steered clear of scheduling Saturday games while school is in session, only to watch in bemusement as college football’s expansionist impulses have undone a lifetime of studied avoidance. That two of the first-round CFP games are on a collision course with a pair of NFL contests with significant postseason implications is one thing, but the fact that the very Law of the Land effectively put college football in this no-win situation—and with a key assist from Pete Rozelle, no less—is worth a closer look.
Way back in 1961, when the NFL was about to expand to 14 teams with the launch of the Minnesota Vikings and Westerns ruled the dial (the three highest-rated shows were Wagon Train, Gunsmoke and the typographically exasperating Have Gun – Will Travel), a young Rozelle flew down to D.C. in a bid to save the league and its TV fortunes. After signing a $9.3 million rights deal with CBS that April, a revenue-pooling arrangement which Rozelle believed would be crucial in order to allow the small-market Green Bay Packers compete with the likes of the New York Giants and Chicago Bears, the commish was all but poleaxed when a federal judge struck down the plan a few months later. Convinced that the judicial overstepping would hamstring his ambitions for the NFL, Rozelle took his case to Capitol Hill.
In a lobbying effort which Vince Lombardi would later credit with saving the Packers organization, Rozelle managed to get key members of Congress to put their legislative weight behind what would become known as the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961. But the NFL wasn’t the only football organization with skin in the game. As Rozelle was cornering his quarry on the Hill, the athletic director from a school in one of those giant rectangle states Out West managed to get a hand-written note to one of the functionaries in President Kennedy’s Oval Office. The gist: Feel free to rubber-stamp this new TV bill, but for…
Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/nfl-clash-college-football-playoff-105500837.html
Author : Sportico
Publish date : 2024-12-20 10:55:00
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