So why doesn't he suggest the same for Santa Clara? Why should tiny Santa Clara be expected to pay $444 million towards a stadium we can't afford?

You're missing the point: He isn't upset about cities having to pay for stadiums. He's upset about the owners having to pay for them.

If Goodell ever suggests the players chipping in for a Santa Clara stadium, I'm sure he'll be proposing it supplant part of the 49ers' share.

This is an interesting view of Goodell's comments -- one I hadn't thought of myself.

My initial thought focused on the statement "The cost of building that stadium is almost entirely on the ownership." Ummm...how much do the owners ever spend on these new facilities? The public is most often on the hook for vast amounts of the funding for the benefit of the owners (and the players and the league, among others) while the owners pocket disproportionately high amounts of the revenues generated.

But this is just the Commissioner doing his job as the elected representative of the owners, spreading the word that the owners want to reduce their expenses as the NFL re-negotiates its CBA with the NFLPA.

Given the NFL is a private sector monopoly, they should be funding the stadium ventures that are for their primary benefit. The days of depending on taxpayers is over.

The owners are whining because they promised too much of those lovely NFL revenues in the last round of talks to the players union. Owners, those poor babies, are seeing less of those millions at the same time that the players' salary cap keeps rocketing upwards.

Goodell is just the NFL owners' mouthpiece. He's trying to get out of the Players union what more than a few owners are having trouble getting out of the cities they're currently extorting.

There's nothing really new here - except for the squealing we'll shortly be hearing out of the NFLPA, of course.

Bill Bailey, Treasurer
Santa Clara Plays Fair

-=0=-

File this under the ever-growing list of "unmitigated gall" by sports owners and commissioners vis a vis stadium financing.

The most interesting thing to watch for in the wake of this is whether DeMaurice Smith does anything other than politely show Goodell the door in regard to this issue. Which is what municipal and state governments should have been doing all along.

Well, perhaps I'm just being all "glass half full" here, but it seems to me that this represents a significant move by the NFL.

For the first time in recent memory, the extortion isn't directed at small to middling cities exclusively. For the first time, there is some admission that the stadium gravy train is slowing down, if not stopping. Perhaps he realizes that, having successfully extorted subsidies from the non-major markets, and then seen his major markets extort similar (or greater) subsidies in order not to be "disadvantaged" by comparison to the smaller markets, the NFL has reached it's peak draw from the public purse... that the Indianapolis' and Cincinnatis of the world won't (or, at the behest of their auditors, can't) ramp up for the next round of "desperate need" stadium funding?

I'm sure the players will simply reject this notion, as it is not in their interest to "partner" on capital construction (though Goodell is correct in saying it may lead to higher revenues, he does not mention the cost of debt service - something the league's franchises presently manage to avoid through their 'partnerships' with cities).

Or maybe I've just forgotten to take my medication again, and I'll wake up tomorrow and realize Goodell is simply trying to add a secondary host for the world's most successful parasite to feed from.

John, I'd say the answer is "a little bit from column A, a little bit from column B". As to your first point, either (a) the taxpayer funding pool is drying up, and they know it; (b) the current targets are not giving up the golden goose so easily; or (c) taxpayers as a whole finally waking up and saying, "Wait a minute, what tangible benefits exactly ARE we getting out of funding these things anyway? Why in hell haven't these things turned out to be the economic boons promised when we agreed to pay for them?" Perish the thought I know, but hope springs eternal.

As to your "or maybe" point, well, yes. As Neil pointed out above, players chipping in will likely be done not to ease the burden on taxpayers, but on owners. Perhaps this is where the 18% give-back the owners purportedly want from the players will go.

Well, in a roundabout way, the players are paying for any contributions to stadiums that the owners make, because NFL revenue goes down when there is debt service to pay, and that means that the salary cap thresholds go down. This proposal would just formally codify it.

On a leaguewide level, if stadium improvements are actually moneymakers (i.e. they create more income than they cost), owners and players share in the bounty. If they are moneylosers (i.e. you spend $900 million to get $300 million without taxpayer support), then owners and players share the cost. The more these things are funded by taxpayers, the more both owners and players benefit.

In response to Brian, the players would not be paying for stadiums in any way. The NFL revenue would not be affected by the building of a stadium. The revenue is simply how much money total they receive during the year. The profits of the franchises would fall with new investments, but the current agreement only has players salaries based on revenue and not profit. Players should have to share some of the burden that owners and taxpayers have when they are getting benefits from it.