National Football League Franchises


Book Description

The National Football League (NFL) is the most influential, popular, and prosperous professional sports league in America. As such this book focuses on the development and maturity of the organization and its members, but most importantly, how each of them performed in seasons and postseasons and then to what extent they have succeeded as a business enterprise despite competition for market share from other types of entertainment. Each chapter contains two core themes as sections—Team Performances and Franchise Business. The former highlights which and how teams won division and conference titles and championships like Super Bowls while the latter lists and compares financial data including their revenue, gate receipts, and operating income. By linking and comparing the historical performances of NFL teams to financial information about them as business organizations, this book provides a unique contribution to the literature on the sports industry. This book connects franchise popularity and all-time records with recent estimated market value, net worth, and other financial data. In sum, National Football League Franchises explains why particular teams located in large, midsized, or small markets win more games and titles than others. In addition, it provides ways to individually, and by division and/or conference, to compare teams from a financial perspective.




The League That Didn't Exist


Book Description

The All-American Football Conference was the only challenger to the NFL (except for the American Football League of the 1960s) to survive more than two seasons in competition with the established league. It ultimately failed to achieve its goal of a peaceful coexistence with the NFL and folded in 1949. Its Cleveland Browns and San Francisco 49ers, which were absorbed by the NFL in 1950, are still in business. This book takes a brief look at all of the NFL's challengers (and would-be challengers) from 1926 to 1945. It looks particularly at the All-American Conference, which overcame obstacles that proved too difficult for others and opened the 1946 season with teams on the East Coast, in the Midwest, on the West Coast, and in the deep South, making it a truly "All-American" enterprise. Each season and off-season is examined in detail.




First Down Houston


Book Description

With more than 200 duotone images, this book captures the first season of the Houston Texans, from the NFL players' draft to the final game of the team's inaugural year.




The Economics of the National Football League


Book Description

This book lays down a marker as to the state of economists’ understanding of the National Football League (NFL) by assembling sophisticated, critical surveys of by leading sports economists on major topics associated with the league. The book is divided into four parts. The first three chapters in Part I provide an overview of the business of the NFL from an economist’s perspective. Part II is a collection of surveys of the economics of the NFL’s most important revenue streams, including media, attendance, and merchandising. The NFL’s labor economics is the focus of Part III, with chapters on player and coach labor markets, the draft, and contract structure. Part IV includes essays on competitive balance, gambling, economic impacts of the Super Bowl, behavioral economic issues associated with the league, and antitrust issues. This book will appeal to sports economists, sports management professionals, and policy-makers, and would be useful as a supplementary text for sports economics and management courses as well as a reference text.




Organized Professional Team Sports


Book Description

Committee Serial No. 8. pt. 1: Considers legislation on the applicability of the antitrust laws to organize professional sports enterprises. pt. 2: Continuation of hearings on sports teams and antitrust legislation. pt. 3: Continuation of antitrust hearings on professional sports antitrust exemptions.




American League Franchises


Book Description

This brief analyzes each of the Major League Baseball (MLB) franchises in the American League, their past regular-season and postseason records and financial performances while operating as competitive, popular, and profitable or unprofitable enterprises. Using sport-specific information and relevant demographic, economic, and financial data, this brief will highlight when and how well these MLB teams performed and the financial status and significance of their organization as a member of an elite professional baseball league. The brief also investigates the success of teams in terms of wins and losses based on home attendance at their ballparks, market value, and revenue. Furthermore, it compares the history, productivity, and prosperity of the franchises among rivals in their division like the Boston Red Sox and New York Yankees in the American League East Division, Chicago White Sox and Detroit Tigers in the Central Division, and Oakland Athletics and Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim in the West Division. This brief will be of interest to practitioners and scholars who research the sports industry, college and university professors who teach undergraduate and graduate students majoring in sports administration, business, economics and management, and fans of the sport.




The American Football League


Book Description

Unable to buy into an existing team and rebuffed by National Football League owners who had no desire to expand, 27-year-old Lamar Hunt, the son of Texas billionaire H.L. Hunt, formed the American Football League in 1959. He placed his team in Dallas, called them the Texans, and invited other young entrepreneurs to join him. The seven men who did called themselves members of the "Foolish Club," but on September 9, 1960, the AFL made its regular season debut and went on to change the face of football forever. Unlike the NFL, the American Football League featured wide open offenses and innovative coaching strategies, capturing a new generation of fans dedicated to the league and its players. The AFL aggressively pursued college stars--Heisman Trophy winner Billy Cannon in its inaugural season and Joe Namath in 1965. The eight teams signed a collective television agreement that split the money equally among the franchises, thus providing far more stability and balance than earlier start-up leagues. Based on interviews with owners, coaches, players, scouts, broadcasters and writers from the era, this is a colorful account of the AFL and its place in sports history.




Football for a Buck


Book Description

From a multiple New York Times bestselling author, the rollicking, outrageous, you-can't-make-this-up story of the USFL The United States Football League--known fondly to millions of sports fans as the USFL--was the last football league to not merely challenge the NFL, but cause its owners and executives to collectively shudder. It spanned three seasons, 1983-85. It secured multiple television deals. It drew millions of fans and launched the careers of legends. But then it died beneath the weight of a particularly egotistical and bombastic owner--a New York businessman named Donald J. Trump. The league featured as many as 18 teams, and included such superstars as Steve Young, Jim Kelly, Herschel Walker, Reggie White, Doug Flutie and Mike Rozier. In Football for a Buck, the dogged reporter and biographer Jeff Pearlman draws on more than four hundred interviews to unearth all the salty, untold stories of one of the craziest sports entities to have ever captivated America. From 1980s drug excess to airplane brawls and player-coach punch outs, to backroom business deals, to some of the most enthralling and revolutionary football ever seen, Pearlman transports readers back in time to this crazy, boozy, audacious, unforgettable era of the game. He shows how fortunes were made and lost on the backs of professional athletes and also how, thirty years ago, Trump was a scoundrel and a spoiler. For fans of Terry Pluto's Loose Balls or Jim Bouton's Ball Four and of course Pearlman's own stranger-than-fiction narratives, Football for a Buck is sports as high entertainment--and a cautionary tale of the dangers of ego and excess.




The United States Football League, 1982-1986


Book Description

One of the most ambitious (and short-lived) endeavors in professional sports history, the United States Football League was founded in 1982. Premiering with a spring schedule and an abundance of talent that included top rookies and National Football League veterans, the USFL gained national attention with broadcast and cable television contracts, controversial player signings, ownership battles and an unsuccessful billion-dollar lawsuit against the NFL. The USFL folded after four years yet represented the last major challenge to America's big four sports leagues--the NFL, the National Basketball Association, the National Hockey League and Major League Baseball. Based upon extensive research and interviews with owners, coaches, players and administrators, this book chronicles the league's formation, its three seasons of play and its long-term effects on pro sports.




The League


Book Description

The epic tale of the five owners who shepherded the NFL through its tumultuous early decades and built the most popular sport in America The National Football League is a towering, distinctly American colossus spewing out $14 billion in annual revenue. But it was not always a success. In The League, John Eisenberg focuses on the pioneering sportsmen who kept the league alive in the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s, when its challenges were many and its survival was not guaranteed. At the time, college football, baseball, boxing, and horseracing dominated America's sports scene. Art Rooney, George Halas, Tim Mara, George Preston Marshall, and Bert Bell believed in pro football when few others did and ultimately succeeded only because at critical junctures each sacrificed the short-term success of his team for the longer-term good of the league. At once a history of a sport and a remarkable story of business ingenuity, The League is an essential read for any fan of our true national pastime.