This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, July 28, 2011 - The late Albert Benjamin "Happy" Chandler was twice the governor of Kentucky, a U.S. senator and the second commissioner of baseball. He held the last post from 1945-1951, succeeding the legendary Judge Kennesaw Mountain Landis as the moral custodian of the big leagues.
During his tenure, he became known as the "players' commissioner." He advocated on behalf of a minimum wage, created a pension fund for the men who actually played the game and, most significantly, presided over the racial integration of Major League Baseball.
When Branch Rickey sought to sign Jackie Robinson, Chandler backed the move. He'd served on the Senate Military Affairs Committee during WW II and reasoned at the time, "Plenty of Negro boys were willing to go out and fight and die for this country. Is it right when they come back to tell them they can't play the national pastime?"
This brand of fair-minded egalitarianism was not universally popular and is generally considered to be one reason he was not retained for a second term. Later, reflecting on his experience as commissioner, Chandler described the team owners of his day: "They were refreshingly dumb fellows -- greedy, shortsighted and stupid."
Given his knack for trenchant observation, it's a damned shame that Ol' Hap isn't around to comment on the current crop of NFL owners because he could have had a field day with this cavalcade of clowns.
Pete Rozelle was the architect of the modern NFL. His tenure as commissioner transformed the league and elevated professional football from an afterthought into an obsession. If baseball was the national pastime, football would become the national religion.
Rozelle understood that the game was ideally suited for television. As baseball fan George Will drolly observed, the game features the two worst aspects of American society -- violence interrupted by committee meetings. The naturally occurring pauses in the action provided the perfect opportunity to run commercials. In fact, Rozelle invented the two-minute warning as a way to install an extra commercial break into each half of play.
Being a showman, Rozelle sought to attract the largest possible audience for the longest period of time. Because viewers tend to tune out when scores become lop-sided, he needed close games with climatic endings to drive up ratings. The more people watched, the more he could charge for broadcast rights, which explains the commissioner's enduring commitment to competitive parity between teams.
Rozelle realized his dream by introducing his owners to the joys of socialism. TV rights became a league property with each franchise receiving an equal share of the pie. The annual draft of college players allowed weaker teams to pick first and thus emerged as a mechanism to standardize talent throughout the league. Visiting teams received 40 percent of the home team's gate.
Because the respective teams relied on each other to stage the show, Rozelle convinced owners that to compete on the field, they had to collaborate off of it.
In doing so, he transformed ownership from a rag-tag amalgamation of venture capitalists and sportsmen into the billionaire boys' club it is today. The only flaw in Rozelle's ingenious business plan was that it's patently illegal.
Unlike baseball, football enjoys no exemption from antitrust laws and the NFL as structured is essentially one massive, on-going antitrust violation.
If a young man leaves a university with a degree in accounting, he's free to sell his services to the highest bidder. He can play prospective employers against each other to negotiate the best deal available. He may also consider non-monetary factors in his decision. If his girlfriend lives in Tampa, for instance, he may be willing to work for less money there rather than relocate to Buffalo. This process is what we call free enterprise.
If the same young man wishes to play professional football in the United States, he's at the mercy of the NFL. The league assigns him to a team that owns exclusive rights to his services for at least three years. Good-bye, Tampa; hello, Buffalo.
Management can operate in this fashion only because labor agrees to it. Football players, like anybody else, are free to waive their legal rights. You might think that those who profit from operating an illegal monopoly would be reticent to rock the boat. You would be wrong.
When the last collective bargaining agreement expired, owners demanded a larger piece of the pie. The players balked and management responded by locking them out of team facilities. The players responded by decertifying their union. Absent a collective bargaining agent (the union) to waive their rights, the players initiated antitrust litigation against the owners.
Last week, Commissioner Roger Goodell triumphantly announced that an agreement had been reached to end the impasse. He failed to mention, however, that this agreement was reached exclusively by the owners and that the players had no idea of what it entailed.
As of this writing, owners and player representatives of the non-existent union are reported to have reconciled. The next order of business will be to re-certify the union so that it can waive the players' antitrust protection and we can all get back to the otherwise illegal enterprise of professional football.
Speaking in generalities, the NFL has three components: the billionaires in the owners' boxes, the millionaires on the field and the thousandaires in the stands. Without the players, there is no game. Without the fans, there is no money. The contribution of the owners is less clear.
The Green Bay Packers are owned by the city in which they play. The franchise is a municipal corporation operated in similar fashion to the water department in St. Louis. Despite frigid conditions on the "frozen tundra" of Lambeau Field, the team has never demanded a domed stadium and management has never threatened to move it to greener pastures elsewhere.
And though the storied team lacks the inspired leadership of a private owner, the Packers are once again the world champions of professional football.
M.W. Guzy is a retired St. Louis cop who currently works for the city Sheriff's Department. His column appears weekly in the Beacon.