MLB Closing Money Gap on NFL

Don't get me wrong, I enjoy professional football. It's just that such celebration of mind-melding, body-crushing hits -- and a documented history of treating former players with a lack of respect bordering on disdain -- always makes me vaguely uncomfortable about watching. I usually become numb to this impulse right around kickoff time.

So maybe it's supposed to make me feel better that Major League Baseball is closing the money gap on the NFL. Maybe it means we're all not a bunch of depraved, bloodthirsty lunatics; maybe it means we can gather 'round a TV and make a game which doesn't rely on brutal violence, or overpowering force, but instead skill and precision, our country's biggest sporting cash cow.

Or maybe it just means MLB is learning how to better monetize its product:

"I probably shouldn't say this," one highly placed MLB executive said last week. "There was a time when I wouldn't even think it. But I think we're going to see a time in the future, the near future, when we are going to pass the NFL in producing revenue."

The final revenue figures for 2007 still are being calculated, but Selig said the projection is $5.6 billion to $5.8 billion. The NFL produced $5.7 billion in revenue in 2005 and is expected to rise to about $6.3 billion this year. MLB definitely is closing what was once a huge gap.

With its global development and the Internet, MLB has tapped into revenue streams that have money flowing into the central fund, which passes most of it back to the clubs in equal shares, the Kansas City Royals getting as much as the New York Yankees. MLB's TV network, another potential source of major revenue, has a launch slated for 2009.

"The economic model we were using in the 1990s was broken," Selig said. "I don't think we really realized how badly it was broken. The same with the labor fights every four years. I don't think we really knew how much we were hurting ourselves. Fans did not want to hear about that. They want to know about the sport on the field, and that has never been better."

Yes, if Phil Rogers and the fine folks at MLB headquarters are to be believed, Major League Baseball is indeed closing the supposedly unclosable gap between NFL and the rest of the major sports. Is NFL's hegemony over? Is MLB going to come out of its steroid era not only intact, but fighting for first among the major sports franchises? Remarkable, if still a little farfetched.

At the very least, it makes me feel better about Americans. Instead of ignoring callous violence toward athletes of questionable natural stature, we can go back to ignoring the known chemical enhancers. This land was made for you and me, wasn't it?