The NFL Product

I didn't want to bring the NFL into FinTruth--a.k.a. the Financial Truth--because the NFL is entertainment, a sport, and it is almost taboo to bring the NFL into our finance-related truths. But, it's also still a business.

Let me take you to a new Red Zone product provdied by the NFL Network via Verizon FIOS and Comcast. Don't get me wrong. I'm a beneficiary of the RedZone--it's the best part of NFL Sunday Ticket and I get it cheap.

You see, NFL Sunday Ticket--solely provided by Direct TV--now has its RedZone portion provided by Verizon FIOS and Comcast Cable. It provides viewers with all the scoring possessions of every NFL team in the country. I love it. For $5o, I get the RedZone channel for the entire season.

Now, if you're a Miami fan living in Washington, D.C., you still might want NFL Sunday Ticket to watch the entire Dolphin game--and all Dolphin games--throughout the year. However, Redskin fans in Washington, D.C. can watch the RedZone channel during commercials and during the games the 'Skins aren't playing in.

The problem is for those local fans, who get Direct TV just to get NFL Sunday Ticket. This year, they're sitting with a satellite dish on their roof and ripped off for the fact that they invested in Sunday Ticket, only later finding out that cable subscribers paid $50 for this benefit.

They must have paid more than $300 for NFL Sunday Ticket...we paid $50.

That said, unemployment continues to rise, the Redskins' owner--Daniel Snyder--pays way too much money for players so that he can market the team rather than put together a winner and the Redskins showed nothing in their three receivers drafted last year during the first week of the season. Frankly, Orakpo didn't show too much either against the Giants.

It's still too early to tell for the Redskins this season, but here are the facts:

The NFL wins, the NFL owners win, the NFL owners will win when they lock out players before the 2011 season and, as usual, the fans lose.

Unless, of course, your team either gets to the playoffs, wins the Super Bowl or you won in this week's pool. Also, with fantasy football, the NFL will always be the true winners for keeping fans involved in all the games. Plus, for fanatasy football players like myself, I'm a winner for paying $50 for RedZone. For my friends who already paid for their Sunday Ticket, they're the $250-$300 losers. Rip off. Yes.

But we're finding out more and more in business--and politics--that life is not necessarily fair.

That said, welcome back NFL...I love it. And, it makes me forget, for one day, about the incredible economic abyss we--as a nation--live in. Especially when the great actor Gene Hackman promotes Lowes above Home Depot as the top hardware store in the country.