Bears linebacker Brian Urlacher was fined $100,000 by the NFL because he wore a hat that said Vitamin Water at Super Bowl Media Day.
After possum and hide the salami, devil's advocate is my favorite game to play.
Everyone has been killing the NFL for this stiff fine and it's lax attitude towards its players' misbehavior. I think they whacked Chris Henry and Pacman Jones pretty good.
The better analogy would be to compare it to the NFL's stringent enforcement of its copyright, like going after a church for charging admission to the showing of the Super Bowl.
To quote Mike Francesa in a rare good moment "If you have a church bazaar in Walla Walla, Washington and you hang a sign that says "Super Bowl" in the window on the back of a paper plate, the NFL will be there with its lawyers 5 minutes later."
But I said I was going to defend the NFL on this one. Gatorade pays a lot of money to the NFL to be the "exclusive" energy drink provider of the NFL. If they fail to ensure that exclusivity, not only could the value of all its endorsement contracts (which pay the players' salaries) go down, they could be subject to a lawsuit. And they had to make the fine big because otherwise companies could offer a guy 10 grand to wear the hat, and pay his fine, another 10 grand and get a bunch of advertising.
2 comments:
I agree. People may think it's a crazy fine but who knows what Urlacher was paid to wear the hat? It was the Superbowl after all. Think about what a 90 second slot costs these companies for a commercial. Maybe he broke even or still made money for the endorsement!
Paul,
You're getting wiser with each year that passes. You nailed this one.
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