Ben Gilbert

I know.

gonzo for the NFL.

There's one more presidential intervention in 1973.

Nixon really, really, really likes watching the Redskins, but he's sick of taking the helicopter to Camp David to watch their away games, which he actually was doing, which is unbelievable.

He was a nut.

Maybe should have been paying more attention to foreign policy and things like that.

But Camp David is sufficiently 75 miles away.

By the way, there was this whole cottage industry that sprouted up of hotels that were outside of the 75-mile radius.

And there were buses.

So people would go to these hotels and they would get rooms for the day to go watch the games.

This dynamic formed like plot lines on sitcoms in the 70s and the 80s.

So Nixon calls Pete Rozelle personally, the president, the sitting president of the United States, and says, hey...

We're in the playoffs this year.

You know, I think it would be a good idea for you to air playoff games, not every game, but playoff games locally.

And Pete Rozelle, even in 1973, is pretty dug in on this issue that it's a bad thing and it's cannibalizing to our most important thing, our gate revenue, if we do that.

So he says no to the sitting president.

And so then Nixon goes to Congress and says, will you please draft legislation, which got known as the blackout ban.

And so because Roselle denied the president, there is actually legislation that was passed in order to force the NFL's hand in broadcasting away games locally.

And this is one of the things that Roselle got super wrong.

The right thing was as soon as possible, the NFL to get as much distribution as possible because the TV rights would become the most important revenue line, but also the thing that most fueled the flywheel.