Ben Gilbert

There are three basketball and three soccer players at the top of the list before any football players.

The NFL has managed to sort of smooth the curve more than other sports have.

Thank you.

Apparently, LeBron James has signed some secret deal with Nike for the rest of his lifetime that's something crazy high that is just not even accounted for in these numbers.

Wow.

This is actually a good place to flip to power.

Yep, they absolutely have a cornered resource.

Yep, completely agree.

And clearly, this is why the fight with the AFL was worth it.

We need the greatest players on Earth to play this game, and we can't have them spread across two leagues competing against each other.

If we have all the best players, then we get to do all the incredible things that the NFL has gotten to do, like the media rights negotiations.

Yeah, certainly.

And I think generalizing from that, I agree with even more that this for the greater good mindset was easier to do when everyone's individual franchise was smaller.

But when you've got these teams that have already been around for 100 years, like good luck talking them out of a machine that already works well.

Yes.

Yep.

You know, I've been thinking about branding.

I actually don't think this one has branding power because the definition of branding power is if somebody offers you the same thing with a different brand on it, will you pay more?

The thing about getting multiple congressional antitrust exemptions is that there isn't another game in town.

I mean, there's sort of a rebooted XFL.