WASHINGTON -- Howard Cosell attacked as blackmail NFL owners' attempts to get sweetheart financial deals from host cities with the threat of moving their team at a Congressional hearing Wednesday.
'Yes, I view it as blackmail or extortion,' the long-time ABC commentator said before the Senate Judiciary Committee in a hearing on two bills that seek to restrict sports franchise movement.
'Let them run their business like any other (without protection granted by Congress). Lord knows they're big business,' he added.
Cossell was one of five sports figures, including Donald Trump, millionaire owner of the United States Football League's New Jersey Generals, to testify before the committee.
A bill in the Judiciary Committee sponsored by Sen. Dennis DeConcini, D-Ariz., would give the NFL and other sports leagues wide-ranging antitrust exemption; while another bill, sponsored by Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., would give the NFL only limited antitrust exemption for restricting franchise movement under certain proposed standards.
Trump said he sees no reason why the NFL should get further exemption from federal antitrust laws.
If Congress gives the NFL immunity to antitrust laws, said Trump, it would be bolstering a 'monopoly' and could prove fatal for the fledging USFL.
'The USFL, as a new league, absolutely must have the NFL under the (antitrust) laws of the state. We are dealing with a great monopoly,' he said.
'The NFL must be subject to antitrust -- as is every other business,' he added.
Cosell said, however, limited antitrust protection may be needed to restrict franchise movement, as is proposed in Specter's bill. Specter would prohibit team movement unless it can demonstrate financial hardship or an inadequate stadium.
Officials from the NFL, USFL and other sports leagues testified earlier in the week before another Senate committee considering two different franchise-related bills.
NFL officials, who support measures that would give them protection from federal antitrust rules, told the committee that such legislation would protect cities from having teams pulled out from under them by adventurous owners.
Jay Moyer, the counsel to NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle, said recent court rulings in favor of owners seeking to move teams have created 'an imperiled relationship between teams and their communities.'
Moyer said the NFL should be 'treated as a business making business decisions' rather than as a loosely-knit group of team owners conspiring to make decisions.
A series of bills have been introduced in Congress in the wake of a swirl of rumors relating to the movement of sports teams in the NFL and National Basketball Association. All of the bills would grant the NFL - and some would grant other leagues -- varying degrees of antitrust exemption to allow leagues to restrict the movement of teams from city to city.
The NFL already has a limited antitrust exemption granted in the '60s to permit its merger with the American Football League. Baseball has had antitrust protection since the '20s.
Trump, a nationally prominent business figure who signed Heisman Trophy winner Doug Flutie to a Generals contract this week, said the NFL and the three television networks have collaborated to squeeze opposing leagues off the air.
'A network would prefer to put on fly fishing from Nicaragua' than televising the USFL because of the NFL's strangle-hold on network television, Trump charged.
He also said another Senate bill that would require NFL expansion into two cities that have USFL teams would mean 'literally the demise of the USFL.'
