MS. REBECCA ROBERTSFrom WAMU 88.5 at American University in Washington, welcome to "The Kojo Nnamdi Show," connecting your community with the world. I'm Rebecca Roberts sitting in for Kojo. Later in the broadcast, a diplomat turned novelist finds inspiration and a mission in Afghanistan. But first, the NBA and NFL on the brink. This is the time of year when basketball and football players are usually beginning their preparations for the upcoming season, but unless players and owners manage to pull off a feat of magic, they and, of course, the fans could be looking at an outcome nobody wants, the cancellation of the 2011-2012 season.

MS. REBECCA ROBERTSOn the one hand, it kind of looked like a dispute with millionaires fighting with billionaires and that's a fairly poorly timed stand-off when so many Americans are in economic distress. But sports editor Dave Zirin says, there are much deeper fault lines under the fight between players and owners, fights that reflect major economic changes in the sports industry and in the relationship between franchises and local communities.

MS. REBECCA ROBERTSDave Zirin is here with me. He's the sports editor at The Nation and author of "Bad Sports: How Owners Are Ruining the Game We Love" and "A People's History of Sports in the United States." Welcome back to "The Kojo Nnamdi Show."

MR. DAVE ZIRINOh, great to be here, Rebecca.

ROBERTSSo give us a quick update of where we stand with these negotiations, starting with the NFL.

ZIRINAll right. In the NFL, there actually is some decent news to report. Jerry Jones, the owner of the Dallas Cowboys, last week, actually even released a preseason schedule.

ROBERTSCan you hear Washingtonians hissing all over town?

ZIRINYeah. Or...

ROBERTSYeah.

ZIRIN...pleading -- you know, the Cowboys statistically are the second most popular team in this region, which just gives you an idea of how polarized D.C. is, even in sports. And you will see Cowboys decals on cars if you drive around town. But Jerry Jones released a preseason schedule. The people who are in charge of the Hall of Fame game, which is the first preseason game of the year, Canton, announced today that they are going ahead as planned.

ZIRINBut both of that is still happy optimism at this point. There still is a tremendous fault line. But what makes people feel optimistic is that the fault line isn't between owners and players anymore. The fault line is between owners who want to get a deal done now and a small group of owners who are saying, wait a minute, we want to fundamentally change and restructure the financial relationship with the players. And until that's done, we're not budging.

ROBERTSSo that -- is that sort of letting the perfect be the enemy of the good? I mean, at some point you say, let's get the season on the road, right?

ZIRINWell, yeah. I mean, what it is, is a divide less in that philosophical realm and more in the realm of -- there are some owners who, like Jerry Jones, frankly, who are saying, you know what? I will be bankrupt if there is no season this year because I have borrowed so much money on my stadium and put so much of my own money into the stadium, that if we don't have games, I can't pay my note to the bank.

ZIRINA lot of these owners built these stadiums with mixed relationships of public subsidies and private funds. And now, in the wake of the 2008 economic crisis, the public subsidies just are not there in the states and the money that's owed to the banks becomes bigger and bigger because they can't borrow money on the stadiums like they thought they'd be able to. So what you have here is a very interesting reflection of what a lot of homeowners have had to deal with. I mean...

ROBERTSRight, team owners under water.

ZIRINYeah, deflationary crisis. It's happening in sports and it's happening all across sports. The Los Angeles Dodgers, which I would argue is the most culturally important franchise in the history of American sports, declared bankruptcy last week.

ROBERTSAnd you can hear New York Yankees fans hissing the entire...

ZIRINYes, that's true. But two words, Jackie Robinson. Two more, Sandy Koufax, Fernando Valenzuela. I'm talking about cultural significance, not World Series rings. And you're absolutely right, the people in -- I won't be allowed to go home to Brooklyn after saying that.

ROBERTSYeah, you really won't.

ZIRINBut it is true that the Dodgers are bankrupt. That's something everybody agrees on.

ROBERTSBut largely because of a messy divorce and bad investments by their owners, not necessarily the economics of the league, right?

ZIRINNo, no. That's rooted in the economics of the league because Frank McCourt, a.k.a., Frank McBankrupt, was -- is that nickname Frank McBankrupt that goes back to when he first bought the team because it was bought as a leveraged real estate buy. So at the time, people were like, he's bankrupt, and he said, don't worry about it, I'll keep being able to borrow on this. He borrowed $107 million so he and his wife then, Jamie, could lead a lifestyle of conspicuous consumption that would honestly make Caligula blush.

ZIRINI mean, we're talking $15,000 haircuts here and that doesn't look good in these economic times, either.

ROBERTSThat's a per hair price, that's awfully high.

ZIRINI know, right? Yeah, but as a story, it's very similar to what's happened to the New York Mets, what happened last year to the Texas Rangers. It's about owners who borrowed on their club thinking that the well spring of public subsidies would never end and it has.

ROBERTSAnd what about the NBA? Where do we stand there?

ZIRINThat's not good news, especially for my fellow NBA junkies. Because the problem in the NBA is that we're just finishing a season where the NBA had record revenues, $4.3 billion, more than they've ever had before. And yet, David Stern and the owners are claiming that 22 of the 30 teams lost money. Now, Forbes magazine put out their own analysis yesterday, which has the NBA furious because this is Forbes, mind you, not the nation.

ZIRINAnd Forbes is saying that the NBA is lying and that by their calculations, it's just completely funny economic math. It's voodoo economics. They are cutting all kinds of corners to make it look like they're losing money when they're not. But even Forbes says at least half the teams lost money last year, even though they have record revenues. So what they are asking the players to do, they're saying, save us from ourselves. We want the Union to agree to formal fiscal constraints on what we can spend so -- to save us from the free market.

ZIRINAnd the players are saying, wait a minute, there. No one has a gun to your head. No one's telling you you have to pay Brendan Haywood $65 million or Andray Blatche $30 million. You're doing that by your own free will. Why should we do that for you? If the market will bear it, then the market will bear it. And Ted Leonsis says, whose -- I say that because he's a local guy. He owns the Wizards and the Capitals. He said -- and this is just very evocative to me, that they need the kind of financial agreement that, quote, "prevents owners from taking their stupid pills," end quote.

ROBERTSSo the conventional wisdom has, sort of, been that the difference between these disputes is that the NFL, the owners and the players are trying to figure out how to fairly divide up a whole lot of profit.

ZIRINOh, yes.

ROBERTSAnd in the NBA, there's actually some fundamental economic problems that they need to solve going forward. Is that a fair characterization?

ZIRINThat is very fair. And that's a very good way to explain it. Another aspect of it as well is that the NFL has that added spice of the health and safety issues, which by my research, and frankly my many discussions with NFL players, has had actually a radicalizing political effect on a lot of NFL guys. Because one of the things that NFL owners have been saying all along is, we want two more games.

ZIRINAnd they're saying this concurrent with a raft of new research about the long term effect of concussions, research that shows the NFL players die 20 years earlier than a typical American male, research about Lou Gehrig's disease, otherwise known as ALS and how that can affect players who have repeated concussions. Even to the point that a forensic researcher, to go to your field Rebecca, a forensic researcher said that Lou Gehrig may have had repeated concussions as a player and that's how he got what was known as Lou Gehrig's disease.

ZIRINSo this has had the effect on players who are saying, wait a minute, you want us to play two extra games? No. I want to pick up my kids when I'm in my 40s. And that has made the tenor of this out -- argue much more dramatic and much more political than I think the NBA contest is going to be.

ROBERTSMy guest is Dave Zirin, sports editor at The Nation and author of "Bad Sports: How Owners Are Ruining the Games We Love." You can join us at 800-433-8850 or e-mail us kojo@wamu.org. Why do you think these disputes, these labor disputes, are going on in professional sports and what do you think the outcome should be? Dave, I just mentioned the name of your book about how owners are ruining the game we love. So it's not hard to necessarily predict where you stand on this. But...

ZIRINI feel it's prescient because look at this, I mean, "Owners Ruining The Games We Love" came out almost a year ago. Now, two of the major sports, the owners have locked the doors. These are not strikes, they are lock outs and nothing ruins the game more than not having a game to watch.

ROBERTSSo at what point do fans just say, forget it, I'm tired of all of you people?

ZIRINThat's a very real risk, especially for the NBA. I mean, the NFL, you could make a strong case that this is the leviathan that sits atop, not just American sports, but American pop culture. I mean, the NBC show Sunday Night Football in America was the number one fall rated show on all of television. The Superbowl was watched by more people than ever before.

ZIRINAnd for me, that's fascinating culturally because you think about the way in which entertainment numbers have fragmented so dramatically as people have more channels and video games and entertainment options, the internet, Netflix live streaming. And yet, the NFL continues to grow in popularity. So...

ROBERTSAnd the Superbowl was not enormous market teams.

ZIRINExactly, exactly. Green Bay and Pittsburgh. Now the NBA, though, is coming off a season that out of nowhere, bang, went up like a rocket. And that had everything to do, researchers, market researchers say, with the Miami Heat coming together with Dwyane Wade and LeBron James. It created a true team that people would either love or hate. I think it was Elie Wiesel who said the opposite of love is not hate, but indifference.

ZIRINThere was a team that nobody could be indifferent about and that drove people to the sets. So there was record television ratings...

ROBERTSDid you just quote Elie Wiesel in a conversation about professional sports (word?) ...

ZIRINIt was either Wiesel or Yogi Bear. I can't remember who. But you had record ratings, you had fifth highest attendance in NBA history and you had, like I said, record revenues this year and the continuing global popularity of the sport. So they're actually taking a real risk if there's no NBA this year, that they will actually flatten that momentum.

ROBERTSAnd they know what it's like to not be popular.

ZIRINYes.

ROBERTSYou know, it's not a given by any means.

ZIRINBy any means that -- and that's actually one of the things that's interesting about these negotiations is that the NBA has been -- David Stern, his assistant Adam Silver, they've been planning this for three or four years on the theory that things were just keep getting worse and worse. Because you're absolutely right, the post-Michael Jordan era in basketball, which has been about a decade, has been largely dark economically for the NBA.

ZIRINAnd yet this year, bang, it became the flavor of the month. So you have a lot of -- what's very interesting is that you have a lot of owners right now, not unlike the NFL, who are split against other owners saying, let's just get a deal done. Let's not worry about the fundamental restructuring of the economics of our sport. Let's get back on the court because we're on a winning streak right now.

ROBERTSAnd are the folks who are interested in fundamental restructuring largely from smaller TV markets and who want revenue sharing?

ZIRINNo. It's interesting. I mean, that's part of it, but the people who are really interested in the fundamental restructuring are a group of new owners who bought teams in recent years at record high prices, inflated prices. Like, you know, the team that was bought for the most money in the history of the NBA was recently in the last two years. It was the Golden State Warriors. I mean, not exactly a team that's had any real success for decades.

ROBERTSAnd who play in Sacramento.

ZIRINOh, no, they play in San Francisco, (word?) and the Kings here are even worse.

ROBERTSOh, right, yeah, yeah.

ZIRINThat's the true...

ROBERTSOr even worse.

ZIRIN...much worse, much worse. I mean, that's a whole other story with the Kings and real estate and Las Vegas owners, the Maloof brothers that tells the bad sports story all its own. But these new owners bought their teams on the promise from David Stern that they should pay inflated prices because a labor deal would make it mammoth-ly popular in the years to come. So they were promised this. They were promised the restructuring and they spent several hundred million dollars more than the market value because they were promised this.

ZIRINAnd that creates a pressure all its own. I would say this to all the small market owners who, I'm sure, listen to "The Kojo Nnamdi Show." I would say this to them, if they were really interested in competitive balance, the NBA would have revenue sharing. They have the least revenue sharing of any league in all the major sports. And just to give you an idea about competitive advantages, disadvantage, which is what you are raising, the Lakers, next year, if the season goes on as planned, will make $150 million in television money.

ZIRINThe Portland Trailblazers will make $150 million over the next decade in television money. That's the real competitive imbalance. And the one thing the NFL does so well is that for decades they have shared the television money.

ROBERTSAnd in terms of sort of winning the hearts and minds of fans, who's doing the best P.R.?

ZIRINOh, I say this absolutely and positively, I think DeMaura Smith, the head of the NFL players association, has played the -- one of the recent -- the first NFL P.A. President, who wasn't a former player has played this like an absolute maestro. I mean, DeMaura Smith came into this thing with every card stacked against him. I mean, the NFL owners even had a sweetheart deal with NBC where they were going to get paid this fall even if there was no football.

ZIRINAnd DeMaura Smith challenged that in court and got that knocked down. And he has waged a P.R. battle, which frankly has resonated on Capitol Hill, where he has said, if you're locking us out, you're not just locking out NFL players. You're locking out every stadium worker, every parking attendant, every waiter or waitress who picks up an extra shift at the restaurant bar in the stadium or arena.

ZIRINHe has made this argument in the context of slow job growth, economic recession, call it what you will, and that has had the effect of really resonating, I think, with larger groups of people. That, plus the injury piece, has more fans. And this is, like, not just me saying this. I mean, like, true independent observers -- and I admit, like, I really do have a thesis that I think owners are ruining sports.

ZIRINBut very independent observers are just saying, like, wow, the fans are siding with the players. And another reason is this 18 and 16 game thing. I interview 3,000 fans for my book and the most common complaint about sports was actually, seasons are too long. And that's...

ROBERTSWell, certainly in hockey and basketball, for crying out loud.

ZIRINIt's insane. It's insane. You're just, like, it's still going on and football gets it right, 16 games, 17 weeks. It's finite. You can get your head around it, every week counts.

ROBERTSDo you foresee Congress getting involved?

ZIRINI think it's possible. I think most people you talk to say they shouldn't. You know, that's a very common feeling out there. I mean, you talked about NFL people not having a lot sympathy for professional athletes in this climate. I think the sympathy for politicians isn't exactly very high these days.

ZIRINAnd most people say, you know, well, let them figure out the problems and the rest of the world before they deal with sports. I think that there will be a strong temptation, particularly for the Obama administration, to get involved because sluggish job growth, is what most people say, stands between him and a rather easy re-election.

ZIRINSo and then you see the republicans doing that. That that's the gong that they're hitting, whether they're Michele Bachmann, social conservative, Mitt Romney, more of an economic guy. It's all about the economy. So there will be a temptation by Obama to take this on.

ROBERTSSave NFL, save your re-election?

ZIRINExactly. Well said. Whoa, you should be a campaign person.

ROBERTSDave Zirin, sports editor at The Nation, author of "Bad Sports: How Owners Are Ruining the Games We Love," and "A People's History of Sports In The United States." Thank you so much for coming in.

ZIRINMy pleasure. Can I make a quick announcement?

ROBERTSAbsolutely.

ZIRINGreat. Because it's right near my house, it's the 4th Solidarity Forum by University of Maryland employees, held by the Black Faculty and Staff Association, Friday July 15, 7:00 to 9:00 p.m. at the Nyumburu Cultural Center. Let's build alliances between community folks and the folks who work at UMD, which is the largest employer in the state of Maryland.

ROBERTSThanks, Dave.

ZIRINThank you.

ROBERTSComing up, author Patricia McArdle on her experiences in Afghanistan. I'm Rebecca Roberts sitting in for Kojo Nnamdi. We'll be right back after this quick break. Stay tuned.