Blackouts could be an issue this year for NFL

The Jacksonville Jaguars have come out and said that all 8 of their regular season home games this year are in danger of not selling out. This problem is mainly explained by the severely struggling home market in the surrounding areas of the team. In the NFL the television rule is that if a game is not sold out within 72 hours of the kickoff it is subject to blackout on all local affiliates including the DirecTV NFL Sunday Ticket package. Do you understand what this means? Jags fans may not be able to see any home games at all this year without forking out the dough and buying a ticket themselves!

Now i understand where the NFL is coming from. If you want to watch the game then buy a damn ticket but these are different times the nation is going through. This economy is hurting everyone, especially professional sports. But think about what happens if there aren't any games for those fans this year. The die hard fans will follow the game somehow. Maybe radio or the internet webcasts or hopefully buy tickets. The average sports fan will probably not care too much, not go buy tickets for the games, stop buying apparel that supports the team, and maybe even hop on the bandwagon of another team that they can see on TV that is in no trouble of blackouts like the Steelers, Cowgirls, or maybe even the Skins. Then there is the person who isn't a fan at all, or at least not yet. The NFL is growing, and growing fast. They depend on grasping new fans and making money off of them. So if Jags games aren't on TV no one will be exposed to them and maybe start liking them. So now you'll have a dying franchise in the Jags, and probably even more Cowgirls fans (which are for the most part band wagoners anyway).

I hope that this doesn't happen throughout the league. Maybe I am forced to look at the issue in a different way because I am obviously a Skins fan and they have sold out for about 450 years now. So, what happens now? Hopefully people dig deep in those pockets and go to the games so this is a non-issue. If these blackouts happen that would be bad for the NFL and hurt the economy even more, and i think we can all agree that that would be bad