NFL Tidbits

A couple of interesting things I read today over at MMQB:

First, a quote by Peyton Manning when asked about his 500th TD pass, he ended the game only 5 TD's behind Brett Favre who holds the all-time record:

"...somebody asked me if for my first [touchdown pass], ‘Did we wear leather helmets?’ So, that was a nice free cheap shot there. I wouldn’t start that guy on your fantasy team next week. He’s not going to get a lot of balls next week. I’ll leave him nameless.”

And now, money:

Quietly, every franchise in the NFL just improved its bottom line by $24.2 million a year, without any effort whatsoever. The new deal the NFL signed Wednesday with DirecTV, an eight-year contract worth a minimum of $12 billion (I hear it’s slightly more than that) beginning in 2015, is an increase in rights fees for satellite TV from $1 billion to $1.5 billion per year. That $500-million-per-year increase nets out to $15.6 million per team. Add to that the new $275 million this year from CBS for doing the Thursday night package ($8.6 million per team) and you’ve got $24.2 million a year more in found money for NFL teams from TV revenue alone. (To be clear, the DirecTV contract starts in 2015, and the $275 million will certainly be the floor that the NFL accepts from whichever network does the Thursday night package in 2015.)

By Wednesday, the long-term future of the Bills (and maybe a new downtown stadium) will be assured. Terry Pegula, 63, who has made his fortune in the natural gas and fracking businesses, and wife Kim are likely to be approved in a landslide by the NFL’s 31 owners at the annual fall meeting in New York City. He’s buying the Bills for $1.4 billion, almost $500 million more than their appraised value, and word on the NFL street is he’d like to oversee construction of a new stadium in downtown Buffalo, near the hockey arena where his Sabres—he owns them too—play. Think of the inflation of franchises in less than a generation. In 2000 the Jets were sold to Woody Johnson for $635 million. New York is the biggest city in the country. Buffalo is 73rd-biggest, behind Henderson, Nev., and Plano, Texas. If you rank by TV markets, Buffalo is 52nd (because of its surrounding counties). But if the NFL franchise in Buffalo is worth $1.4 billion, what are the franchises in New York worth? What would the Cowboys sell for?