The NFL locked up new six-year deals this week with Fox and CBS for Sunday day games from 2006 to 2011 and the league and the television industry now are waiting for the other nickel to drop.
Of course, the NFL and television rights fees aren't about nickels, they're about billions of dollars.
What's left:
* Sunday night games, which could be split into two packages, as was the case from 1990 to '97, when ESPN and TNT each had half a season.
* Monday night games, which have been on ABC since 1970 but are not guaranteed to stay there.
* A new Thursday/Saturday prime-time cable package involving eight games late in the season.
The deals with Fox and CBS are worth $8 billion. The NFL got another $3.5 billion from DirectTV for continued exclusivity of the NFL Sunday Ticket pay package through 2010.
When the remaining deals are concluded, the NFL could be pocketing $20 billion to $22 billion over six years.
In 1960, Commissioner Pete Rozelle negotiated a $600,000 rights deal with one network, CBS.
The first billion-dollar deal was made in 1987, with CBS, NBC and ABC agreeing to pay a total of $1.89 billion over six years.
The first network to spend more than $1 billion on the NFL was Fox, which at the end of 1993 agreed to pay a then-staggering $1.58 billion over four years (1994 to '97) for the NFC package.
Speculation Time
So, what's next? Can ABC hang onto Monday nights? Will NBC wrest it away and also get the new Thursday/Saturday package for one of its cable networks such as USA? Will ESPN have to share the Sunday night package? Will the league save some late-season games to put on its year-old NFL Network?
ESPN, which bills itself as the sports television leader, just about has to hang onto the NFL. ESPN, for now, can bid only on the Sunday night package. If it bids on any other package, such as Monday nights, then outsiders such as NBC and TNT will also be able to bid.
ABC and ESPN have exclusive bidding rights for another year, but only on their own packages.
Under the new deal, the Monday night rights-holder, now ABC, will not have a weekday prime-time exclusive, because games will also be on cable Thursday nights late in the season.
To compensate for that, the league has persuaded CBS and Fox to agree to a flexible schedule, the Monday night rights-holder getting to pick the best games toward the end of the season.
