How business social computing could help the National Football League (NFL)

When most people think about social computing and football, they probably think of fans discussing their teams on websites.  But I think social computing could help with the NFL’s labor problems, the draft, and weekly game preparation. Here’s how. (Settle in, because I’ve thought this through.)

First, if this strikes you as outlandish, keep in mind that football is a business with the same situation our customers face – a huge amount of data and many critical decisions being made every day. This is social computing’s sweet spot.

If you follow football, you’ve probably heard that the owners and the players have reached a stalemate in their negotiations. One of the fundamental premises in a negotiation is that a certain amount of tension has to be created to cause the two parties to make the compromises that lead to an agreement.  One of the problems with the collective bargaining agreement (CBA) negotiations is that both sides have very powerful personalities who seem to have a fair amount of ego involved. In addition, these negotiations have a substantial number of people involved (probably too many).  So how on earth does applying a business social computing solution (which means getting leverage from having many people interacting) help here?

Fan-driven mediation
I’m not going to suggest that we should take the process out of the hands of the professionals and just let fans decide. But I think getting fan input might provide a better path for moving the discussion forward versus spending a lot of time trying to hash this out in the legal system. My suggestion here is to have fans create and vote on proposals for specific portions of the disagreement. The highest-scoring proposals are presented to the owners and players to consider. In the ideal case, both sides prepare some sort of a response to the proposal.

Why is this any better than the process that is currently being used? First of all, it’s neutral. In highly charged negotiations, it can sometimes be difficult to objectively recognize that the other party has a good idea. With fan involvement, the idea doesn’t come from either side. Second, it’s clear that a negotiation of this scope will need to be done in pieces. For example, the owners and players were able to come to some agreement around the rookie wage scale (the rules contract length and caps on the initial contract). Third, this gives fans a chance to be heard. Right now, the typical NFL fan is looking forward to the draft and has no idea of whether any progress is being made on an actual season happening this fall.

It seems pretty feasible for fans to propose solutions to individual elements like an 18-game season, financial disclosure (at a high level), retirement benefits, etc.  As one example, the Dan Patrick radio show proposed an option to create a season that had 18-weeks of regular season television coverage without requiring players to play 18 regular season games.  Maybe some other fan will put a simpler proposal on the table to just give every team two bye weeks and make the regular season be one week longer (and lose one pre-season game to compensate). In a negotiation of this scope, it’s clear that the owners and players have a lot of work to do. Having fans break that work up just might help move the ball down the field – so to speak.

To hear more about how social computing can help the NFL, check back for part 2 of this blog later this week…