With bated breath, we await the kickoff of what should be a classic season opener and all fans everywhere are dreaming of, if everything goes just right, a Super Bowl season, however not everything is looking up, Up UP in the NFL.

Because attendance is going DOWN, Down, down.

The mighty NFL’s overall attendance is expected to drop for the third straight season this year and overall the gate could be the lowest since 1998 with some teams even facing the grim reality of a blacked-out first home game.

The reasons are many including a brutal economy with its 10% unemployment and some teams consistently sucking for far too long, but the number one reason is far scarier for the league.

Simply put, watching NFL games on TV is getting to be a better experience than watching them in person.

With fans making the investment in high definition PVR’s, home theaters and HUGE screens, the incentive to stay home has become competitive with the prospect of driving to the stadium, tailgating with drunken grandmothers, lining up for $6.00 beers and $8.00 hot dogs – or in Dallas’s case, $60 pizzas.

Television is the economic engine that makes the NFL the greatest sports league in the world. The last contract, set to expire in the 2011, earned the teams a combined $20.4 billion over its term, with all revenues equally shared between the 32 teams.

That’s what pays the bills. What makes the profit is the gate.

So imagine you are a Tampa Bay Buccaneers fan. Your team went 3-13 last season and is in a rebuilding year and the season opener is against the Cleveland Browns – who only were slightly better finishing 5-11. According to the Fan Cost Index your cost for a family of four to purchase tickets, food and drink, programs, caps and parking for Sunday’s game at Raymond James Stadium would be $399.40.

Or, Option B would be to just stay home and watch it on your 52” flat screen with the Buccaneer themed beer fridge a short stagger away.

In Tampa, too many are going for Option B and are now faced with the prospect of not even being able to do that. Their opener is going to be blacked out, and the team has even changed their policy to make blackouts more likely.

Last year the Bucs bought back unsold tickets at a reduced price in order for the game to air locally. This season the team isn’t going to do that because “people need to understand that (games on TV are) not a given.”

Essentially they are trying to force their fans to watch the games in the stadium, which is first insane and second, incredibly shortsighted.

Insane because if there is one thing fans have never gone for, it’s to be forced to do anything, and shortsighted because it is only going to get worse.

NFL rules require that games be blacked out in the home market if it is not sold out 72 hours prior to kickoff. The league had 22 games (8.6% of the regular season) blacked out last year, a five-year high (which co-inky-dink-aly is about the same time HD TV went mainstream).

And the forecast for this season is much worse. Last year’s blackouts were confined to five teams, all of which had losing records.

This season, there are 11 blackout teams including three who made the 2009 playoffs: the Arizona Cardinals, the Cincinnati Bengals and the San Diego Chargers.

That’s the way things are now.

In the future things are only going to get tougher for those who try to get us to go through their turnstiles.

Tennis’ U.S. Open is currently underway in New York, and for the first time, it’s being broadcast in 3-D. Check out the sides of the courts and you’ll see the funkiest TV cameras you’ve ever imagined with four independent lenses to translate all the action into a three-dimensional digital output that can be accessed by those who have paid out the $5g’s 3-D set costs.

I’ve seen it demoed and it’s almost surreal. It’s better than the best seats in the house because it’s like you are on the court, complete with the reactionary head dodge every time a ball is hit towards the cameras, therefore hit your way.

Translate that to football, and the game viewing experience will be unsurpassable by anybody in the stadium – except for maybe the quarterback.

How can the league compete with that?

They can’t and the reason is simple – they’d be competing against themselves.

The NFL is a TV driven league.

The better the TV experience, the bigger the viewership and the more humongous the broadcasting contract.

Commissioner Goodell is trying to get the teams to improve their in-stadium experience and to make the venue’s more fan-friendly. But in the very near future brutal parking, bad food, terrible seating and the worst bathroom experiences imaginable will be competing against 3-D virtual football experienced in custom designed, football-centric man-caves across the country.

I don’t like their chances. Unless something radical changes less and less folks are going to be heading down to the old ball game and more and more will be tuning in to the games on the tube.

Which is great for the NFL.

Which is also terrible for the NFL.

Cheers – Gavin McDougald – AKA Couch