The NFL-PGA Collision

Every year the Professional Golf Association Tour kicks off during National Football League playoffs. Why can't it wait until the dead week before the Super Bowl?

By Rick Horrow and Karla Swatek

In the grand scheme of sports properties, even the world's most expensive golf course is relatively cheap.

At an estimated $250 million, and more than 10 years in the making, Liberty National Golf Course in Jersey City, N.J., is the costliest golf course in the world. The private 160-acre property, where a membership will run you $500,000 plus annual dues, was built and is owned by Dan Fireman and Paul Fireman, the former chief executive officer of Reebok who sold the sneaker company to rival Adidas (ADS:GR) for $3.8 billion in 2006.

Despite the big price tag, it would take almost five Liberty Nationals to equal the cost of the proposed new downtown NFL stadium in Los Angeles. Notwithstanding shoe deals with lots of zeros attached, there is a great deal of interplay—and—competition, between professional football and golf.

National Football League players and the world's top golfers routinely battle each other for the most lucrative sponsorship deals, competing in corporate conference rooms for the right to endorse Cadillac, Gillette razors, or a bank. A high percentage of NFL players enjoy a round of golf outside the gridiron. Conversely, according to the informal polls ubiquitous around Super Bowl time, a majority of PGA Tour players consider themselves avid football fans.

What's the Rush To Tee Off?

Outside this player mutual-admiration society, pundits ask every January why the PGA Tour doesn't open its season a little later, when it's not competing head-to-head with the NFL. As Yahoo! Sports (YHOO) noted during last week's Hyundai Tournament of Champions in Maui, it is "hard for the golfing world to get into an event like this when we have so many factors turning us off, [like] the fact that it goes up against the NFL playoffs and bowl games."

"Why not start the season during the dead week before the Super Bowl," asks Yahoo's Shane Bacon, "so it gives sports fans an opportunity to watch something besides the horrible Pro Bowl?" ESPN's Bob Harig is a little more tactful. "Wouldn't it be better to wait until the last week of January—which happens to coincide with the open week before the Super Bowl," he ponders, "to begin the golf season?"

Whether or not the PGA Tour ever shifts its first tee times, now that the NFL Playoffs are progressing toward Super Bowl XLV at Cowboys Stadium, you can expect current and former NFL stars to anchor the PGA's celebrity Pro-Am circuit as it gets underway. If labor unrest eats into the NFL's 2011 season, golf and the PGA Tour—more than any other sport outside of college football—might stand to benefit. The FedEx Cup takes place during what should be football's kickoff.

PGA Golf is Already Prospering

Jonathan Byrd pocketed $1.12 million for winning last week's $5.6 million Hyundai Tournament of Champions at Kapalua. The PGA Tour was also a big winner before, during, and after the event as the Tour started 2011 with a solid new title sponsor in its bag in Hyundai. FedEx (FDX) also commanded a bigger presence as part of the kickoff to the season-long FedEx Cup schedule.