The loss of a full NFL season would cost $2 billion

It’s day 45 of the NFL lockout and some are starting to examine the worst, even if they aren’t quite ready to declare existence.

NFL officials have stated that the league would still spend (read as: “lose”) nearly $2 billion dollars on staffing were the entire 2011-2012 season to be canceled.

“We’re going to maintain a readiness to play a full season, and there’s a cost to it,” Eric Grubman, the league’s executive vice president for business operations, said in a meeting with members of the Associated Press Sports Editors at the NFL headquarters. “It is incredibly expensive to maintain the state of readiness without the revenue coming in.” (via PGH Post Gazette)

While there has been relatively no progress in labor negotiations during the 45 day lockout, NFL fans can at least be optimistic that a season-canceling “drop dead” date has not yet been established.

“We don’t have a date by which the season is lost. Our intention is to play a full season and we will pull every lever to make that happen,” Grubman said.

While Grubman further mentions that the NFL schedule certainly has areas of elasticity (weeks between the conference championship and Super Bowl, preseason games, etc.) one of the more intriguing points surround the Super Bowl,

“We have the additional flexibility with Indianapolis to move the Super Bowl one week later,” Grubman said.

A Super Bowl move could be interesting, especially for fans that pre-book hotel and airfare packages. More importantly, it leaves the date of NASCAR’s Daytona 500 in question (NASCAR had already changed the date so as not to coincide with the Super Bowl after a potential 18 game NFL regular season).

Of course, as mentioned previously, we haven’t reached the previously undefined point of panic quite yet. There’s still time for the Players and League to come to an agreement.

Talks between the two sides will likely resume in mid-May.