NFL holds answer to economic recovery!(SPORTS [biz])

• Author: Schley, Stewart

Stop the presses, sports fans, for we have discovered the elixir that can cure the nation's economic malaise. It's called the PSL.

PSL stands for "personal seat license," and it's back at the forefront of NFL economics once again as a few high-profile team owners do their best to ensure only the elite get to plant their posteriors in seats for live football games.

PSL invoices are coming soon to the mailboxes of ticket holders in New York, where Giants fans will pay between $1,000 and $20,000 for the privilege of buying a ticket in a $1.6 billion stadium opening in 2010, and in Dallas, where the boyishly charming Jerry Jones has decided $325 million in public funding isn't quite enough to spruce up the Cowboys' new digs in Arlington. PSLs for Jones' new stadium start at $2,000 and top out at (this is not a typo, dear reader) $150,000.

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If nothing else, you have to admire the scrappy entrepreneurial hustle behind the modern-day NFL. A PSL is a derivation of a little-understood economic principle known by academics as a "cover charge." It's complicated, but essentially it's the $10 bill you slip to the bouncer at Shotgun Willie's, conferring to you a right to pay a confiscatory sum for a lime-flavored Miller Chill. (For out-of-towners; Shotgun Willie's is a Denver institution known for its creative and nuanced blends of the subjective nouns "lap" and "dance.")

The PSL is a brilliant double-dip financing scheme that I believe more businesses could put to sound use. In fact, the possibilities practically leap from the Excel worksheet! Herewith, a few ways in which Colorado businesses might apply the lessons gleaned from the NFL:

* Before buying a pork, beef or chicken burrito from Chipotle, a customer first pays a (one-time) rice-arrangement fee to a guy at the counter. This fee, which I think should not exceed $300 in a calendar year, ensures that the preponderance of rice kernels included within a standard burrito order are confined physically within the burrito housing itself (the "tortilla,") and do not spill externally from the housing. They are currently giving this service away for free at Chipotle, and I am surprised the shareholders are not in outright revolt by now.

* To improve margins on high-definition...