A couple months back, the NFL softened its blackout policy. The league once bound local stations to black out nearby home games if they had unsold seats. Now—although the league still incentivizes complete sellouts—teams have the option of airing their games with as little as 85 percent of their seats sold. It's a…

The Chargers' attendance issues are legendary. The weather's too nice. The stadium's too old. Norv Turner's just going to do something stupid and they're going to crash out just shy of the playoffs again. There are all sorts of reasons why Qualcomm doesn't fill up. Failing to adequately advertise to fans of the other…

The Wall Street Journal published a piece over the weekend about dwindling attendance at NFL games and the league's plans to combat it. Buried within the story was this nugget:

We did a post yesterday on Richard Nixon's 1972 efforts to forever sustain the NFL's policy of blacking out teams' home games in their local markets. The NFL rejected Nixon's bargain, and so, from 1973 on, only those games with unsold tickets 72 hours prior to kickoff would be blacked out. That rule still stands.