NFL holds answer to economic recovery!

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 television sales, the good people at Ultimate Electronics introduce a "pre-screening license." (This too can be abbreviated "PSL," just sort of to generally ride on the trail blazed by the courageous Jerry Jones.) It's a straightforward deal: Before you get to gawk at the oversized HDTV monitors playing "Shrek 2" over and over, you slip your credit card to a clerk who's outfitted with one of those ultra-convenient wireless authorization devices that debits your account for, say, $30 or so. The great thing here, from the consumer standpoint, is you only pay one fee to cover viewing on--get this--every single TV set they sell! I think it's a win-win.

* The dry-cleaner who handles your laundry initiates a customer-rewards program called "Stain Outreach," which not only ensures attentive care of your prized sweaters for an annual subscription fee of $100 or so (before the customary per-item laundering charges), but gives back to the community in the form of "Starch Bucks," which are vouchers allowing patrons to pay a small fee (I'm thinking something like maybe $25) to enable them to donate clothing through the laundry to area residents who are a) in need; and b) can pick and choose from donated clothing for a one-time cost that really shouldn't be any higher than $50 or so, considering this is a cause-related marketing program.

If more businesspeople would look to our shrewd NFL owners for guidance, perhaps we wouldn't be in this pesky near-recession today. PSLs are just one more illustration of why owning a government-protected monopoly business with prescribed labor costs and anti-competitive revenue-sharing arrangements simply works, people. Now stop the whining and get to PSL-ing your way to newfound riches, will ya?

Stewart Schley writes about sports, media and technology from Englewood. Read this and Schley's pas: columns on the Web at cobizmag.com and e-mail him at ss_edit@comcast.net