Earlier this week, Forbes released its breakdown of the top 50 most valuable franchises in sports, and 20 NFL teams earned a mention, making it the best-represented league on the list by a comfortable margin. First among those 20 NFL franchises was the Cowboys, valuated at $3.2 billion by Forbes. Dallas didn’t quite earn the top overall spot on the list, but the team was a close second to soccer’s Real Madrid.
Of course, as Mike Florio of Pro Football Talk notes, NFL franchises are worth whatever someone is willing to pay for them, and the fact that Forbes’ figure for the Bills falls well short of the $1.4 billion paid by Terry and Kim Pegula last year suggests that it’s not an exact science.
Here’s more on the NFL’s most valuable franchise:
- In providing the specific details on Dez Bryant‘s new contract, Aaron Wilson of the Baltimore Sun notes (via Twitter) that the deal includes $500K de-escalators in the event that the wideout misses workouts.
- Referring to reports about a supposedly damning videotape as a “smear campaign,” Jarrett Bell of USA Today suggests that Bryant is owed an apology by those who “sloppily reported” the existence of such a video earlier this offseason. For his part, Cowboys owner Jerry Jones told USA Today that he’s skeptical of the existence of such a tape.
- Using his “expected contract value” metric, Bryce Johnston of Over the Cap explains why Bryant’s new extension is more player-friendly than Demaryius Thomas‘ deal, despite the fact that the two contracts looked similar on the surface.
- Babe Laufenberg of The Dallas Morning News rates the Cowboys‘ offseason as excellent, citing the addition of La’el Collins as the move that put it over the top. Still, the team lost the NFL’s leading rusher, has signed two pass rushers with checkered histories, and has only one top-flight corner, so there are some causes for concern in Dallas.
Zach Links contributed to this post.