• by Wayne Friedman , Staff Writer, April 9, 2012

How should an NFL sponsor react to news of a New Orleans Saints defensive coach repeatedly telling his players to “kill the head” of an opposing player?

That football is a violent game? Natch. That coaches use whatever motivation they can to get players to play hard and win games? Natch. That hard-hitting, tough football makes good television? Of course.

The NFL wants to do all it can to protect its players. Football is a game where one object is to tackle hard, which can result many times in injuries. As gripping as football can be, it’s just a game. Yet real-life injuries do occur.

We can believe Toyota had the best intentions last season with its commercial revealing how its crash-test technology and analysis could help the NFL and its crashing players. However, the NFL was not amused, and put the kibosh on future airings of the commercial. The marketing of the NFL can be a touchy thing.

The New Orleans defensive coach -- along with the head coach and others -- has already been punished for the team’s “bounty hunting” program, which paid bonuses to players for hurting other players.  And hearing about the coach's urging his team to “kill the head” of a San Francisco 49er player makes things a little scarier.

Perhaps more revealing, based on what other former and present players are saying, is that this kind of motivational talk (not about “bounties”) goes on all the time.

Marketers generally don't balk at much off-the-field stuff concerning the NFL. That is not what consumers really care about, anyway.

More important, the NFL is so much the most desired sports franchise among marketers that they would clearly relish the news of more TV commercial inventory. For a while, there was some momentum to the idea of perhaps extending the season.

While the season won’t get longer anytime soon, the NFL Network will add more high-valued Thursday prime-time games to its schedule --13 in 2012, up from eight. That will bring more marketing dollars to the league.

If you have a decent NFL media plan, all that means is that it will “kill” when it comes to selling your consumer product or service.