• by Wayne Friedman , September 14, 2009

Although the economy still has football fans in a financial crunch, NFL teams managed to sell out their home games this past Sunday -- the opening weekend of the new season -- and thus avert TV blackouts.

Three markets almost didn't make it: Cincinnati, Arizona and Oakland. But all were given 24-hour extensions to sell off remaining tickets, which was accomplished.

NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said on Sunday in a report -- as he has repeated recently -- the league has no plans to lift the TV blackout rule for home games where stadium tickets aren't sold out 72 hours before game time.

The decades-long rule was put in place to protect stadium seat revenues for home teams. Each team has eight regular-season home games to sell.

Still, the NFL says the league this year will feel the effects of blackouts, since about 20% of the games could be blacked out. About a dozen of the NFL's 32 markets could be in danger, including Arizona, Cincinnati, Detroit, Jacksonville, Minnesota and San Diego.

That figure would be much higher than the 4% of games that were blacked out a year ago -- nine of the NFL's 256 regular-season games. For the last 10 years or so, 8% of all NFL games have been blacked out.

But in previous decades, the situation was much worse. Reports say in the 1990s, 31% of games were blacked out; in the 1980s it was 40%.