. >> tom: there is that and we turn to alan sanderson, an economist from the university of chicago who studied these things and this is what he told us. >> these teams are very small economic entities. they may be important for psychological or emotional reasons in an area, but just the flat out economics, they're pretty small. an nfl team is much smaller than a major department store. and i don't mean a department store chain, i just mean one department store in the center of the city. in terms of revenues or in terms of employment. >> tom: so the downtown j.c. penneys is doing more business than the packers or the broncos or the chicago bears. >> well, indirectly the people who stay downtown and who eat downtown and go to the games, that's not taken into account, in that equation but allen does add might the psychological and emotional benefit of not having those games is paramount as well. >> tom: it would be big. meantime the golden egg in all of this talk, of course, the broadcast and the cable television contracts for those games, week in and week out. directv has the nfl sunday