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NFL Said No to President Nixon

AP file photo

The NFL, which is trying to maintain its TV blackout of home games that don't sell out, missed an opportunity 40 years ago to preserve an even more restrictive policy when it rebuffed an effort by President Richard Nixon to lift the hometown blackout just for playoff games.

On a previously unreported tape recording, now in the National Archives, Nixon told his attorney general to offer the league a deal: Allow playoff games to be televised in the hometown city, and the president would block any legislation requiring regular-season home games to be televised as well. At the time, the NFL blacked out all home games, whether they were sellouts or not.

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