Apparently, there was once a time when you could purchase an NFL football team for $2,500 on winnings from the track. That was back in 1933, when Art Rooney went to the Saratoga Race Course in New York, won at least $2,500 in a parlay of longshot winners, and then used the money to pay the required National Football League franchise entrance fee for a club based in the city of Pittsburgh.

My how things have changed.

No longer can degenerate gamblers simply wander down to the track and turn a parlay into an NFL team - unless of course you count the Arizona Cardinals.

That's because yesterday Forbes released its annual study on NFL teams and determined that the average NFL team is now worth $1 billion.

That marks the first time any sports league on earth has surpassed that level. 10 years ago, the average NFL team was worth $288 million.

Here's some interesting data from the report as well:


Just so you know how good an investment an NFL team is, Jerry Jones purchased the Cowboys for $150 million in 1989.

But here's my favorite tidbit from the report:


You mean the heavy costs of stadiums that you're actually having taxpayers primarily pay for? And yeah, I don't see how a team with $327 million in revenue could possibly afford higher player salaries. Heavens, what will the NFL do? I mean, it's only pulling in $7 billion in revenue a year.

It's amazing to me that a league with so much money is tighter with it than the game pants its players wear. Not to mention that the league is trying to do everything possible to find a way to stop giving out guaranteed contracts.

I don't know when, and I don't know how, but eventually there's going to be a player revolt of some kind. Sure, NFL players are very well paid, but the average NFL player ($1.4 million) is woefully underpaid in comparison to the average NBA player ($4 million) and MLB player ($3 million).

Sure, there are more football players on a team, but hey, the NFL has a lot more money than either of those leagues - regardless of how they try and spin. And if the NFL ever gets out of guaranteed contracts, you'll see that $1.4 million number nosedive instantly.

But hey, rather than me ragging the NFL, I should probably try and find some league that I think if I purchase a team in, it'll become worth billions of dollars in 20 years.

My money's on Major League Lacrosse.

NFL average team value tops $1 billion [Yahoo! Sports] via [Deadspin]