How your rising cable bill is making sports teams and star players rich

[Commentary] Imagine famous football coaches and professional athletes taking a 50% salary cut. University of Alabama football coach Nick Saban's annual salary would be a mere $3.5 million or so. Angels baseball star Albert Pujols would earn just $8 million a year. And the Lakers' Kobe Bryant would have to be satisfied with a yearly $15 million. Not by chance, if this came to pass, you the consumer would reclaim control of your rapidly rising monthly subscription TV bill. This is not just idle speculation. Something like this will probably occur when the forced bundling of television channels ends and the consumer is given meaningful choices about which channels to purchase. As increasing numbers of viewers simply forgo subscription TV, demand alone will ultimately force change to this dysfunctional, highly unfair and ultimately doomed system. But it may take a while: Powerful interests are fighting to preserve a business model that rewards them and their clients, chief among them the American sports industry. Consumer choices should dictate which TV programs survive and which do not. Consumer sovereignty is what competition is all about.

[Grimes is a professor of antitrust law at Southwestern Law School]