here's a link:
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-f...,6069384.story
I heard of this on NPR today. It seems that one of the old manufacturers of fitted caps took the NFL to court. Apparently the NFL took all of the merchandising away from vendors, and funneled it all through Reebok, and suggesting a much higher price for merchandise. This little mom and pop shop actually had the stones to take them to court, and lost. The small court claimed that the NFL was 1 single entity, and all of the teams were not individual businesses. The mom and pop appealed to the Supreme Court, the NFL agreed to this thinking that if they won in the Supreme Court appeal, there would be precident for them to do this with ALL NFL merchandise, video games, magazines, fantasy football, etc... They had the backing of all other large sporting entities, MLB, NBA, NASCAR, etc... who were all thinking the same thing. But, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that the league consists of 32 individual businesses, all under the NFL umbrella. The case is now going back to a smaller court to rule whether they are guilty of monopolizing, or if they were just trying to run efficient business practices.
I don't know if Miggle could or would be able to pursue a license with the NFL again. I don't know if they would be able to pursue it like the college teams, where individual teams would be licensed rather than the whole group. Regardless, this is a pretty big deal.