It is not entirely clear to me that the premise of many of these arguments is even correct in the first place.
The premise is that pooled broadcasting/national tv contracts violate the antitrust laws and thus need an antitrust exemption, as was provided by Congress in 1961.
The premise is supported, as I understand it, solely by a single 1961 court decision by a single district court judge in the eastern district of Pennsylvania. To read some of this stuff, you'd think it was a clear federal statute or a ruling from the Supreme Court of the United States.
Getting away from the law and just talking about the issue as a matter of good or bad public policy, I really can't see why government is messing with the market in such dramatic fashion here. Most laws are stringently designed to protect intellectual property. The NFL has a copyright in something that is very desired, and they should be able to do what they like with it.
If cable doesn't want to pony up for NFLN, so be it. Seems like a risky strategy to me for NFLN to be too hardcore. Eventually, they need cable more than cable needs them, but that's their game of chicken to play, not mine. And cable's decisions are not NFLN's fault. Similarly, when the NFL negotiated its contracts with the networks and decided to hold back games for itself, cable could have tried to come in and bridge the gap, or otherwise attempted to enter the fray at that time by putting together their own bid for cable-owned stations. But claims that there we americans are entitled to another's copyright if they don't want to give it seem a bit exaggerated to me.