The middle letter in NFL obviously does not stand for fans. Both the league itself and individual teams go out of their way to insult or take advantage of fans.

The biggest ripoff is a long-standing one: the practice of including exhibition games on the season-ticket package. The league calls them “preseason games,” but they’re really nothing more than glorified scrimmages.

Niners assistant Mike Martz

Though fans and writers try to make evaluations off these games (one San Francisco Chronicle columnist wrote off the 49ers because of a bad showing in the first game!), it’s really futile because the coaches don’t game-plan for the first two games. Instead of using plays designed to win the games, they work on specific areas — but nobody else knows what they’re trying to do.

And, they use a lot of players in the first two games who may not even be on the roster during the season. Fans often get excited by a third-string quarterback, without understanding that he’s throwing against defensive backs who may never play a down in a regular-season game. Cody Pickett got 49er fans excited by looking good in these situations in 2004 and ’05, but in the regular seasons, he was a combined 18-for-45 (40 percent) and is long gone.

When I started covering the Oakland Raiders in 1967, AFL teams played their exhibitions in cities that did not have pro football teams and so, might be interested in these games. In ’67, the Raiders played in Portland, Ore., and North Platte, Neb.

The Raiders lost both games, 48-0 to Kansas City, 21-17 to Denver. In the regular-season opener, the Raiders annihilated Denver 51-0 and, during a season in which they ended in the Super Bowl, beat the Chiefs twice.

And I learned firsthand how meaningless exhibition games can be.

Even coaches don’t like exhibition games. Before training camp, I talked with 49ers offensive coordinator Mike Martz, who has campaigned for years to cut back on the number of games. When I talked to Martz again in training camp about the 49ers quarterback competition, he said the games wouldn’t figure in his decision on a starter. “I learn much more from practice,” he said. “The games just slow everything up.”

Martz has proposed that teams play only two exhibitions and 18 regular-season games. The first game would be to look at new players, the second to fine-tune the team’s play. “We don’t need any more than that,” he said. “College teams don’t play any practice games, and they seem to do all right.”

The problem has been that the networks don’t want to televise games in August because, with so many people on vacation, they wouldn’t get the ratings they get in September. But the league could agree that the networks would pay no more for the additional two games — and I’d bet that a lot of fans would make sure their vacations had ended by mid-August so they wouldn’t miss any of the games that mean something. As it is, they often miss the exhibition games — but they still have to pay for them.

Fans also have to pay when teams build new stadiums, in the form of the dreaded Personal Seat Licenses. The latest to be hit with those are fans of the Giants and Jets, for the new stadium that will host both teams.

The Giants rewarded their loyal fans with a Super Bowl victory last season, but both teams were mediocre for much of the previous 20 years; the Giants had nine winning seasons, the Jets eight. Yet, the season-ticket holders will have to take a big financial hit in addition to the ticket price, as if they’d been watching topflight entertainment all these years.

Let’s be honest: Though teams always couch their stadium plans in language about wanting the best for their fans, their real incentive is to add to their already bloated profit margins. The salary cap has made it virtually impossible to lose money with an NFL franchise. I bet the owners of airlines wish they had that kind of cushion.

Meanwhile, the value of franchises just keeps going up, and there’s no shortage of buyers. I’ve seen that in the San Francisco Bay Area there are potential buyers who have surfaced who could pay cash for the 49ers, if owner John York could be persuaded to sell. Unfortunately, he’s determined to hang on.

It’s much more difficult to build a stadium in California, and I doubt that the 49ers will ever build the stadium they want in Santa Clara. But I’m not going to waste any sympathy on York or any other NFL owner. They all know that they can sell at a much higher price than they paid for the franchise at any time.

Meanwhile, the NFL has found another way to gouge customers — putting games on NFL Sunday Ticket on DirecTV. But if local games aren’t sold out, fans still can’t see them.

It’s been obvious for years that television is a great selling tool for the game, yet owners continue to cling to the outmoded idea that having it on home TV would keep potential ticket buyers away if the game isn’t sold out.

They know better. The 49ers have been buying up unsold tickets for years so they could continue to have games on local TV. The Raiders also did it last year for some games, so they had artifical “sellouts” for probably three of their games.

It would be a great service to fans if the NFL would drop the home blackout provision. But, they won’t. The NFL isn’t about the fans. It’s about the owners.

Glenn Dickey has been covering pro football since 1967 and now has his own Web site, www.GlennDickey.com. E-mail him at glenndickey@hotmail.com.