I'm in a similar situation. This is what I did.
In February 09 I registered NFL guy dot com. I'm ready to develop a site with it. Being afraid of possible trademark violation, I called the NFL office. I was connected to three different people, and explained my concern. The third person said he would forward my request to the correct person.
That was one week ago. I haven't heard back from them yet. Next, in a couple of weeks or so, I'll call them again. This time I'll ask for an email address, for the correct person, so I can send a link to the proposed site.
On the sample site I did place this information for them:
"This is the site I'd like to develop"
"The term 'NFL' would not be used (aside from the domain name) to promote or advertise this website, and no NFL keywords
would be used, I would like to possibly use the term "NFL' in direct links to the NFL shop, schedules, tickets, fantasy, videos,
and stats as shown in the boxes below. Later, with the NFL's approval, I would like to place direct links to teams, player profiles, and other direct links to the NFL website for information.
Any proposed website changes would first be submitted to the NFL for approval before being made. No reference to any other football league or teams would be made, except in the NFL league history as cited below.
My commercial products would be hotels, rental cars, airline tickets, credit card services, and links for the dish network, cable network sports channels, and other non-NFL related products. These ads would be placed in, and as seen in, the box in the lower right of this page. The search box would be removed, and the titles in the menu would be changed to reflect direct links to the NFL website without using the term 'NFL'. These menu items would link only to the official NFL website pages.
The 'contact' menu link would remain, and there would also be a link to our privacy policy."
If no approval is given, I'll simply give the domain to them.
