All Fun And Games Until Somebody Gets Hurt. . .

Let’s talk sports. Well, you talk sports, I need to pay attention to the road, as I’m flying down I-70, trying to evade the cops, while you read this.

Sports are great. Sports give you comedy, tragedy, triumph. . . the thrill of victory, the agony of defeat! But sports is a business and much of the business model is rotten, particularly in the NFL (the “No Fun League”) and the semi-pro, pre-trial diversionary program known as the NCAA.

• The Stadium Shake-Down: The NFL extorts news stadiums from cities. Each year, a dozen NFL owners declare their existing stadiums, most of which are barely half way through their useful lives, “uncompetitive” and they threaten to abandon the city if the taxpayers don’t fork over a new palace with all the latest amenities -- with the profits going to the NFL owner, of course. This dance continues year in and year out until the cities caves, fearful of losing “their” team. Indeed, many believe the reason Los Angeles doesn’t have a team is because the NFL uses the possibility of moving to L.A. as a threat against other cities.

Cities need to wise up. Whenever the issue of a new stadium comes up, pro-stadium groups put together “impact statements” purporting to show all of the benefits the city will accrue from handing over its treasury. But, as noted by an economist for the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, no independent study has ever found that the benefits of building a stadium outweighed the costs. Indeed, studies have found the economic benefit of building a stadium (direct jobs, indirect jobs, increased economic activity and additional tax revenue) to be only $2.9 million per year, on average. Comparing that to the $400+ million dollars it takes to build a stadium, even an athlete can see that is a bad deal.

So now the latest claim is that having a professional sports team adds to the “quality of life” in a city and makes it a more desirable place to live. . . like Cleveland, or Buffalo, or Detroit, or Pittsburgh. If this argument were at all credible, you would expect these cities to grow at least as fast as the rest of the country, if not faster. But they aren’t. In the past fifty years, Pittsburgh lost more than half its population, falling from being one of the top ten largest cities in the country to 54th. The same is true with the others.

Save your money folks, make the owners buy their own stadiums, because this is almost criminal. And speaking of criminal . . .

• NFL Correctional Facility: The NFL has a crime problem. There is a website which runs a “days without arrest” counter for NFL players. In the past several years, that counter has only hit double digits on a handful of occasions, and only twice reached the “20 day” mark. I would say that typically, an NFL player gets arrested once every ten days. Recent charges have ranged from drug dealing, to beating up pregnant women (two separate incidents), to vehicular manslaughter. Simply put, the league is awash with criminals. And this is so because the NFL has set up a culture that allows it. Players with talent will get a slap on the wrist until the public pressure becomes too much for a franchise to bear.

An athlete commits a crime. The community is outraged. The NFL immediately goes into cover-up mode. Coaches and league officials proclaim that the player is a good guy who just made a mistake, oh and ignore all his criminal activity in college. The outrage grows, so the NFL asks you to wait as they decide on a fair punishment -- usually a minor suspension. The outrage continues to grow. Thus, finally, forced into a corner, the franchise must fire the player. But that’s not the end. Instead, the player is immediately picked up by another team that is willing to provide him with “a second chance” -- provided he does not commit more crimes. When he does, we repeat the process. And how many second chances does the NFL give? As many as needed until the player’s talent fades. The next person to be injured by an NFL players should sue the league under RICO because it’s enabling is getting dangerously close to making it into a criminal enterprise. And that brings us to. . .

• Michael Vick And Phony Indignation: Michael Vick spent last year in prison after pleading guilty to running a dog fighting ring out of his house. He served his time, and thus, he is legally forgiven. But that doesn’t mean that we must forgive him personally, and I don’t. I think the NFL should never have taken him back, or its other criminals. This is an organization, after all, that actively promotes the concept of athletes being role models.

At this point, Vick has yet to show contrition, except for being caught. The NFL assures us that he has, but NFL contrition isn’t like regular contrition. NFL contrition is written by lawyers and PR guys and it uses words that the players not only have never spoken, but couldn’t find in the dictionary with a four letter head start.

And the sports media, a truly slavish group, plays along. When Vick was caught, every single columnist wrote how Vick’s conduct was contrary to everything the NFL stands for, and they assured us that he would never rejoin the NFL: trust the NFL! These writers didn’t believe Vick should ever be let back in, and neither did the NFL, they assured us. But now, with the NFL having let Vick back in, these same people who yelled “never again” are singing “Welcome Back Cotter” and they are assuring us that the NFL knows how to handle and rehabilitate guys like Vick. . . ignore the NFL crime wave.

• The War On English: And speaking of crime waves, what the NFL is doing to our language is a crime. NFL game announcers are usually ex-players, and these guys are idiots. They know nothing except football, and they don’t even seem to understand that “good.” They certainly don’t understand the rules, and they’re not very good at telling you what is happening on the field. But what bothers me more about these idiots is their truly stunning misuse of the English language. Not one of them knows that adverbs end in “ly,” fewer still know the difference between words like “good” and “well” or “fewer” and “less.” Many can’t conjugate verbs. This grates on my nerves. It, also, in my opinion sends the wrong message to people who are watching, particularly children, who learn to speak from what they hear. English skills are bad enough without 12 hours of poor English brought into the home every weekend. And these guys are college grads? What does that say about college. . .

• College “Athletes” My Foot: What this says about college is that college athletics is a sham. These guys aren’t students, at least I hope they’re not. If they are, then we should burn our colleges to the ground because they’re a total disaster. How in the world can someone graduate from an institution of higher learning who cannot read or write. . . or speak. If these are students, then heads should roll.

Colleges need to either be honest that these players are nothing more than hired mercenaries who play for their semi-pro farm teams, or they need to seriously reconsider what the mission of student athletics is? Isn’t the point to learn good sportsmanship, to learn teamwork, and to give students an opportunity for a little exercise? If that’s the case, why are the athletic facilities off limits to regular students, why did I never see some of the football players who graduated with me in the classes we supposedly took together, and why were the hockey players across the hall in my dorm given the answers to the tests the night before?

Aren’t we told that the reason football is so valuable is because it gives these hard luck kids a chance to go to college, which they otherwise could not do? What good is that, it they learn nothing except how to drop into zone coverage? And considering that so few will make it to the NFL, shouldn’t education be the actual focus of college?

(FYI, I’m opposed to the idea of a college playoff system, but that’s for another article.)


As I said at the beginning, I’m traveling today and tomorrow (never fear, there will be a Film Friday article tomorrow), so I can’t respond to comments until later. But please do leave comments. I will respond when I get the chance. Also, please feel free to use the comments to discuss any sports issues that you’d like to discuss, and let us know your favorite team(s). . . so that we can laugh at you. ;-)