At a time when unemployment is running over 9% (17% actual if you count the underemployed and those that have given up looking for work); football players and team owners were, until yesterday, haggling over the split of the $9 billion in revenue that the NFL generates annually. To the average unemployed individual it seemed to be a rather petty dispute between callous millionaires and billionaires.
In San Diego, the wealthy Spanos family is still trying to find a way to have the taxpayers subsidize a new stadium with taxpayer cash and city land for their Chargers business. Their quest has been made more difficult by Governor Jerry "Retread" Brown's impound of all local community redevelopment funds to help satisfy the Sacramento's insatiable appetite for spending. Unless an owner builds his or her own stadium or the team is located in a prosperous state like Texas, it will be at least ten years before any sports stadium is financed with public funds.
All this brings to mind the real purpose of local government, which is to provide basic municipal services like streets, fire protection, police, and infrastructure. Local governments are not venture capital banks. Few politicians have the requisite skills to run a simple lemonade stand. And truth be told, most politicians have no real marketable job skills. Elective office is often the best job that most of them will ever have. And the NFL owners are just another bunch of potential campaign contributors that, with a well placed contribution might benefit financially using other people's money, i.e., taxpayer money.
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| Keep your eye on the bouncing ball! |
I loved the game when it was common for players to take "real jobs" in the off season. That was in the Golden Age of Pro Football in the 1960s. A couple of players worked at the department store where I worked at as a sales clerk forty years ago. Other players sold cars, insurance, houses or worked at banks. They were for the most part regular guys and not the prima donnas of today's game. The game lost its luster for me when the NFL reinstated Michael Vick, dog torturer and gambling ring impresario.
Nobody denies that Michael Vick has a right to make a living, but there are some misdeeds that should foreclose one from making a living in certain professions. Thieves rarely get to work at banks or any job that requires honesty. The animal cruelty aside, running a gambling ring should be evidence of a character flaw that is incompatible with the so-called integrity of the NFL.
No doubt I'll watch a couple of football games this year. But it just doesn't have the same magic that it held for me many years ago when I was able to eat my tuna sandwich next to a real NFL player in the store lunchroom.
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They don't make them like that anymore-- the 32 cent postage stamp OR Jim Thorpe. |
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