The Reds Win Again

Trey Smith

Is the Super Bowl a socialist enterprise? Yes the language is provocative but not, I believe, inappropriate. After all Indiana, the site of the next Super Bowl, is currently governed by those who insist government should play a minimal role and the word they, and their Republican counterparts around the country, use to describe those who disagree is socialist.

By any definition, tomorrow's Super Bowl in Indianapolis is socialist from head to toe.

Start with the venue. Governments paid for over 80 percent of the new $750 million Lucas Oil Stadium. The Colts chipped in about 15 percent, an investment they probably recouped in inflated asset value the day the stadium opened. Governments are also covering the estimated $20 million a year in operating deficits.

But this is only the tip of the iceberg. The NFL itself is a government creation.
~ from Is the Super Bowl Socialist? by David Morris ~

Here's a little secret: The elites aren't rabidly against socialism. No, socialism is fine and dandy...as long as THEY are on the receiving end. The socialism that they so bitterly oppose is the kind in which the 99 percent reaps the benefits! In their eyes, that specific type of socialism is dangerous.

~

I still consider myself a sports fan these days, but it is not an all encompassing passion like it was in my youth. Back then, all I cared about was what I saw or heard on the field of play, whether in person or on the radio/TV. As I grew older, I began to lift the veil to see the economic side of sports and, to be quite frank, I didn't like that side much at all!

Professional sports (these days it's even true for much of college and high school sports too) is big business and the corporations that own sports teams are just as cutthroat as any other mega corporations. They tend to hold local communities hostage with a variety of mean-spirited threats. They bleed communities of tax dollars and, if a community won't provide them with a sweetheart deal, they aren't beyond slipping away in the middle of the night to prey on a different community.

While far too many professional athletes are grossly overpaid for playing little more than children's games, their rights as workers routinely are abused by their employers. It is these workers (the players) who put fans in the stands and enrich the CEOs and top executives, but you'd never know it by the way management treats them.

I'll probably watch a bit of the Super Bowl today and root for the New England Patriots, but I no longer watch these types of events with the same fervor. It is nothing more than a mild diversion for me from the many things in this life that genuinely are important.