A couple weeks ago I glanced at the Stupor Bowl. I was mainly focused on my gizmo’s screen watching a couple guys carefully dismantling and rebuilding a 50s-ish Farmall Super M tractor in their shop somewhere. Uninterrupted by commercial puffery pushing corporate beverages, faux-food products, and usurious debt instruments they bent to their task. Skimping only on the final paint quality — because this was going to be a working tractor, not a parade tractor — the process moved in multiple episodes toward a successful conclusion. It was totally vicarious. No skinned knuckles, or profanity over a busted bolt or wrenching misjudgment (for a change).
We had the TV sound off so the gladiatorial sponsored snippets were just visual blips when we looked up. I never saw or heard the pitches for SoFi student loan products. But I understand there were several. Whereas in more civilized countries, post-secondary education is considered a public good (and is free), here it usually involves debt peonage. Mr. Biden’s campaign promised cancelation of such debts but alas the anti-democratic Senate rules and metastatic Manchinism typically prevailed.
Even though the public often pays for football stadiums, profits are privatized. The “naming rights” are usually sold to a corporation which then gets “plugged” frequently in every broadcast. Apparently during the super pageant, Vermont Senator Bernard Sanders tweeted, “How does it happen that SoFi … could spend $625 million to put its name on the LA Rams football stadium when 45 million Americans are drowning in $1.8 trillion in student debt? Today would be a good day for the president to cancel student debt.” While Biden has that authority … he didn’t do it of course.
The halftime entertainments featured unpaid cultural plantation workers: Mary J. Blige, Snoop Dogg, Dr. Dre, Kendrick Lamar, Eminem and others. Customary bling and crotch-grabbing were observable whenever I looked up. The NFL apparently did pay for the Compton mock-up and the cardboard delivery boxes from which some of the (unpaid) dancers dramatically unfolded themselves. While Marshall Mathers (aka Eminem) didn’t get any money, he did get some criticism for kneeling in a “symbolic shout-out” to black-listed former QB Colin Kaepernick. Dr. Dre apparently stated lyrically that he was “still not loving the police” over NFL objection, but the blunt anti-fascist Reality Rap of N.W.A.’s “Straight Outta Compton” was nowhere to be seen or heard.
Former Miami Dolphins head coach Brian Flores recently likened the NFL, with its wealthy owners and its (football) field-hands to a “plantation.” His lawsuit states, “ The owners watch the games from atop NFL stadiums in their luxury boxes, while their majority-Black workforce put their bodies on the line every Sunday, taking vicious hits and suffering debilitating injuries to their bodies and their brains …”
The bodies and the brains of pro-football players are used up — black and white. The vast majority have brief careers, and that only after competing between the lines since they were pre-teenagers. That’s a lot of pounding and it’s cumulative. The bosses above sip mint juleps. The proles sweat in-the-trenches. It’s not often presented that way in media however.
Typically it’s cast as pageant with literal cartoons depicting the players, their super-hero stylized biceps and snarling faces punctuating a flatulent “color commentary.” Pro football usually draws huge audiences easily outperforming the cheap “reality” or “crime drama” slop the networks routinely dispense. Super Bowls are the most viewed program of the year. NBC just raked in $6.5 million for each of the ninety 30 second spots totaling $600 million.
The Rams billionaire owner is one E. Stanley Kroenke. He’s married to Walmart heiress Ann Walton whose family fortune is based on exploitation of sweat-shop labor at home and abroad. Kroenke also owns about a million acres of US ranch/farmland as well as the Denver Nuggets, the Colorado Avalanche and assorted other sports franchises.
Then there’s the Green Bay Packers. The Pack is almost always a contender and the cheese-heads support an actual Home Team, not some rich guy’s ego-boosting toy. It won’t be leaving despite its small “market.” It’s publicly owned. The people of Green Bay built the stadium; originally named “City Stadium.” Today it’s called “Lambeau Field” after founder and 30-year coach Curly Lambeau.
The Packers organization is governed by an elected leadership. The elected president alone gets paid.
Occasionally in America, democracy breaks out, but examples are seldom mentioned when people are paying attention. To protect the league’s oligarchs, late NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle “had it written into the league’s constitution in 1960, Article V, Section 4 … the Green Bay Rule. (It) states that ‘charitable organizations and/or corporations not organized for profit … may not hold membership in the NFL.’ “ (Dave Zirin, The New Yorker.com)
When the (Public) Pack makes the Super Bowl again this won’t be part of the storyline.
Guaranteed.
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