This past summer, Rush Limbaugh expressed interest in becoming part owner of the NFL's St. Louis Rams. The story went on the shelf for a few months, but OxyMan was back yesterday to announce that he had, in fact, partnered with my new least favorite NHL owner Dave Checketts to put in a bid to buy the franchise. Now, buying a professional sports franchise isn't as simple as rounding up a few hundred million/billion dollars and giving it to the team's current owner in a garbage bag. You have to be approved by the league's other owners. So, at this point, I'm going on record: if Rush Limbaugh buys an NFL franchise, my days as an NFL fan are over.
Now, a little background on me and the NFL. When I was 10 years old, the Washington Redskins won the Super Bowl. 10 years is a very impressionable age, especially as far as sports are concerned. I'm now 28, and the only team I currently cheer for that has any chance of winning a title within the next 3 years or so is the Washington Capitals. The best players on the Capitals are Alex Ovechkin, 24, Alex Semin, 25, Nick Backstrom, 21, Mike Green, 23, and Semyon Varlamov, 21. I respect and admire their ability to play the game, but they aren't my heroes. Darrell Green, Art Monk, the hogs, Mark Rypien - they WERE my heroes. And of all the professional sports teams that I cheer for, the Redskins are the only one that has taken me to the mountaintop as a sports fan. Even through years of mediocrity and mismanagement, I could never abandon them, and watching the Redskins has been an integral part of my Sundays for nearly as long as I can remember.
Not anymore, if Rush gets his way.
Now, you might be thinking, "couldn't you just hate the Rams?" Well, it's true - I would hate the Rams. But the fact is, the NFL has one of the most aggressive revenue-sharing plans in professional sports. It's the biggest reason the NFL does so well - each team gets a piece of the pie, and so every team has the financial wherewithal to be competitive, unlike in baseball, for example.
(Former owner Art Modell once described NFL owners as, and I'm paraphrasing here, a bunch of fat cat Republicans who vote socialist. Good to know that his league is good enough for socialism but his country isn't.)
The downside, then, is that some of the money I spend on Redskins merchandise - the Skins come from one of, if not the, most lucarative markets in the NFL - would go do directly to Rush Limbaugh's fat little fingers. And I'm not going to have it. I don't know who advertises on Rush's show, and I don't know if any of their parent companies also make products that I consume. I'm not going to go out of my way to research that to ensure that I'm cutting Rush off, but I will not knowingly and willingly give Rush Limbaugh money. Period.
Nor will I help the NFL by driving up demand for its Season ticket package by going to bars where I can catch the games (which is what I have to do as Skins fan to catch my team up here in Massachusetts). I've been a die-hard NFL fan for almost 20 years, but I'm ready to leave it tomorrow if Rush Limbaugh is granted a piece of it. That's a promise.
And I'm guessing I'm not alone.