Violence, abuse, crimes, - these have been a part of the NFL for decades. And for those same decades, people have turned their eyes away, held their nose, and got ready for the next tailgate party. Come Supper Bowel time, and literally billions are spent - food, alcohol, giant TVs, and more.
Let's throw a few bombs downfield and list some of the facts.
2013 revenue: $10,000,000,000 Yes. That is BILLION.
The NFL is Tax Exempt.
There are about 1100 players at any time, including practice squads.
Salary caps are $133,000,000 per team. This guarantees that with TV revenue sharing, every team is extremely profitable. Given the draft, they are guaranteed a pool of avid, eager, pre-trained bodies to hire. At no cost.
Roger Goodell, Commissioner, earns $44,000,000.
The average life expectancy of a US citizen - (excluding West Virginia, Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi - 80.8 years of age.
The average life expectancy of an NFL player - 58 years.
The average penis length of an American male - 6.5 inches.
The average penis length of a rabid football fan - 4.9 inches.
The median income of an NFL player - $770,000.
The average length of an NFL career - 3.5 years. (The NFL claims it is 6.5 years)
The reason most NFL careers end - serious injury.
Including College football, there were 489,676 serious injuries caused by playing pro football. (Face it. College is a pro sport) That was in 2013 alone. That number has been stable for the last 10 years.
The NFL draft is a huge income booster for the NFL. It limits choices of players, it keeps labor costs down, and it creates yet another artificial means of capturing ad revenue.
Rice
Peterson
Haynesworth
Marshall
Hardy
Vick
Whether it involves the abuse of a child, a dog, a fiancé, or a spouse, there is a serious problem festering within the hallowed, ivied halls of the NFL. Worst of all has been the reaction of this organization once the dirty laundry gets aired.
This morning, Rick Morrissey, the very talented sports writer for the Chicago Suntimes, put it this way:
It took a hotel-chain boycott and the threat of other corporate action, not the welts on an abused 4-year-old boy, for the Minnesota Vikings to take Adrian Peterson off the field. No matter where this mess ends up, let’s make sure we never lose sight of that.
Nobody needed a reminder that the NFL is a slobbering, money-hungry hog, but the league hit us in the face with it anyway Wednesday
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http://www.suntimes.com/...
The NFL refused to take any substantial step on violence until Anheuser Busch, PepsiCo, Campbell Soup, McDonald’s, TD Ameritrade, and Visa all made it known that their response was pathetic. Only then did the NFL respond with a tepid response.
Here's another example of just how vile this organization has been throughout history. Head injuries. Brain damage. Concussions. Early onset Alzheimer's. ALS.
For years, the NFL has acted like Big Tobacco on the issue of head injuries. Monday Nacht Football used to portray some of the most disgusting head collisions, with music, explosions, and cheers in its advertising. Big hits were cheered, injuries were denied. As the NYT wrote in 2012, the NFL continuously pushed the idea that head collisions were a welcome part of the game. "You got your bell rung, your clock cleaned. You got nuked or blown up. You got your head handed to you." But you were never concussed. In fact, teams pushed brain damaged players back onto the field, even if they could not see straight. It was the manly, football thing to do.
For decades, the NFL lied, it concealed, it misled, and when finally the awful truth came out, it lied and cheated some more.
For over a decade, two small companies tried to sell the NFL on a new design for a helmet that would lessen the damage caused by head impacts. The NFL refused to let them in the door.
In 2012, this tax exempt, multi-billion dollar organization, which knows that the lifespan of its retired players is 22 years shorter than the average public, pissed on doctors who were warning about brain injuries until it finally came up with a meager offer of $30,000,000. For medical care. Given the several thousand retired players (MDs estimate the actual number is 4,800 sufferers) meant that each player would receive medical care worth $6250. As the total benefit. For a lifetime of brain damage.
Finally, reality set in, and the settlement was pushed to $765,000,000 until a federal judge did the math and realized that even that number was totally fucked up. $159,000 doesn't even pay for the care costs in a serious car accident. (hell, mine total meds exceeded $300,000) Judge Nixes Head injury Settlement.
The issue of head injuries came home to roost again yesterday. For more than a decade, Chicago's franchise proudly sold overpriced jerseys bearing the number 54. Former Bears linebacker Brian Urlacher announced Tuesday that he would resign from his job as an NFL analyst at Fox Sports, saying he "wants to spend more time with his family and experience retirement in full." For years, Brian played despite getting his head rung. His clock cleaned. His head handed to him. For years, Brian tackled head first, beating up receivers, quarterbacks, and running backs with his helmet. His NFL approved Riddell helmet. In fact, no player could choose a better design. Riddell had a NFL approved monopoly.
Urlacher's last days at Fox were sad. His comments seemed, well, slightly off.
Here's what Frontline said in 2013 about the NFL and Riddell:
But back in 2000 the company received a warning: A biomechanics firm hired first by the NFL and later by Riddell to test helmets and study head injuries sent the company a report showing that no football helmet, no matter how revolutionary, could prevent concussions.
In fact, the report stated, even a helmet that passed the industry safety standard for protection against skull fractures and other severe head injuries could leave a player with a 95 percent likelihood of receiving a concussion from a strong enough blow.
Yet the report, made public during a recent Colorado lawsuit, did not deter Riddell from marketing the helmet as protection against concussions. Riddell promoted the Revolution by saying that players who wore it were 31 percent less likely to suffer a concussion – a figure criticized as an exaggeration by leading experts on head injuries and some members of Congress.
PBS - Frontline
So, a sport which maims and injures 500,000 a year, which treats college professional players as a training squad without pay, which lessens the lifespan of its players by 22 years, that has players cycle through because of injury every 3.5 years, that has a guaranteed monopoly on college trained players through the draft, that pays a total of $2,695,000 to the average player, leaving them broken, broke, damaged, even brain damaged, WON'T EVEN ADMIT THAT IT KNEW ABOUT BRAIN DAMAGE. As of 2000. When it received an official study that it commissioned.
Drug dealing. Rape. Child abuse. Animal fighting. Beating of spouses and girlfriends. Head concussions. Something is Rotten in the State of New York. Funny how it did nothing except lie until advertisers began getting angry.
I will bet that Roger Goodell will resign within the next couple of months. With a huge bonus. And a cognac and cigar party. The question is, who will replace him?
I would love to see Condi Rice chosen. Given her innate talents at fucking things up, her stint as commissioner would doom the sport forever. It couldn't happen to a more deserving industry.