Lately, however, I’m beginning to suspect that big-ticket professional sports have skewed many peoples’ priorities and values. I feel several recent events have given me reason to question how our culture has placed so much prominence on it.
I think Super Bowl XLV put the wheels in motion.
Yes, I had low expectations for this year’s extravaganza from Dallas as neither the Pittsburgh Steelers nor the Green Bay Packers elicit anything more than yawns from me. In all fairness though, it wasn’t the quality of play in the game as it was quite good.No, I think what actually changed my perspective actually happened before the Super Bowl in what seemed to be a never-ending pre-game show. Sometime during FOX's parade of corny and overly sentimental packages about anything even slightly relevant, I began to notice how the Super Bowl has become an event by, for and of the super-rich. I realize that this is hardly a new development. Perhaps, it became more evident to me this year because of my indifference to the game.
I believe this revelation came to me while FOX’s sports commentators were serving up a monumental softball interview to Dallas Cowboys owner, Jerry Jones, to discuss his relatively new $1-billion-dollar toy built mostly at taxpayer expense called Cowboys Stadium.
This 95,000-seat cathedral is a shrine to corporate excess and its amenities would make King Louis XVI, Marie-Antoinette and the entire House of Bourbon feel right at home. I’m surprised FOX’s reporters didn’t address Jones as “your majesty” during the sickening interview. (It’s too bad President Obama didn’t get anywhere close to that kind of respect during his subsequent interview on FOX.)It just seemed to me that this self-congratulatory, pampered owner and these admiring, seven-figure income sports announcers were a little too out of touch singing the praises of a stadium that provides access to other people from the same wealthy class. The average ticket price for Super Bowl XLV was $3500 dollars!
I realize that it’s the Super Bowl. But, seriously…$3500 dollars to attend one football game?!? What percentage of the American people can afford that? I think I could treat my family to a weeklong vacation in the Bahamas or buy a decent used pickup truck for less.
Of course, stratospheric ticket prices aren’t exclusive to just the Super Bowl or NFL football. And Cowboys Stadium isn’t the only overpriced facility built on the backs of working Americans, most of whom will never be able to see a live game at one of these venues unless they win the lottery.
And this is what I really find disenchanting and downright appalling about professional sports these days: the fact that these billionaire team owners receive massive amounts of public funding to pay for their stadiums and arenas. Never have authorities transferred so much public money for so little economic benefit to so many billionaires who don’t need it. Meanwhile, states and municipalities are slashing funding for much-needed social services to the bare bones.
Like other realms of corporate America today, it seems professional sports has gotten too big to fail. The owners have no incentive to lower ticket prices so that regular working class American can attend. Using ticket purchases as tax write offs, corporations have paid off luxury suites years in advance for their CEO’s and upper management. Plus, team owners have the added income bonus generated from television advertising revenue.
I really enjoy watching sports. But lately, it seems it has become a reeking cash cow for the filthy rich. Perhaps, I’d be better off investing my emotions in something else.
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