Are You Not Entertained?

The President apparently worked the phones and told the sports executives that they need to plan on getting football going in September.

It makes sense only if you look at the issue from his perspective.  His base is also a sports-addicted population.  In the red states, NFL practically beats church-going during the season!

So, if there is no sports on the horizon, especially if there will be no NFL, then it will begin to dawn on even the most loyal tRump cultist that this COVID-19 is not any hoax, and that their dear leader has been lying to them.  As a result, in the elections in November, there won't be anything to stop the Democrats from running up the score against a weak and demoralized candidate and party.

I hope against hope that Americans will use this global catastrophe straighten out our individual and collective priorities.

I have, forever, blogged here about the awfully screwed up priorities of this American society (and others too) in which we paid gazillions to ball players, while systematically gutting long-term capacity building--from education to infrastructure to health care to ...

Here's a re-post of one of those from the past--this is from April 2017
*************************************************

Recall the sound bite "we need more welders and less philosophers" from back when it was the season of the Republican primaries? I wish we had engaged in a whole lot of discussion regarding that statement from Senator Marco Rubio. Instead, we collectively shrugged and moved on.

We could, and should, have used that opportunity to engage in discussions on what education ought to accomplish. If we had, then we would have agreed that we need both welders and philosophers, and that higher education is failing to deliver them.

Public higher educational institutions have suffered from extensive mission creep over the years. It is best (worst?) seen in how sports-oriented the taxpayer subsidized colleges and universities have become. Welders and philosophers are apparently way less important than athletics in the mission of higher education!

Countries where people are far more sports-crazy than we are do not waste their taxpayer monies like we do here in the US. Europeans, for instance, are maniacal about soccer, but they know well that sports is sports, and education is education. Or, consider my old country, India, where cricket is practically a religion. Colleges do not waste enormous resources on cricket and its gods.

If only we had continued to engage with the welders/philosophers soundbite, then we would have ended up talking about the wasteful practices in higher education, with athletics as perhaps the foremost waste of taxpayer money. But, of course, public institutions do not want us to talk about this, and the sports-addicted taxpayers are even less interested it seems.

A year ago, journalists in Michigan attempted to understand how much taxpayer money is spent on athletics by public institutions in their state. It was not an easy project. They “obtained through the Freedom of Information Act the financial disclosure statements provided to the NCAA from Michigan's 13 public universities that offer NCAA-level athletics.” Yes, through the Freedom of Information Act!

What they found did not surprise any of us who have been critical of this unholy mix of sports and academics in public higher education. Not only did the public institutions spend gazillions on athletics, “students are often "kept in the dark" when it comes to how universities fund college athletics and the degree to which colleges are subsidizing sports.”

Yet, whenever they cry funding shortage, universities are ready to cut philosophy before they even think of reducing the sports subsidies. I wish that legislatures, including here in Oregon with our huge budget deficit, would question the wisdom of public colleges as entertainment arenas.

The university where I have been teaching for fifteen years is no exception. A decade ago, a 25-million dollar facility was built primarily to meet the NCAA Division II requirements. Such an outrageous expense would not have been incurred if sports were played at the lower tier National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA,) in which the university participated until the year 2000.

America is exceptional indeed—when it comes to diverting taxpayer money on entertainment, when that could be spent instead on welders and philosophers.

This taxpayer-supported entertainment is what the Declaration of Independence meant by "the pursuit of happiness"?

I won't watch this Super Bowl, too

"The bag is not even full, and the total is almost 35 dollars?" I remarked with a laugh after the clerk rang up my groceries.

"Yes, eating is an expensive habit" she joined in.

My groceries were nothing compared to another guy's basket.  His was a more expensive amount.  But, it was not because he was loading up with food as if end times were around the corner.  Nope.  His high bill came from the beer and wine and party food--it is time for Super Bowl Sunday.

As the only regular reader (hehe!) knows well, I don't care a damn about the Super Bowl.  I cannot even recall the last time I watched the game.  Even in the years that I did, I was way more interested in the singing of the national anthem--all because of the phenomenal job that Whitney Houston did way back in my early years in this country.

Despite all the news reports on concussions and the taxpayer subsidies, the sport continues to have maniacal supporters.  Not only those who voted for this POTUS.  A great number of the ultra-left too are rabid sportswatchers.  I have always wondered how these lefties deal with the cognitive dissonance--their own ideological views on the political economy, versus the anti-competitive mega-rich owners of the teams sucking on taxpayer teats!  I tell ya, it is such unholy combinations that makes politics bizarre, and why truth has no place in politics.

The defense of taxpayer subsidy for sports, especially the stadiums (stadia?), is beyond truth!

Federal subsidies are justified for infrastructure projects that provide a public good across states, but local sports stadiums clearly do not meet this criterion.
Indeed, there is little evidence that stadiums provide even local economic benefits. Decades of academic studies consistently find no discernible positive relationship between sports facilities and local economic development, income growth, or job creation. And local benefits aside, there is clearly no economic justification for federal subsidies for sports stadiums. Residents of, say, Wyoming, Maine, or Alaska have nothing to gain from the Washington-area football team’s decision to locate in Virginia, Maryland, or the District of Columbia.

Now that we are fully in a post-truth America, who cares, right?  A listing--like here--on how all that taxpayer waste can be put to use will appeal only to a few truth-seekers!

I have often commented that sports in America is a wonderful proxy measure for many aspects of the country.  American football is highly correlated with jingoism and a militaristic attitude.  And more, like these two NY Times reports show:

It is a mad, mad, mad world! :(

Problems with football--both college and NFL

It simply baffles me that we are unable to do anything about the ultra-wasteful NCAA football, despite any number of reports and analyses that detail how much it screws up higher education and, more importantly, the life of the typical students who are increasingly finding it difficult to stay financially afloat.

Last night, PBS' "Need to Know" had a pretty good segment on NCAA football, by focusing its lens on Ohio University. 

In New York, the governor is proposing a 10 percent reduction in funding to higher education. In Michigan, it’s 15 percent. And in California, almost 16 percent. Last month, the president of the University of Nevada Las Vegas announced that the school may end up in the academic equivalent of bankruptcy. Tenured faculty could lose jobs, and entire departments may be closed.

But on many campuses, spending on intercollegiate athletics is growing, even though most sports programs run up millions of dollars a year in annual deficits. That means that while public universities are cutting in classrooms, your tuition dollars — and maybe even your tax dollars — are subsidizing big-time college sports.

It is depressing that we can have any number of such reports, but NCAA sports, especially football, apparently has even better a teflon coating that Reagan had during his presidency.  Simply depressing.

It is atrocious that faculty in higher education overtly, and covertly, encourage and support, and quite maniacally, college sports.  I fault even more the liberal faculty who waste not a second in complaining about fat cats in the corporate world and even in college administration and rally up students in these causes.  Quite a contrast it is when it comes to NCAA football and sports--not only do they rarely critique them, they are big time fans to boot (pun intended!)  And then their misguided defense of sports as an avenue to providing access to higher education for the poor and minority students.  Gimme a break!

As I have blogged before, even the small little university where I work is not exempt from wasteful spending on football. Of course, the "radical" faculty and their union has not bothered even to whimper about this.

One of the many reasons why higher education is academically adrift!

As if this sucking of blood money from students and taxpayers is not enough, the NFL goes even further.  Let us leave it to Reason to explain how the NFL owners, players, and the feds are all taking us for a very expensive ride:



I feel terrible for the youth in this country who don't realize how much they are being screwed :(

Super Bowl question: Does Football Have a Future?

Why this question?  All because of one word: concussions.

It is no longer tackle football, but collision football, writes Ben McGrath in the New Yorker..  Collision that involves, and increasingly so, players fast for a big person and unusually big for a fast person. 

Chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or C.T.E., is the name for a condition that is believed to result from major collisions—or from the accumulation of subconcussions that are nowhere near as noticeable, including those incurred in practice. It was first diagnosed, in 2002, in the brain of the Pittsburgh Steelers Hall of Fame center Mike Webster, who died of a heart attack after living out of his truck for a time. It was next diagnosed in one of Webster’s old teammates on the Steelers’ offensive line, Terry Long, who killed himself by drinking antifreeze. Long overlapped, at the end of his career, with Justin Strzelczyk, who was also found to have C.T.E. after he crashed, fatally, into a tanker truck, while driving the wrong way down the New York Thruway.

 Even though the harsh impacts on the health and well being have been known for long, Alan Scwarz of the NY Times is credited as the guy who relentlessly followed up with reports that has forced the NFL, and other sports too, to investigate this issue.  So much so that apparently he is sometimes sarcastically referred to as Alan Brockovich by those who don't like what he is doing.  Here is an example of the long-term effects:

retired N.F.L. players are five to nineteen times as likely as the general population to have received a dementia-related diagnosis; that the helmet-manufacturing industry is overseen by a volunteer consortium funded largely by helmet manufacturers; and that Lou Gehrig may not actually have had the disease that bears his name but suffered from concussion-related trauma instead. (Since 1960, fourteen N.F.L. players have had a diagnosis of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, which is about twelve more than you would expect from a random population sample.)

And, remember that other sports too have the concussion crisis:

“Hockey, by the way, has a higher incidence of concussions than football,” Dr. Maroon told me. This is true of women’s college hockey, at least, which doesn’t even allow body-checking. (Women, in general, seem substantially more prone to concussions, and explanations vary, from weaker necks to a greater honesty in self-diagnosis.) And in December, 2009, Reggie Fleming, a New York Rangers defenseman in the nineteen-sixties who was known more for his fighting than for his scoring, became the first pro hockey player to be given a diagnosis of C.T.E. Hockey may now have a concussion crisis on its hands, with the N.H.L.’s best and most marketable player, Sidney Crosby, having been blindsided during the sport’s annual Winter Classic; attempting to play again, four days later, he was drilled into the boards, and he hasn’t played since.

So, what are we looking at?  Over at Slate, John Culhane writes:

At least two class action lawsuits by recent players against the league are in preparation. These suits are expected to allege that the league knew, but suppressed, knowledge of the long-term neurological risks of playing football.

There is a good chance, according to Culhane, that the suits will be tossed out.  But, 

Football isn't tennis; it isn't even basketball. It's violent by design. But that doesn't mean the violence and injuries must escalate without end. If the NFL accelerates the proactive approach it's demonstrated lately, the results won't just redound to the benefit of current and former pros. Given the league's prominence and influence, its safety stance could cause a safety dance to break out: Everyone from college and high-school football players to athletes in other contact sports will begin to get the message.

Think about these when you watch two players colliding at the Super Bowl.

Patriots lose to Jets. Behlichick throws acid on Brady

Onion SportsDome

Ahem, that was from the Onion's new show :)

Would you buy jeans from Brett Favre?

Every once in a while SNL does something really funny; here is one:

Just in case you missed out on the news that is the reason for this "advertisement," here is a recap
And here is the original ad that SNL parodied

If Filmmakers Directed the Super Bowl

"You play to win the game" ... football coaching rants :)

Jacksonville Jaguars forfeit game against Tennessee Titans

All because of a crisis triggered by an existential epiphany at coin toss. Watch the report and see for yourself how it happened.

Pre-Game Coin Toss Makes Jacksonville Jaguars Realize Randomness Of Life

Of course it is a satire and, as always, fantastically done by The Onion. How do they do it every time? Simply awesome. I particularly liked this: "what meaning can life have if the future can be dictated by the random chance of this coin? Existence is a vulgar absurdity." Fantastic :-)