Bernie and the NFL: Two Peas in a Socialist Pod?
When Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders was elected to the US Senate from Vermont, he hadn't chosen to run as a Democrat or a Republican, he ran as an Independent Socialist.
He did this because he felt that America's Democrats and Republicans had moved too far to the right on the political spectrum and that his political philosophy was more akin to the democratic socialism you find in western Europe.
(Sanders image from nhjournal.com)
Which is a lot more in-sync with some American institutions than many people think.
Take the National Football League (NFL), for example. Americans love their football and the NFL is a virtual money-making machine. Television rights to broadcast NFL games sell for billions of dollars a year.
With over 100 million people tuning in to watch the Super Bowl, advertisers pay millions of dollars for just a 30 second spot during that broadcast.
But is the dirty little secret of the NFL's success the fact that the league and its 32 franchise owners have adopted a socialistic game plan? Consider the following:
(NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell - image from nydailynews.com)
- The teams who perform the poorest during each season are rewarded by the league with the best draft positions for college players.
- Every team's salary expense for players is capped by the league. The cap number for the 2016 season is ~$155 million. A team owner can spend less on player salaries than that amount, but they can't spend any more, regardless of how rich the owner is or how much money the team makes.
- Television contracts are negotiated by the league and the money is collected by the league; individual teams may not sign their own television deals. The money earned by the league's television contracts is split evenly among all 32 NFL teams, regardless of how poorly the team performs or how often a team appears on one of the nationally televised games.
- Gate receipts from each game are not kept in their entirety by the home team. They are split 60-40 between the home team and the league. The league then distributes their 40% share evenly between all teams.
My goodness! The league restricts the freedom of team owners in many areas, taxes a team's gate receipts for purposes of re-distribution to others, provides guaranteed income to all teams, rewards underperformers, and penalizes success!
Bernie Sanders' proposals don't come anywhere close to the rules and regulations the NFL has in place and has been operating under for years. And yet…the NFL makes billions of dollars every year and believes those rules and regulations result in the maximization of total income for everyone.
We're not going to make any value judgments on this or try and relate it to society in general; we're just pointing out some interesting facts. And maybe wonder why Bernie and his supporters haven't brought them up during this year's presidential primary season.
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