The Forty-Four Million Dollar Man

I just finished reading an excellent study, of the man seen above, in the New York Times Magazine. Commissioner Roger Goodell might be universally scorned, and perhaps even hated, but no one can argue with the results of his tenure at the helm of the fabulously successful National Football League. This is from the article: The N.F.L.’s total revenue in 2015 ($12.4 billion) is nearly double that of a decade earlier ($6.6 billion). The price of television ads during the Super Bowl has increased by more than 75 percent over the last decade. This year’s conference championship games set yet another viewership record for the league: 53.3 million people watched the A.F.C. game on CBS; 45.7 million watched the N.F.C. game on Fox.

In short, professional football is more popular and profitable than ever before, even as the League's problems seem to be multiplying. But you would never know anything was amiss from listening to Goodell. He is relentlessly aggressive when it comes to defending the NFL which is hardly surprising when you realize that the man has never worked anywhere else. His entire working life has been spent with the NFL. Just yesterday, the commissioner strongly asserted that if he had a son he would "love to have him play the game of football" despite the overwhelming scientific evidence showing that the game poses serious long-term health risks for the players. Unkind observers have compared Goodell to the tobacco executives who continued defending their product even in the face of overwhelming medical evidence that the product sickened, and killed, its users. I'd give Goodell the benefit of the doubt on this one though. I do think he is sincere when he says that he'd let his son play football.

Goodell has been far less straightforward when questioned about things like daily fantasy football and medical marijuana. Here is his tortured explanation of why those daily games aren't considered to be a from of gambling by the NFL: “It’s hard to see the influence that it could have on the outcome of a game because individual players are picking different players from different teams, mashing them up, you might call it. It’s not based on the outcome of a game, which is what our biggest concern is with sports betting". This is a variation of the familiar argument which holds that daily fantasy games can't be gambling because there is a level of skill involved in assembling a fantasy team. Congress helpfully reached that conclusion back in 2006 and thus opened the door to the unchecked, and unregulated, proliferation of daily fantasy sports that we see today. And even though these daily games are a very different animal from traditional fantasy sports, the NFL didn't hesitate to get in bed with the industry. Only to wind up looking more than a bit stupid when states started filing lawsuits against DraftKings and FanDuel charging that what they do is indeed a form of gambling. As Rick Perry surely would have put it, OOPS!

As far as the issue of medical marijuana, I dealt with that in my last post and won't bother rehashing it at length here. Suffice to say, the NFL's position on medical marijuana positively reeks of hypocrisy. The fact that it is now legal in a number of states means absolutely nothing to the League which, according to Goodell, has no plans on revisiting their policy. As it stands now, any player who tests positive for marijuana will be fined and suspended. The League's thinking on this issue is at least two decades behind the rest of American society which is increasingly in favor of decriminalizing marijuana, and allowing it for both medical and recreational use. One could be forgiven for assuming that the NFL would be embracing medical marijuana as a far less dangerous alternative to the opioid-based painkillers that their players frequently become addicted to. After all, don't we always hear Goodell himself solemnly intoning that the health and welfare of the players is the NFL's number one priority? I won't give him the benefit of the doubt here. There is no good argument to be found that would support the NFL's idiotic stance on the issue of medical marijuana.

Drug Wars

Last night was the premiere of the much-anticipated ESPN 30 for 30 documentary about the 1985 Chicago Bears, and it certainly did not disappoint. I thoroughly enjoyed every minute of it, and only started thinking critically about the program this morning. That Bears championship team is unique in that they only won a single championship, yet they are always in the conversation when the subject turns to the best football team ever. Generally speaking, a team needs to be a dynasty with multiple championships to their credit in order to earn that degree of respect. But the combination of football dominance, and larger-than-life personalities, that was the '85 Bears sets them apart. They really are in a "league of their own", so to speak.

I was 23-years old at the time of their Superbowl victory over the hapless New England Patriots, which means most of the players are of my generation. That fact made it easy for me to relate to them as they looked back 30 years, and reflected on what was surely the greatest moment in all of their lives. The producers of the documentary were able to assemble a half-dozen of so of the most prominent members of the team to tell the story including quarterback Jim McMahon seen above lighting a marijuana cigarette. And that is not a still image from the documentary, which made no mention at all of the fact that McMahon openly admits to using the drug to treat a number of health issues stemming from his playing days.

Obviously, the producers realized that they couldn't avoid the elephant in the room and had to dedicate at least some of the show to the health challenges faced by retired football players. And by including McMahon in the documentary, they were forced to confront the issue of Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE) because McMahon is suffering from the consequences of having experienced repeated concussions as a football player. The list of symptoms he ticks off include pain, depression, memory loss, early onset dementia and issues with his vision and speech. But, having introduced the issue, the producers then disposed of it by doing a segment on chiropractic treatments that McMahon claims has greatly diminished the severity of his symptoms. Problem solved.

But what they didn't address was the equally troubling issue having to do with the chronic pain that football players experience, both during their playing days, and long after they retire. One of the incidents recounted in the show nicely highlights the unbelievable hypocrisy that permeates our society when it comes to drugs. Head coach Mike Ditka had a rule in place that held that if a player didn't practice during the week, then he wouldn't be allowed to play on Sunday. McMahon had spent part of that week in the hospital, in traction, and did not start the game. However, by his own admission and that of his teammates, McMahon had taken a number of painkillers on game day and felt that he could play. And, with the Bears losing, he badgered Ditka to put him into the game. The coach finally relented, Jim McMahon took over at quarterback, and led the team to a comeback victory. But, on the very first play from scrimmage, McMahon stumbled backwards and nearly fell down because of the effects of the drugs he was on. Only to recover his balance and throw a touchdown pass. His teammates laughed about it.

What isn't very funny though would be the fact that McMahon, and hundreds of other players, rely upon prescription painkillers to deal with the often unbearable physical pain they live with every day. Many of them will become addicted to the pills and end up in rehab, jail, or worse. McMahon states that he took roughly 100 Percocet pills a month to cope with the chronic pain, and was only able to get off the painkillers through the use of marijuana. He calls medical marijuana a "Godsend", and advocates for the use of medical marijuana to treat current, and former, NFL players. Now, I understand why the producers of the 30 for 30 documentary about the Bears decided not to tread there. Marijuana is still deemed to be a dangerous drug with no medicinal properties by the federal government, and remains illegal in many parts of the country. They would have gotten serious flack if they had asked McMahon about it. But, they evidently had no qualms about lightheartedly recounting a story about that time Jim McMahon staged a comeback victory with a powerful assist from some opioid-based painkillers.

Field of Schemes

Orwell was referring to the game of soccer of course, but one could easily be forgiven for assuming that he was actually anticipating the gladiatorial spectacle that is today's American football. After all, the quote is from Orwell's dystopian novel 1984 that predicted a future of perpetual war, omnipresent government surveillance, and public manipulation, all of which have come to pass. And, speaking of public manipulation, the three-headed hydra of NFL executives, lawyers, and team owners have no peer in that department. Politicians are woefully ill-equipped to negotiate deals with the NFL, as evidenced by the incredibly stupid stadium deals municipalities routinely enter into with teams.

The League is now a mere five days away from playing the greatest single game on the American sports landscape, which is of course the Superbowl. The buildup to the big game began weeks ago, and with the announcement yesterday that pop star Lady Gaga will sing the National Anthem, all of the pieces are in place. A few discordant notes are floating around, but nothing that will detract from the shock and awe of Superbowl Sunday.

Even as the playoffs that would determine the two teams that would face off in the Superbowl were still unfolding, the St. Louis Rams announced that they would be breaking their lease and moving back to Los Angeles, the city that they abandoned two decades ago. The lease that the Rams signed with the city of St. Louis contains something called a state-of-the-art clause. What that essentially means is that the team can break their lease if the stadium in which they play is not maintained to insure that it remains in the "first tier" of NFL stadiums. In practical terms, that would have required the city of St. Louis to spend $700 million to upgrade a stadium that only cost $280 million to build 17 years ago.

The city of St. Louis is struggling economically, and could surely find better uses for the money it would have cost to keep the Rams. Still, they scrambled to come up with plan that would have satisfied the ownership in the form of a new $1.1 billion stadium proposal. The Rams' dismissed it out of hand, while giving the distinct impression that nothing St. Louis did would be enough to convince them to stay. The decision to move the team back to LA had very likely already been arrived at, and all that remained was to get the NFL to bless the relocation. And it was foregone conclusion that they would indeed receive that blessing.

Fall with Paul

As I was reading the various postmortems being written for Rand Paul's 2016 presidential campaign, there was a mention of a Time magazine cover that touted Paul as the "most interesting man in politics". I was curious to learn what the issue date was and did a search for it. The editors at Time made that declaration in October of 2014, more than six months before Paul announced his White House bid. The article is only accessible to Time subscribers, so I was unable to read it, but would guess the writers were already assuming that he would be running for president in 2016. As far as what prompted them to label Paul as such, your guess is as good as mine.

For me at least, the most striking thing about Rand Paul's failed candidacy would be the fact that he didn't even manage to draw as much support as his father did during his two presidential runs. Rand's strategy seemed clear enough going into the campaign. He needed to retain the small but passionate libertarian following that his father had built, while simultaneously appealing to a wider swath of voters. Ron Paul proved unable to draw support from either mainstream Republican voters, or the party establishment, for the simple reason that he refused to compromise on his principles. And it was that quality that endeared Ron Paul to his loyal followers.

As it turned out, Rand Paul ended up with the worst of both possible worlds. His abandonment of what his supporters assumed were deeply-held principles infuriated them, without offering Paul any corresponding gains to offset the defections. All politicians are guilty of the old "my position has evolved" dodge, but Paul's positions sometimes seemed to be evolving from hour-to-hour. His father was widely derided as being an isolationist crackpot, but at least Ron Paul had a coherent worldview that he didn't deviate from. His son ended up all over the map, and never really offered a compelling reason to support his candidacy. Even so, like his father before him, Rand Paul was frequently the only participant in those debates that made even a damn bit of sense.

Out of the mouths of babes

If the children of Iowa were allowed to caucus, Trump would surely have won in a landslide last night. They seem to instinctively like Donald Trump, and I don't think that can be entirely attributed to his celebrity. Ted Cruz, on the other hand, has a history of terrifying little girls with his apocalyptic language. Now, I'm not necessarily saying that we should be picking our leaders based upon how kids react to them, but it wouldn't be a bad idea to factor that into the equation. After all, they are the ones who will be inheriting the world that we entrust to these political leaders. I'd also like to see how dogs react to them as well. Because if kids and dogs don't like someone, that tells me all I need to know about them.

Clavar un tenedor en él

When Jeb Bush launched his ill-fated presidential bid in June of last year, he made the announcement in both English and Spanish. Bush would also sit down for at least one interview in which the language spoken was Spanish, and I believe that his campaign rolled out some Spanish language ads as well. He is married to a Mexican-American woman, and Bush is fluent in her native tongue. Clearly, the Bush campaign felt that their candidate was uniquely positioned to appeal to Hispanic voters and proceeded accordingly. And if Donald Trump had decided to do another season of The Celebrity Apprentice, instead of running for president, the strategy might have paid off for Bush.

 Bush isn't the only Republican 2016 candidate who is fluent in Spanish. Both Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio are the sons of Cuban immigrants, and presumably speak the language at least as fluently as Bush. But I can't recall having heard either of them speaking Spanish on the campaign trail. In fact, both men go to considerable lengths to downplay their heritage, and they make no special attempt to appeal to Hispanic voters. As a teenager Cruz changed his first name from Rafael to Ted, and never looked back. Just as relevant is the fact that the immigrant experience for white Cubans, like Cruz and Rubio, is altogether different than what most Hispanic immigrants to this country experience.

All of which means that Jeb Bush would have had a decent enough shot at attracting Hispanic voters, that is if he hadn't abruptly ended his outreach after a couple of months. Because while Bush celebrated Mexican heritage in his announcement speech, Trump actually attacked Mexican immigrants when he delivered his own announcement speech. And he would follow that up by brutally attacking Bush for having the audacity to speak Spanish during his own campaign events. Trump told him pointblank during one of the debates that he should speak English in this country, and we haven't heard Jeb utter a word in Spanish since that night. He pretty much left his cojones behind when he walked off that stage. 

Bush might hang on after tonight's results in Iowa, but he would only be prolonging the inevitable. He is expected to finish far back in the pack and his prospects don't look any brighter moving forward. His presidential bid never got off the ground, and the fact that he has been on the main stage for every debate is nothing short of a travesty. If that process were above board, Bush would have been relegated to the undercard long ago. But the combination of his family name, and the seemingly limitless amount of money his campaign was willing to burn through, was enough to buy him a free pass to the main stage each time. 

Trump Über Alles

We New Yorkers have long since become accustomed to seeing the name TRUMP all around us, because the man emblazons it on everything he touches, and typically in 10-foot tall gold letters. It is the Trump Brand, and he attaches an inordinate value to it as evidenced by this remarkable deposition he was once forced to give. But, for New Yorkers, the sight of a giant airplane with TRUMP plastered on the side only makes us think of his failed plunge into the airline business back in 1988. However, the grounding of the short-lived Trump Shuttle would be small potatoes compared to the beating he would later take in Atlantic City. In the span of little over a decade, Donald J. Trump would go from being the poster boy for a decade marked by greed and excess, to being a bankrupt tabloid curiosity. By the early 2000s, Trump had fallen so low that he actually lent his name to a scam get-rich-quick scheme called Trump University.

But redemption was soon at hand in the form of a crass reality television game show that turned out to be the perfect vehicle for Trump's comeback. Not so much in the monetary sense, although I suspect the money did come in handy for the perpetually cash-starved Trump. No, the real value of his long tenure on The Apprentice came from the priceless exposure it provided him with. Every week Donald Trump had an hour of prime-time television that he shrewdly used to promote himself ahead of the inevitable presidential run. And not only did he introduce himself to the American public, Trump also worked his family members into the mix. The happy result for Trump is that millions of potential voters already feel that they know, and like, Donald J. Trump. He was a celebrity before he became a politician, and it would be impossible to overstate how valuable that is to his presidential prospects.