I love football. I’ll be watching the Super Bowl today. I’ll be wearing my Eli Manning jersey, cheering for the kid whose dad was my college quarterback.
Watching the NFL is my favorite after-church activity. That’s the sad thing about the Super Bowl - when it’s over, no more football until fall.
Today’s Super Bowl is expected to break records as the most watched television event in North American history. NFL football regularly tops the weekly Neilsen ratings.
Income and revenue are soaring. Last week, CBS’s “60 Minutes” called NFL football “the most successful entertainment enterprise in the country.”
Incredibly lucrative, the NFL practices an interesting business model, one that politicians and economists might study.
As NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell put it on “60 Minutes,” “We try tocombine socialism and capitalism. How can we socialize by sharing our revenue in a way that will allow every team the ability to compete?”
The NFL retains its competitive edge by enforcing policies that help all teams compete, whether from big markets like New York and Dallas or from small markets like Green Bay, Nashville and Buft alo. The league shares 80 percent of its revenue equally among the 32 teams. It’s a form of redistribution of wealth. Or you might call it progressive taxation. But it works to help all the teams to remain competitive, which produces a quality product that helps all to prosper, not just the wealthiest.
The teams have salary caps to prevent the wealthier franchises buying up all of the talent. Each year’s draft of new players is conducted in reverse order of finish. The last place team gets to choose fi rst. You might think of it as a form of aff rmative action.
The NFL also has a strong unionized labor force that gives the players an eft ective voice for their interests.
They’ve negotiated healthy benefits for active and retired players, a signifi cant minimum wage and a balance between the high salary potential of free agents and income limits that benefit less renowned players.
The NFL enjoys signifi cant public-private partnerships. Taxpayers underwrite building the stadiums that feed the system, which brings hefty revenues into the NFL cities. Government investmentin infrastructure is a foundation for the league’s success.
The NFL is a highly regulated business, with strong protective measures not only over its economics, but also strict rules to limit risks and damage to their players. The regulations are constantly evolving. They’ve increased recent rules to prohibit helmet-to-helmet hits in vulnerable situations.
Good regulations are always a way for systems to limit risk and to prevent the powerful from damaging the vulnerable.
Regulations also address the human tendency to cheat. In another professional sport we’ve seen the results of a failure to have good regulations and enforcement.
Baseball owners and their commissioners failed to prevent the use of performance-enhancing drugs, which led to broken trust and bogus records.
The integrity of the game was compromised. The U.S. financial system could learn a lesson from baseball. Guys will cheat. We always need good protective regulations to create a fair system and maintain trust.
It’s interesting how the NFL has figured this out.
The NFL is essentially a plutocracy. The 32 teams are owned by 1 percenters. But they seem to recognize that if left to their own devices, they would ruin the system.
The richest would spend what they could to win and competitiveness would go out the window. So they hire Commissioner Goodell to protect the integrity of the game and keep the playing field as level as possible.
And it works. Every team has a real chance for success.
One of the byproducts of the NFL’s policies is hope.
Commissioner Goodell says, “We want every fan to feel … hope when the season starts, that their team can end up holding that Super Bowl trophy.” And there is good reason for hope.
In every year since 2002 when the NFL went to eight divisions, at least one team that finished last in their division won that division the next year.
The key is vision. The NFL knows its overall health depends on the health of all its parts. Instead of letting money and power concentrate in a few hands, they intentionally reinvest in the potential of every team, sending resources where they are most needed. Their regulatory policies enhance competition and improve the whole system.
It’s ironic. This highly regulated, government assisted, unionized, aff rmative action, income sharing, capitalist-socialist enterprise is the top show on Fox nearly every week, while the Fox commentators revile the very strategy that helps make their network wealthy.
LOWELL GRISHAM IS AN EPISCOPAL PRIEST WHO LIVES IN FAYETTEVILLE.
Opinion, Pages 13 on 02/05/2012