They shouldn't be playing the London game anyway

If I were king of football, we wouldn't be disrupting teams' schedules and inconveniencing their home fans by shipping them off to London every year.  It's especially a hardship on the Dolphins now given that they're also playing 16 weeks with no bye.  But we know the NFL doesn't care about any of that so.. it's off to London.

Whose streets? Tom's streets

Last week the NFL voted to allow the Oakland Raiders to move to Las Vegas. The reason, as always: pure extortion.

The relocation feels like the money grab it is. Davis and the other N.F.L. owners said they were impressed with the city’s potential, but what persuaded them most was the $750 million tax subsidy lawmakers in Nevada will provide for a big, modern stadium with suites, fancy restaurants and concession stands, not to mention the prospect of a marquee naming-rights partner and other financial benefits.

Fans might not care about such amenities, but in the money-first N.F.L., the other 31 owners certainly do because they receive a cut of what every team generates in its stadium. The Raiders have been near the bottom in the amount of revenue they have produced in their deteriorating stadium, which is more than 50 years old.

Now, in a sane world, hulking landmarks like sports stadiums probably should be expected to have a shelf life well past 50 years. That's allowing for the occasional renovation or two, which the Oakland Coliseum certainly has had.  But this is professional sports where decisions on such matters are more about what the ownership cabal can squeeze out of the public.  And every franchise relocation crisis brings a new opportunity. 

The owner Jerry Jones of the Dallas Cowboys, a power broker in the league who embraced and pushed the move, had an extra incentive. He owns half of Legends, a marketing and hospitality company. Last year, he persuaded the owners to let the Rams move to Los Angeles, and his company won the contract for the new stadium the Rams are building there. Jones pulled off the same daily double with the Raiders.

So the age of any stadium isn't nearly as important as what fortunes can be derived from building a new one. The Superdome is a few years past 40. And nobody is (currently) talking about any dire need to pull the Saints out of there.  The Advocate's Nick Underhill tries to tell us this is because the team's home grown ownership and management "gets it" or some such nonsense. But those of us with longer local memories than Underhill's might disagree.

Take, for instance, this passage where Underhill unquestioningly repeats Dennis Lauscha's assurances that all is well and the good people are working to keep you happy well into the forseeable future.

The Saints have already begun discussions with SMG’s Doug Thornton about how the two sides can keep this relationship going beyond 2025. The Saints have started soliciting proposals from architects for a long-term plan for the Superdome. The goal is to start shaping what the “next generation” will look like for the area around the stadium.

“I can sincerely say that our team and Doug and his team and the state, they’re investing in the future,” Lauscha said. “(All) of us want nothing more than to make that area great and really make it the jewel of downtown.”

He added: “You have two partners who want to dance. We’ve seen when that happens — particularly in our market, but all throughout all professional sports — when that’s the case, good private-public partnerships can exist and work long-term.”

[Before we get too much further into this, let's assume that, unlike Underhill, most of us remember well that Tom Benson was determined to move the Saints out of New Orleans when the city was at its lowest point after Katrina and had to be dragged back kicking and screaming. In case you are like Nick, though, and need a refresher, I always liked Oyster's explication best.]

Anyway, about that "jewel of downtown" public-private partnership the guys are all working on. It's less of a "partnership" than it is a.. well, grift isn't really strong enough a word for what this is. A new post at AZ takes an in-depth look at it. Apologies for the long quotation.

Easy Street...courtesy of Louisiana

The 2009 deal between Benson and the State/LSED consisted of two parts.

The first was an extension of the Superdome lease by LSED through 2025 and an $85 million dollar disbursement to the LSED by the State of Louisiana for improvements to the Dome as well as scaled payments to the Saints pending the amount of money the team generated annually from 2011 to 2024.

The second part of the deal involved the newly acquired Dominion Tower and properties purchased by Benson’s Zellia, LLC. In addition to the State agencies leasing over 70% of the office space in the tower, a state organization called the Louisiana Office Facilities Corporation (essentially an extension of the LSED) agreed to lease the New Orleans Center property which included the Mall and area now known as Champions Square, as well as the aforementioned parking garage for $2.3 million annually. The LSED agreed to take on the operations of the parking garage, mall and Macy’s retail store, retaining all revenues up to the $2.3 million mark (to compensate for the rent to Zelia), then any additional revenues would be split with Zelia 50/50. The agreement called for Zelia to be responsible for any initial renovations and repairs to the properties with the LSED maintaining daily operations and maintenance.

Benson/Zelia agreed to a $10.5 million dollar investment in the property over a three-year period (from 2010) and the LSED committed to making $85 million in capital improvements over the following two years with a completion date of 2011.

Public/Private Partnerships: The Road to Prosperity for the Private

After ratifying the agreement in an LSED Board of Commissioners meeting, Commissioner Robert Bruno stated the deal was (paraphrased from meeting minutes), “One of the most complicated, creative, bipartisan examples of a public/private partnership that could ever be imagined.”

Ron Forman, then President of the LSED Board of Commissioners and CEO/President of the Audubon Institute said (paraphrased from meeting minutes), “Without Mr. Benson’s willingness to invest, it could not have happened.”

How would one not be willing to invest in a multi-million dollar contract that placed any business risk solely on the State of Louisiana? The deal guaranteed near full occupancy rate of Benson Tower on top of a guaranteed 2.3 million dollars a year lease for the Champions Square property and the parking garage in which Zelia doesn’t even have to manage (The management of the properties is contracted to the company SMG by the LSED).

All Benson had to do was purchase the properties and the state took on any and all business risk to guarantee Zelia a financial windfall.

As obscene as all that is, it's pretty well known to most New Orleanians. (Except, I guess, Nick Underill.) Ask anyone to define the boundaries of Bensonville and most probably wouldn't even need to consult the Noligarchs Map.



But a lot of people may not know about the public street Benson's fiefdom managed to absorb for what appears to be zero compensation back to the city.. or scarcely any acknowledgement of the transaction.

An entire city street, the 1400 block of LaSalle which lies between Benson Tower and the Superdome, has been appropriated into the Champions Square venue….sans any contract with the City.

The street has been completely closed to automobile traffic with numerous permanent structures erected by the LSED including gateways  on both ends of the street.  During concerts and events in the Square these gateways are closed to the general public and used as a ticketing entrance for private events.

There are numerous problems with this, as Jason goes on to point out. Most crucially, it's probably illegal in that it violates a state constitutional prohibition on public property being "loaned, pledged, or donated to or for any person, association, or corporation, public or private." It's also just a ton of money the city is leaving on the table for use of the public property. At the same time the mayor is squeezing as much as he can out of ordinary people by raising parking fees, installing traffic cameras, and taxing people for air, he's doing this multi-million dollar favor for a billionaire.

Here's something else from the AZ report that would make you spit out your $12 Dome Foam.

If the City of New Orleans is as cash-strapped as Mayor Landrieu suggested when I interviewed him, why have we left millions of dollars on the table in respect to 1400 LaSalle?

When I asked the LSED if the City has received any compensation for the use of the street from them or Zelia they replied:

"The City of New Orleans has received the economic benefit of (i) the improvements that were made to LaSalle Street, (ii) the ongoing maintenance, repair, etc. of LaSalle Street, and (iii) increased tax revenues derived from events that occur at Champions Square. "

It’s kind of hard to understand how shutting a city street off to the public, taking it out of commerce (including parking meters and fines), installing permanent fixtures....all to generate income for a private venture...is an “improvement” or benefit to the City. 

If I fix the potholes on my own street, can I put up two gateways on each end and charge people to use it?

No. No, you can't do that with your street. These Newcomb Boulevard residents found that out the hard way a few years ago. Also, this is pretty much the same argument advanced by defenders of the city's Confederate monuments now scheduled for removal.

Led by the Monumental Task Committee, the monument supporters argue that the upkeep their members have done over the years at the statues of Gen. Robert E. Lee, Confederate President Jefferson Davis and Gen. P.G.T. Beauregard gives them an ownership interest in the statues and therefore a say in what happens to them.

Of course that wasn't a winning argument for the Monumental Taksers. But it's remarkable that the city (or LSED on the state and city's behalf) would turn around and make that case now.  It's especially dubious for anyone to argue that Benson has gained some sort of property right to LaSalle street simply by virtue of presuming to collect rent from it.  On the other hand, stealing public goods and purposing them to enhance the profits of billionaires is what the NFL was built on. So who could expect anything different?

And this does seem to be the way we treat our public spaces now be they streets, parks, or federally protected wilderness. If it isn't being monetized and "put back into commerce" we no longer recognize its communal value.  But as long as Mitch Landrieu and the neoliberals are applying the privatization model to New Orleans, they probably shouldn't just be doing it for free.

Congratulations, San Diego

I mean that sincerely.  No city should stand for being abused by billionaire sports magnates in this way. It takes courage to stand up to them, even when you know they can gut you emotionally like this. But they don't deserve to wield that kind of power.

At the very least this allows us to finally dispense with the fiction that the NFL and its owners care about their fans, or about anything but profit. Sports Illustrated’s Jack Dickey nails it: These are land barons, and the only true currency in the NFL is property. The real money is not in attendance, or merchandise, or even in TV contracts—though there is plenty there. The real money is in obtaining a shiny new stadium, because of what that stadium does for the sale price of the team. The relocation may double the value of the Rams; Dean Spanos looked at that and said “me too.” From the second they buy an NFL franchise, owners are focused on one thing: selling it.

The difficulty with standing up to the bully is that the bully can and will hurt you. As fans and as citizens we imbue our cultural assets with a value incompatible with the cold logic of capitalism. Sports fandom is an act of participatory community. As a civic ritual it evokes a spirit of shared purpose and identity in a (mostly) constructive vein. It creates a platform for creative expression and elaborate riffing. It brings strangers together and makes them neighbors.

It is also a stupid diversion. But stupid diversions are among the richest of life's luxuries.  Our cultural assets need not be monetized in order for their true value be realized. In fact it is this very commodification of the civic spirit that drains it of its worth to the advantage of undeserving oligarchs.  We were just talking about this with regard to Carnival season, in fact.   We deserve better than such a fate.

We also deserve better than to have our pride and joy held hostage by real estate speculators. Good on the people of San Diego for not giving into Spanos's threats. Shame on him for hurting them in response.

Friday afternoon link dump

A hodgepodge of items I've bookmarked over the past few days that might be of interest.

Deadspin: Peter King's Credulity is a Character Flaw

Peter King almost certainly does not think depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, and/or attention disorders are “character flaws.” If Peter King thought that, he would be undermining his professional utility, which is that he does not think at all. He’s not a journalist or commentator so much as he’s a macro that imports spreadsheet data into a weekly Microsoft Word form letter. NFL front-office types input their talking points, and the macro sorts them, dutifully, and with no less agnosticism than that of your common pop-up toaster. The talking points about actual football ability—wingspan, agility, speed, arm strength—go over here, in the Upside bin. Off-field stuff gets sorted into two bins. The appealing stuff, the stuff that makes a personnel decision look good (charisma, performative Christianity, an engineering degree, a wardrobe full of flannel shirts) goes into Intangibles; the unappealing stuff, the stuff that works as a defense of passing on a talented non-quarterback (weed, arrests, mental illness) goes over here, in Character Concerns. What King accidentally illuminated, here, is not an unenlightened personal attitude toward the mentally ill, but the underlying framework and purpose of NFL character scouting.

King was writing about the "character flaws" of  defensive end Randy Gregory in that column. Gregory was considered, perhaps, a top 5 pick before stories about his marijuana use began to spread.  Many of us fans, operating under Matt Taibbi's "always draft the weed guy" theory lobbied hard for the Saints to pick Gregory last weekend.  But that didn't happen.  Now Gregory and his "character flaws" which, on Earth, are probably just personality quirks, is a Dallas Cowboy.

The Cowboys also announced this week that they have signed LSU tackle La'el Collins whose draft day was ruined by a murder investigation which, the circumstances strongly suggested, he was never actually a suspect in. After the draft, the Saints didn't lift a finger to bring him in.  This year, at training camp, when Sean Payton distributes his annual motivational T-Shirts, the slogan will be "RISK AVERSE."

King will probably want one too. Although maybe his career strategy of parroting the party line isn't is safe as it used to be.  King's rote plugging in of talking points could easily be produced by a robot with today's technology. The NFL already owns its own network. It's a wonder they haven't begun to staff it with its own Kingbots yet.

WWLTV: Landrieu: I warned Serpas about funding problems

In this interview, the mayor seems to say former police chief Ronal Serpas should have known the job was gonna suck before Mitch hired him to do it. It's very strange. 

"I brought him in," Landrieu said, "and I was really clear with him. And I said, 'Let me explain where you are coming to. This is not the New Orleans that you left. We're in a cataclysmic downfall. Not only are you not going to have everything you need, you're not going to have most of what you need.' "

Once Serpas settled in as top cop, a string of email correspondence between him and Landrieu's top advisors shows increasing alarm over the dwindling number of officers.

When Serpas took the job, he inherited 1,540 cops. But after a two-year hiring freeze, plus unchecked attrition, troop strength decreased every year Landrieu has been in office. Manpower now stands at 1,144.

In some emails, Serpas' warnings were very specific. He issued red flags about "critical vacancies" in the sex crimes unit, which was blasted in an Inspector General's report last year showing a lack of follow-up in more than 1,000 sex crimes and child abuse complaints.

He warned about slower response times, which also was the subject of a critical OIG report last year.

The story also gets into the back and forth between the Mayor and Serpas over how many cops the city should have, even as Landrieu insists that Serpas shouldn't have even been asking for help. Again.. it's very strange. 

Landrieu recalled the "academic debate" over the appropriate size of the NOPD. But he said he that because of the city's sprawling footprint and year-round tourist population, he ultimately settled on an "aspirational" troop strength of 1,600.

In the emails, Serpas stated that his data-crunching projected an ideal police force of 1,575.

The NOPD is far behind those numbers, but Landrieu stood behind his budget decisions.

"I was fully aware of Chief Serpas' thoughts. He was operating at my direction, as do all of the other department heads, in terms of do the best you with the limited amount of money that you have," he said. "And it was ultimately my decision that I made with great clarity. I wish we wouldn't have had to make the decision. That's like asking me, 'Which one of your children do you want to lose in a difficult circumstance when there's only one life vest?' "

In any case, those "aspirational" troop strength estimates are probably too high in the first place.  See Owen Courreges' columns at Uptown Messenger for more on this. We don't need that many cops.  But this is not something people want to hear.  So we're aggressively pushing in the wrong direction.

Anyway, Landrieu doesn't want to hear it.  He's the "quarterback" and shouldn't have to put up with all this stuff. This whole interview is very strange.

"We can argue until the cows come home, but once a decision is made, we've all got to get on the same team. That's how the Saints win the Super Bowl. You don't have the running back trying to tackle the quarterback. That's what's happening in this situation. That's got to stop."

Speaking of police and politics,

Wall Street Journal: U.S. Split Along Racial Lines on Backlash Against Police, Poll Finds

When asked to explain recent events in Baltimore and other cities that have seen confrontations between police and members of the African-American community, blacks and whites viewed the situation differently.

Asked to choose between two possible explanations for recent events, 60% of blacks said they reflected “long-standing frustrations about police mistreatment of African Americans.” Some 27% of black respondents said the disturbances were caused by people who used protests over an African American man dying in police custody  “as an excused to engage in looting and violence.”

But among whites, the balance of opinion flipped: 58% said people were seizing an excuse to loot, while 32% said the events reflected long-standing frustrations with police.

In this year of widespread protest over police violence, it's important not to underestimate the effect of white conservative backlash on national politics.

More generally, Republicans everywhere may be tempted to exploit the reflexive support for police officers among white citizens that is beginning to exhibit itself everywhere black protests arise. As John Judis observed at National Journal this week, the likely election of Dan Donovan--the prosecutor who appeared to work hard to avoid any grand jury indictment of the cops who killed Eric Garner--to Congress in Staten Island next Tuesday may signal a new era of racial backlash, battening on conservative anxieties already aroused by the years of attacks on Obama and manufactured fears of his supposed mania for “redistribution.”

If there is a supply of backlash voters, there will certainly be a demand, if only among the crowded GOP presidential field where the candidates will soon run out of ways to demonstrate their True Conservatism. The more historically minded of them may realize that St. Ronald Reagan himself built his California political career on a foundation of backlash to rioters, albeit student radicals more than African-Americans per se.

No doubt there will be more fuel for this fire as the 2016 election cycle approaches. One possible flashpoint could be in New Orleans where, though a series of absurdities, we've managed to reopen the Danziger case. In any case, it's bound to get uglier.

Finally, author Rick Perlstein is currently writing some of the best American political history this side of Robert Caro's Years of Lyndon Johnson series.  Perlstein's focus is the rise of the conservative movement in the latter half of the 20th Century.  His latest book, The Invisible Bridge: The Fall of Nixon and the Rise of Reagan is all about the backlash politics of the 1970s.  Here is a pretty good interview with Perlstein conducted this week on Maryland public radio.

"One or two teams"

The NFL is out to hurt some feelings this year.

A consensus is growing around the NFL that a return to Los Angeles is happening. The questions now are more about which team or teams will move there than whether a team will move there.

Giants owner John Mara says 2015 looks like the NFL’s last season without a team in L.A.

“I think there’s going to be one or two teams playing in L.A. next year — 2016,” Mara said, via Bob Glauber of Newsday. “Maybe a temporary stadium [next year], but I think — and this is just my opinion — that one or two teams will be playing somewhere in L.A. next year. But we’ll see.”

Their business relies heavily on goosing the civic pride and "loyalty" of American cities in order to extract billions of dollars in local and state public funds all over the country. And then leaving those places holding the bag whenever it's convenient.

 Also don't count the highly unstable Saints franchise out of this as a darkhorse contender.

"What's wrong with him?"

This is a quick Salon interview with Dave Zirin about the NFL-Media Industrial Complex and its overreaction to the retirement of one player. 49ers linebacker Chris Borland retired last week after only one season citing concerns for his health based on the mounting evidence that pro football can cause severe brain trauma.  Zirin is asked to comment on the paranoid response.

Some very big names in the NFL’s media universe were critical. I don’t really get it, to be honest; why do they care if he plays football or not?  
 
I communicated with Chris Borland this morning; we exchanged emails. He was truly, truly stunned that this was as big a story as it was. To him, it was like, second-year player decides not to play football because he’s concerned about concussions— why is this a big story? Everybody is concerned about concussions. Especially since you have had other young players leave the game this off-season, he thought he was going to be one of a group that was doing this. The difference between Chris and these other folks is that these other folks had already suffered real injury before their 30th birthday. With Chris, it also has to do with the situation in San Francisco, where he really had a shot at superstardom. The 49ers linebacker core was depleted, he had a very promising rookie year, and they were going to put him in a position to be a Pro-Bowler and a star but he decided that he did not want that.

The thing I kept thinking about was Dave Chappelle, because when Dave Chappelle walked away from tens of millions of dollars from Comedy Central everybody was saying he was completely crazy, like, literally mentally imbalanced. A friend of mine said to me, we always wonder in this country why everybody’s all about the money but when somebody shows he’s not all about the money he gets mocked for it. I was thinking about Dave Chappelle with Borland, because isn’t this what we always say we want for people? How often have you heard people about the fact that schoolteachers and firefighters aren’t role models but athletes are? Why do we put so much worth on them just because they perform for millions of dollars? Here’s somebody who walks away from that money and that celebrity— which is like the nobility of the 21st century— and the response has been, what’s wrong with him?

 If you're not chasing the money and glory, even at the potential expense of your own mental health, well then you clearly must have some sort of mental health problem. 

Now you don't have to go

Here are two entertaining links to kick off the weekend. Each involves a report from somewhere you, thankfully, will never have to visit.

First, here is Jeb Lund who went to CPAC this week so you don't have to.

I eventually leave the room and start heading to the other side of the Gaylord, where former UN Ambassador John Bolton, Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton and Montana Representative Ryan Zinke answer the question: “When Should America Go to War?” And, folks, lemme tell you, it is all the dang time.

And, even more frightening, here is Matt Taibbi at the NFL scouting combine.

In the old days, the draft was an unknown event that took place in hotel banquet rooms, sometimes during the season. Old-timers like former Cowboys executive Gil Brandt tell stories about teams that used to “pick up a pay phone, call a school, and say, ‘Hey, we need a tackle; you got anybody good?’”

Screw that now: The new reality-show format subjects the draft entrants to a hilarious nine-week stretch of goofball obstacle courses and campy personality tests that collectively play out on TV like a cross between Battle of the Network Stars and the Miss America pageant, with a faint but troubling whiff of 1830s slave auction mixed in.

Are there no workhouses?

The NFL is giving back and paying it forward and.. well, pressing the homeless into unpaid labor is what they are doing in Tampa.

TAMPA — Before every Tampa Bay Buccaneers home game, dozens of men gather in the yard at New Beginnings of Tampa, one of the city's largest homeless programs.

The men — many of them recovering alcoholics and drug addicts — are about to work a concessions stand behind Raymond James Stadium's iconic pirate ship, serving beer and food to football fans. First, a supervisor for New Beginnings tries to pump them up.

"Thank God we have these events," he tells them. "They bring in the prime finances."

But not for the workers. They leave the game sweat-soaked and as penniless as they arrived. The money for their labor goes to New Beginnings. The men receive only shelter and food.

I suppose, as long as the slave laborers do not engage in any symbolic protesting of police brutality, no one will call on the NFL to act, though. 

NFL UK Disney

You know the "World Showcase" part of EPCOT where you can visit like a half dozen different pavilions themed after the very Disneyesque version of selected foreign nations?  It's like being a world traveler except also not at all like that.

That's what this experience must be like for Brits.

There is always music in the air, provided by a rotation of local rock bands, DJs and groups of competitive beatbox teams. The layout -- identical at Saturday's rally and Sunday's daylong tailgate -- is the standard American county fair. There are enormous beer tents, all operated by Budweiser and dressed in solid bright red. You can't buy a pint of Fuller's or anything bitter, but aluminum bottles of Bud Light scatter the lot. The idea, presented big and clumsy, is to sell the "American" experience of American football.

The food vendors are all English companies, but they're providing "American" food -- hot dogs, hamburgers, burritos ("American burritos!" one clerk yells to passersby) and, scariest of all, barbecue. Or at least a concept thereof. There are at least eight different stands to buy BBQ from, and all are frighteningly suspect to a native. Sampling one stand's most popular item, "pork and mac: a pile of pit barbeque on top of classic American mac 'n cheese!" is to experience a nullification of flavor by American standards. Dry, onion-laced pork on top of white elbow macaroni. Fans are lined up to drop 8 pounds apiece for the dish.

Could this be real?

A reader comment included in Deadspin's "Why Your Team Sucks" Panthers edition:

A friend bought PSLs a few years ago before we drafted Cam Newton, and in his frustration at the high price of watching a shit team, emailed the Panthers front office to vent. Somehow, someway Ol' Jerry (Panthers owner Jerry Richardson) found about the email and called him. Did he call to save "have hope" or "things will get better"? No. He called to tell my friend to stop complaining and be grateful that Charlotte has an NFL team. He then preceded to degrade him for about 2 minutes and threaten to take his PSLs WITHOUT a refund, then abruptly hung up on my friend. I wish I was making this up.

Just some cursory googling points to it being at least plausible.

But Richardson and Panthers President Danny Morrison -- along with several other team employees -- have been "calling on individual fans who have complained about the team by sending a 'feedback' e-mail to the Panthers website." Several of those fans have said that they are "impressed with the personal touch."

Still, "Shut up and be grateful for your PSL privilege" isn't the most impressive personal touch.

Good luck with all that

The Minneapolis Star-Tribune got a copy of the NFL's rider it sends to the Super Bowl host city. It's about what you'd expect.

The National Football League had a long and expensive list of confidential requests before it awarded the 2018 Super Bowl to Minneapolis.

Free police escorts for team owners, and 35,000 free parking spaces. Presidential suites at no cost in high-end hotels. Free billboards across the Twin Cities. Guarantees to receive all revenue from the game’s ticket sales — even a requirement for NFL-preferred ATMs at the stadium.

Those requirements and many others are detailed in 153 pages of NFL specifications for the game. An official on the host committee that successfully sought the game — Minneapolis beat out Indianapolis and New Orleans — said the panel had agreed to a majority of the conditions but would not elaborate.

The document, which the Star Tribune obtained through sources, has not been released publicly but shows how the NFL will control the event and many of its public aspects. The NFL declined to comment on the document and host committee officials are declining to make it public, citing state data privacy laws.

"Data privacy laws" mean that the NFL doesn't have to disclose how it plans to dispose of the public resources including police protection, usage of parks and streets, "clean zone" infringements on free speech, etc. granted to it by elected officials.

The elected officials, technically, do get to see the plan although, it turns out, many of them choose not to. 

Minneapolis City Council President Barb Johnson said “incentives” were necessary to host the Super Bowl, but Mayor Betsy Hodges’ office said it did not know what the city’s host committee ultimately agreed to. “We haven’t seen the bid, so we don’t know what was agreed to,” said Kate Brickman, Hodges’ spokeswoman.

Anyway, not our problem... at least not for a few more years.  

The NFL's CBA sucks

Here is an ESPN report which ranks the world's professional sports franchises by payroll.  

WHO SAYS MONEY can't buy happiness? According to the ESPN The Magazine/Sportingintelligence Global Salary Survey, the 2013 Super Bowl champion Seattle Seahawks spent an average of $2.3 million per player last season, the second-highest total in the NFL. Though the franchise spent more per player than 30 other NFL teams, it ranked No. 116 overall, behind all 30 NBA teams, all but two major league baseball clubs and 13 of 20 English Premier League squads.

"A lot of people think because the NFL has great ratings, the players must be the wealthiest," says Sportingintelligence editor Nick Harris. "A list like this over time shows the disconnect."

Ha ha funny how that just happens.  "A lot of people think..." that because 12 of the 20 most valuable sports franchises on the globe are NFL teams, they would be commensurately represented in a list of team payrolls. But nope. Not even close. 

It’s interesting to note how low all NFL teams rank on the overall list among all sports teams around the world. No NFL teams rank in the top 100 on a per-player basis (in part because their rosters are so much larger than basketball, soccer and baseball teams).

But even when it comes to total spending, no NFL teams ranked in the top 20, which was completely made up of major league baseball and international soccer teams.

Again, what an interesting fact. You'd think ESPN would ask why such a strange piece of trivia exists but it doesn't for some reason. 

Some charts and graphs for drafting football players

SB Nation's Jon Bois has some information for you about the ways in which some teams are very bad at the NFL Draft.

Even if their failures in the draft are understandable, it doesn't mean they aren't funny. Y'all, they are funny as shit.

How can the only people in the world who don't understand that Warren Sapp will be better than Kyle Brady be the same exact people who are in charge of an NFL franchise? Why is a team spending a second-round pick on a kicker? When the Browns select one of the greatest busts of the century in Brady Quinn, why is the great surprise not that he was picked in the first round, but that he wasn't picked far earlier?

With the benefit of hindsight and massive volumes of statistics, these errors are every bit as funny to me as a snap that pops an inattentive quarterback upside the head. After some stat-gathering and number-crunching, I've found lots to laugh at.

Maybe not exactly as funny as shit but pretty funny.  Take a look when you've got some time to spare. 

"Mistakes were made"

When Drew Brees is good, he's pretty good.  When he's bad, he's very very bad.

While he hadn’t watched a Frontline documentary critical of the NFL’s stance on concussions and traumatic brain injuries, New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees on Wednesday said the league, its teams and its players are better educated about the issue today than they were before.

“I think certainly there were mistakes made in the past in regards to what people knew or how it was handled,” Brees, a member of the NFL Players Association’s executive board, told reporters after practice. “But as we think about moving forward here, and especially when you talk about youth sports, there are protocols that need to be in place and that need to be followed to a ‘T.’ ”

Just to clarify this.  There were not "mistakes made in the past."  The NFL spend more than a decade lying about what it knew about head trauma, denying all evidence of danger, and aggressively attacking those who tried to bring the danger to the public's attention.  All of this, the NFL did on purpose and not by "mistake." 

"The NFL expects only 'positive press"'

Maybe, as an adult reader, I shouldn't be as amazed by this stuff as I am but I don't understand how they can comply with this sort of thing and then expect their readers to take them seriously.

I learned firsthand of the NFL's sensitivity to criticism of inaction on health issues in the run up to the 1997 Super Bowl in New Orleans. At that time the Superdome had a towering spire in its parking lot topped by billboard featuring the Marlboro Man. Similarly, inside the Dome were several strategically positioned ads for cigarettes. The Louisiana Tobacco Free Kids organized a children's demonstration in the shadow of the Marlboro Man to protest the connection between smoking and sports. The adults present also questioned whether television cameras catching sight of the tobacco ads during game broadcasts violated the ban on TV cigarette advertising. Several news outlets, including national newspapers, reported on the protest, but not the hometown The New Orleans Times-Picayune. A reporter subsequently explained to me that in awarding Super Bowls the NFL expects only "positive press" from local news outlets during the event. Executives worried that the League might count it against the city if the paper carried a report that effectively highlighted the NFL's unwillingness to stand against kids smoking.

To be fair, the T-P reporting around the Super Bowl  this year wasn't all glowing positivity.. although there certainly was a lot of that.  I didn't think this article said the most positive things about what the NFL does for the city and state, for example.  

It's OK as long as you play in New York

Jets' Pace on Reggie Bush: 'We had to put him on out'

We'll be over here holding our breath waiting for Roger Goodell to suspend the Jets' coaching and front office staff for the rest of the season. 

Collusion collision

The NFL has bigger legal problems on its hands than just Jonathan Vilma.

Has there ever been an established league that spent more time in courtrooms defending its very foundations than Roger Goodell's NFL?

The facts in the White case are straightforward and damning, and largely agreed upon by both sides. In 2010, the last year of an expiring labor deal, there was no salary cap. Teams were ostensibly free to carry whatever payroll they could afford, but in their summer meetings the owners came to a secret agreement. No one would cross the $123 million boundary, because if some teams spent freely, that would drive up prices for teams that would rather not spend at all.

The imaginary salary cap "came up several times in our meetings," said John Mara, Giants owner and chairman of the NFL's management committee. Still, four teams took the gentlemen's agreement as something less than binding, because after all: There was no actual rule. The Redskins, Cowboys, Raiders, and Saints all spent more than $123 million, despite being warned "at least six times" that serious consequences would follow. And sure enough, the gavel came down. This season and next, Washington and Dallas (the two biggest spenders) will forfeit a combined $46 million in salary cap space, to be distributed among the other teams.

In other words: Dan Snyder and Jerry Jones are being punished for failing to collude with their fellow owners in a secret deal to keep hundreds of millions of dollars out of the hands of NFL players.

Counting the days to Roger Goodell's resignation Day 1

The NFL is bringing jack and shit as far as "evidence" is concerned to its player suspension hearings on Monday.  There's a report up at the robustest website in New Orleans on this topic which reads in part.

Thus far, the review of the evidence has turned up nothing to support the scandal's most trumpeted charge - that Saints linebacker Jonathan Vilma offered $10,000 to any teammate who took out an opposing quarterback in the 2009 playoffs.

It also does not appear to include any documents showing a 'bounty ledger,' the existence of which had been reported by Yahoo! Sports, nothing backing up the league's contention former Saints defensive lineman Anthony Hargrove lied to league investigators, and none of the complete set of 2010 defensive meeting videotapes the NFLPA asked for in a Friday letter to Goodell.

Curiously, the packet did contain two items that could not possibly have been used as evidence by Goodell when he imposed the unprecedented discipline because at the time Goodell did so the documents did not exist. Those are a May 31 on-line screed published by documentary filmmaker Sean Pamphilon and a column by The Times-Picayune's Mike Triplett based on an interview with Saints linebacker Scott Fujita. That article was published on June 6.

Furthermore, according to a source cited by the T-P's James Varney, the NFL has no document or recording that refers to a ledger full of "cart-offs" and "knock-outs" or that money was exchanged for any such thing.

And then there's this from Jonathan Vilma's attorney Peter Ginsburg.

Ginsberg: "Unfortunately, what it says to me is Commissioner Goodell has made a dreadful mistake."
— James Varney (@jvarneyTP) June 15, 2012

Ive made a huge mistake by alexis711

If they can make a taco walk...

Surely they can give you wi-fi access in the stadium.

NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell says he wants every fan in every stadium to be able to access the Internet using whatever device they carry into the stands with them, as the NFL continues to grapple with the fact that for many fans, watching games on TV at home — for free — is a better experience than spending a small fortune to go to the game.

What he's not saying, of course, is that it will probably cost $20 (or 2 beers)  per quarter to access or some such thing.

Oh also, shut up, Cowherd. Nobody wants you here anyway.

How many free agents?

I have yet to read a report on the supposedly forthcoming CBA that explains this clearly.

Free agent terms have yet to be disclosed, but it looks like veterans with four or more accrued seasons will become unrestricted free agents. That means close to 500 veteran free agents will soon be available on the open market.

Every veteran with four or more years? Surely they mean every veteran not currently under contract with four or more years experience.