The NFL: An Abject Lesson For America

With everyone watching the Super Bowl (me included), I’m probably talking to myself. But here goes. . . Football truly is America’s game. Indeed, it is a microcosm of America itself. Yet, over the past 20 years, with the growth of the NFL, the game has changed significantly for the worse. In that change lies a warning to America itself.

What Football Was

The game of football uniquely represents American values. Like America itself, it is a game that requires a constant mix of team work and individual talent -- as compared to games like soccer where individual talent is almost meaningless. It is a game that lets you succeed in any number of ways, from strength to speed to specialized skills or brains, just like the American dream offers many paths to success. In America, anyone can succeed, whether they are smart, strong, skillful, or simply hard working. Football also prizes hard work and rewards risk taking, just like America.

Moreover, there is a psychological aspect of football that seems uniquely American. In other sports, scoring is about exploiting a weakness in your opponent; you find the hole in your opponent’s defense and sneak through it to score. That’s not football. Football is about making your own opportunities, about seizing control from the other team and establishing your own destiny.

There are other aspects of football that mirror America as well. . . at least, there used to be. It was one of the first sports to integrate because it didn’t care what you were, so long as you could play. It was also a game that anyone could play regardless of class. You didn’t need to be rich to learn the basic skills (like golf), nor did you need to live in the right part of the country (as you did with hockey because you needed ice), nor did you need to be born into a football family or learn to play from birth. Nor did you need to be born with certain skills (like pitchers) or with certain physical traits (like basketball requires abnormal height); indeed, football uniquely offers a position for anyone to play. In that way, football is like achieving the American dream, anyone could become a great football player so long as they have the drive to succeed.

Thus, football was the epitome of the American dream. Anyone, from anywhere, could learn to play, and they could succeed in any number of ways so long as they worked hard to make themselves into a success. But that was then . . .

The NFL Changes Football

Over the past 20 plus years, football has changed dramatically, and for the worse. As the NFL grew, the focus of the game shifted to money. Teams became worth billions of dollars and profit became all that mattered. Indeed, football stopped being about the sport entirely. It became a business. . . the biggest of big businesses.

Today, the NFL is driven entirely by the profit motive. Owners hire teams of consultants and lawyers to exploit everything they can touch. They hold up cities for stadiums, not to benefit the fans or make the game better, but to squeeze an extra few million out of luxury boxes. Historic jerseys are changed, not because it is something the team or the players or the fans want, but because Nike tells the owners that they can make more money by changing their jerseys. The NFL has become a political lobbying machine, owning more than a few politicians. Few regular fans can now attend the Super Bowl because corporate America has turned the game and the week around it into a retreat for the elite.

The players have changed too. They’ve gone from guys who played because they loved the game to selfish, drug addicted creatures who play for money first, second and third. Did you know there is a strike looming in 2011 because the billionaire owners can’t get along with the millionaire players?

At the same time, the NFL has changed the game itself. When football began, it was a game with a small rule book. It allowed creativity, and the referees really couldn’t determine the outcome. But over the past twenty years, the rule book has grown to epic proportions. It’s become legalistic. Changes where made to placate unions, to satisfy the television contracts, and to try to make the product (formerly known as “the game”) more exciting to a television audience. Did you know that a visiting football team can only bring 43 players to the game, while the home team can brings full compliment? Why would something as stupid as this end up in the rule book? Because it was included in the union contract to reduce payroll costs.

These days, the game is highly regulated. The referees are deciding more and more games. Not a week goes by without the league office handing out fines for player conduct, regulating their speech and conduct. The NFL employs people to walk the sidelines of games and remove or cover up any brands that don’t have a contract with the NFL. The NFL even regulates what coaches can wear on the sidelines.

Along with the legalistic environment, the “technicalities problems” have come en mass. Players can only be discipline as allowed by the union contract, and discipline can be appealed. Want to bench a trouble maker? Better lawyer up. Payroll issues now decide rosters. Even race has returned to plague the NFL after decades of relative racial harmony. It is virtually impossible to criticize black quarterbacks without being called racist. And the NFL has a rule requiring teams to conduct at least one (sham) interview with a “minority” (read: black) applicant before they can hire a new coach. Not to mention the constant complaining from black groups that there aren’t enough black head coaches.

Why? Because the monetary stakes of the game have risen so much that it’s worth fighting about these things.

And this is all flowing down to the lower levels. Do you recall William “the Fridge” Perry? He weighed just over 300 pounds when he played in the 1980s and people were shocked. But his success meant that people had to get bigger and stronger to compete. Today, there almost isn’t a lineman in the league that doesn’t weigh 60 pounds more than that. Indeed, there are NFL quarterbacks today who are larger and heavier than every player in the NFL in the 1920-1970s. What’s worse, this is now becoming the norm at the high school level. I know a coach at a high school team who told me that in his city of 18,000 people all six high school teams have at least five 300 pound kids each on their offense lines -- that’s 30 kids larger than Perry.

How is this happening? With the ridiculous sums of money being thrown at athletes, kids are taking (and some parents are letting them take) steroids and human growth hormone. I’ve read stories of parents who hold their kids back 1-2 years in grade school so that they will be larger than the other kids and get a chance to excel in high school. "School shopping" for guaranteed starting positions is now common for high school players. If you want to be an NFL quarterback, your father better be your high school coach. If you want to coach, your father better have been an NFL coach.

What does all this mean? It means the game no longer invites all comers, it has become a game for professionals only -- from high school to college to the NFL. You now need to be born into a football family. You need to meet certain physical requirements that you can’t achieve without drugs. You need agents and trainers and PR reps. And like all “special people,” the rules no longer apply to these athletes. They can commit crimes and throw public tantrums, but their schools, their employers and their sponsors stick with them. They are forgiven instantly by the system without asking for forgiveness so long as they have talent. Even the law looks the other way. They have become the ancient royalty of old Europe, capable of no act which cannot be ignored.

The Warning To America

There is a lesson in all of this for America. We have allowed our government to grow too large. It is packed with heredity princes like the Kennedy’s and family dynasties like the Bushes, who are above the law. It regulates everything, and it sells its power to regulate to the biggest of big businesses so that they can squeeze their competitors, exploit taxpayers and consumers, and impose a new order on American society that is exclusive and runs contrary to everything that made America great.

It’s time we put an end to this, before big business does to the American dream what the NFL has done to football. Otherwise, there will come a day when the only way to succeed in the United States will be to be born into the right families, to get the right pedigree, and to follow the only allowed path to the top. We will become what Europe was in the 18th Century and has largely become again today.

That is our destiny if we continue to travel down a path of over-regulation, of turning all disputes into legal matters, of corrupt government selling its influence and power to its friends, of family dynasties in politics, of the revolving door between business and government. It’s time the government represented the people again, not just the most important people.