Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

The words do not have to be perfect.

Let me eat cake. The rest of you could stand to lose some weight, frankly.

Accountability, motherfuckers.

I like you, you’re my kind of trouble.

People are complicated. Love is not.

If you’re pissed about Biden’s speech, he was talking about you.

When do we start airlifting the women and children out of Texas?

Their freedom requires your slavery.

Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn.

Historically it was a little unusual for the president to be an incoherent babbling moron.

Let us savor the impending downfall of lawless scoundrels who richly deserve the trouble barreling their way.

The party of Reagan has become the party of Putin.

Bark louder, little dog.

But frankly mr. cole, I’ll be happier when you get back to telling us to go fuck ourselves.

We are aware of all internet traditions.

Russian mouthpiece, go fuck yourself.

Never entrust democracy to any process that requires republicans to act in good faith.

“But what about the lurkers?”

Republican obstruction dressed up as bipartisanship. Again.

“More of this”, i said to the dog.

Sitting here in limbo waiting for the dice to roll

This blog will pay for itself.

So it was an October Surprise A Day, like an Advent calendar but for crime.

The revolution will be supervised.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Excellent Links / Leftovers Open Thread — Superb Owl Edition

Leftovers Open Thread — Superb Owl Edition

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David Roth, in the Baffler — “Downward Spiral”:

… The NFL is financially healthy and also pretty luridly out of its mind, increasingly given to grandiose delusion and stubborn denial and spasms of executive sadism. And lately, it’s declining—in ways that are obvious for even casual viewers and evident during an average Sunday’s slate of games and in ways that the league might not fully feel for generations.

It’s America’s game all right, and if the NFL is sick, if it is even perhaps dying, it is for the most American of reasons—because it is increasingly ragged and rotten with corruption, and because it can’t quite come up with any other way that it would rather be…

Rich television deals ensure that profitability is locked in for the foreseeable future, and ratings are only slightly off their old Olympian standard. But the NFL currently feels very much like a league in decline—the league seems in a real way to have lost interest in football, or in trying to stop the league’s broader skid. There are and will always be bad teams, but the NFL in 2017 is remarkable for the number of teams that appear not even to be trying to compete. This includes not just teams embarking on variously forward-thinking tank schemes to gain advantageous position in upcoming drafts, or the roughly equal number of teams that are plainly institutionally incompetent. The ones that stand out most dramatically are those that are plainly not trying to do anything but bump along the bottoms of their divisions and collect their share of the $39.6 billion in television revenues that the league’s thirty-two teams will divide between 2014 and 2022.

Fans will put up with a lot, but such overt and unapologetic indifference is an insult that’s hard to ignore. The NFL has always prioritized the profits of the men who own the league’s teams above any other end and has only rarely bothered to conceal that fact. In its simultaneously sincere and delirious self-performance, the NFL rhymes perfectly both with our Trump-y moment and the man himself, from its valorizing of not just money but greed, its blank devotion to bigness, its endless capacity to take offense at every outrage against itself, by “anti-football” doctors revealing the damage the game does to the people who play it, to the kneeling Kaepernick. It makes sense that Trump once owned a football team of his own, the New Jersey Generals of the short-lived USFL; it’s a nice Trumpian touch that the USFL only realized a modest financial return when Trump and his fellow team owners negotiated a buyout at the expense of their far richer NFL counterparts. That the same NFL owners who donated more than any other sports executives to Trump’s inauguration celebration, according to FEC filings, recoil righteously from Kaepernick vulgarly “politicizing” their American Sunday tradition is, mostly, unsurprising. That Trump, in a characteristically beefy ad-lib at a late-September rally for Alabama Senator Luther Strange, said he would “love to see one of these NFL owners, when somebody disrespects our flag, to say, ‘Get that son of a bitch off the field right now, out, he’s fired,’” was, in retrospect, probably inevitable. That he kept mashing away at that (popular) sentiment whenever his poll numbers turned down in the months afterward spoke not just to Trump’s well-documented animal shamelessness but also to the risks of the NFL’s long, strange campaign against its players.

It’s not quite sufficient to say that the NFL is an owners’ league. It absolutely is, in the sense that every decision the league makes is made to advance the financial interests and flatter the various vanities of the owners. But, on a more mundane level, the league’s current deemphasizing of the game of football in favor of oafish executive theater—the protean expansion of the league’s metastatic rulebook, the endless rounds of stern but vague disciplinary action that issue from the commissioner’s office—is more than the owners dictating the way that their sport is overseen and organized. It is the owners making the league more explicitly about them: not just what they want, but what they do.

From a fan’s perspective, this is a bad choice for a bunch of reasons, starting with the fact that the people playing football in today’s NFL are stronger and faster than any people who have ever played the game before and that the owners are interchangeable soft pink guys whiffing on high-fives in their luxury boxes. Those are the bosses, though, and so the league’s appeal to fans is increasingly less about strength than power—less about the physical geniuses tossing or catching forty-yard lasers than the proper management and, where necessary, punishment of those players. The fantasy the league sells is less about the vicarious experience of a superhuman specimen like Odell Beckham Jr. than the vicarious experience of controlling such a specimen—whether on a fantasy team or through taking a hard line in real-world salary negotiations.

It’s possible to see this collective will-to-power as part of a slick and subtle bit of anti-labor propagandizing on the part of a caste whose most deeply held ideal has always been paying players as little as possible. But it’s just as easy to see it as a simple failure of imagination by rich men who have come to believe that they are more important and more interesting than the strange, violent, astonishing game on which this is all leveraged. Again, you may detect a Trumpian echo to all this…

Reader Interactions

45Comments

  1. 1.

    efgoldman

    David Roth, in the Baffler — “Downward Spiral”:

    Wish I’d said that.
    Which is why, I guess, he writes for a living and I don’t

  2. 2.

    joel hanes

    the same NFL owners who donated more than any other sports executives to Trump’s inauguration celebration, according to FEC filings, recoil righteously from Kaepernick vulgarly “politicizing” their American Sunday tradition

    Those would be the same NFL and owners that accept large annual payments from Republican governments to celebrate and promote militarism in American life.

  3. 3.

    lamh36

    Last thought of the night, the Dodge RAM commercial is a prime example in real time of how/why Dr King’s words have become the sanitized versions that they are today…folks who rather than go and read the actual speech thinks a except taken out of context is the truth. did u even listen to the actual speech and what it was about? It was
    part of which warns against dangers of consumerism, and ends him King imagining his own funeral. It was distasteful. I don’t care which one of the King children sold it to them (Dexter), still doesn’t make it right

  4. 4.

    efgoldman

    @joel hanes:

    Those would be the same NFL and owners that accept large annual payments from Republican governments to celebrate and promote militarism in American life.

    Fie wuz king, this would be flat out illegal.
    Even standard recruitment ads, to me, are borderline

  6. 6.

    satby

    Travel update since it’s an open thread. We’re outside Siem Reap volunteering for the next few days at the ELMA English School. It’s a primary school with a heavy emphasis on learning English in a poor community. As a community centered NGO, it’s also got a project where some of the volunteers are helping build toilets for families, so that they don’t have to go into the jungle surrounding the area to eliminate. In a country where only 40 years ago the Khmer Rouge slaughtered people who were educated, or even just looked educated by wearing glasses, it’s sweet how many of the students want to become teachers or doctors. The genocide is still very fresh here.

  8. 8.

    Ruckus

    @joel hanes:
    I thought they accept large annual payments because those republican governments think that it’s an easy way to buy votes. And they aren’t against anyone giving them money that they don’t have to pay out to their employees.

  10. 10.

    satby

    @NotMax: it’s fun, though the teachers here are the real heros when you think about it. Their parents lived through the killing field years, imagine the reactions when their offspring wanted to join an occupation that was an automatic death sentence when they were young. They accomplish so much with such rudimentary materials it’s really inspiring.

  13. 13.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    Eagles player says he’ll skip White House if team wins Super Bowl
    Chris Long, a defensive end for the Philadelphia Eagles, says he won’t visit the White House if his team wins the Super Bowl on Sunday.
    Long made the comments in an interview on Barstool Sports’ podcast “Pardon My Take.”
    “No, I’m not going to the White House,” he said. “Are you kidding me?”
    Long, who played for the New England Patriots last year, was one of several players who skipped a visit to President Trump’s White House after the Patriots won the Super Bowl in 2017.

  19. 19.

    jl

    @David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch:

    I heard a news spot a few weeks ago that said Chris Long donated his salary this year to charity, Looks like its true. Geez, I hope he can still keep a job in the NFL.

    ‘ Long announced that he would donate his entire 2017 salary to charity, with the money going to a different charity each week.[52] Long said in a statement: “I hope it won’t stop here, but that more people will become inspired to commit energy and resources to our educational system. It will be the number of people invested in this cause that will be the difference maker for a quality education for every student in America. Education is the best gateway to a better tomorrow for EVERYONE in America.” ‘

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Long

  21. 21.

    David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch

    @jl: He went to college at Charlottesville, so he was angered and saddened by the Klan & Nazi riot.

  22. 22.

    jl

    @David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch: Just hope he keeps his head low on this kind of agitation if he wants to keep playing.

    Edit: in terms of the ownership culture of the NFL, I think Nixon as their patron saint (Trump must be more of a goofy mascot, since the NFL owners’ greedy business schemes work, and Trump is too incompetent for anything better with them). Anyway, with Chris Long, I can’t help but wonder ‘What would Nixon think?”

  23. 23.

    David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch

    @satby: you better stay out of the country until for awhile. White people are out of control and they’re burning down their own communities.

    Thanks Obama.

  29. 29.

    Mel

    @satby: Thank you for this. The teachers and students really appreciate the assistance, whether it’s an extra pair of hands to help make repairs or an extra helper for one-on-one language practice and individual attention and feedback in the classroom. ?

  30. 30.

    ZyklonBeaArthur

    My first reaction upon seeing the looted Philly Ritz: “Damn, don’t they have a Trump hotel they could pillage instead?”

    Since i despise sports i spent the entire night researching Russian propaganda. I had no idea the Kremlin had infiltrated the UFO movement, although in retrospect it makes sense: the fringe’s war on science is bad for America, ergo it’s good for Putin;

  31. 31.

    Amir Khalid

    It’s a pity American football doesn’t have the more egalitarian structure that association football has around the world. A tiered league, with promotion and relegation, would eliminate scraping along complacently at the bottom of the table. It would also give rise to more teams, creating jobs for players and coaches and stadium workers and so on, and dilute the power of the current team-owning oligarchy. A rule that a team moving to another city is treated as a brand new team, and must start next season on the lowest tier, would make supporting one’s local team a part of civic identity, and put an end to owners of big teams holding cities to ransom for the right to host their team.

  34. 34.

    JWR

    @ZyklonBeaArthur:

    I had no idea the Kremlin had infiltrated the UFO movement…

    I used to hear those wacky, usually Air Force military (Ret.) guys on Pacifica Radio. I don’t know if they were Russian, but they were freakin’ nuts.

  38. 38.

    NorthLeft12

    @Amir Khalid: Amir, the notion of actual competition, with severe consequences [relegation] to poor performers is absolutely horrifying to the titans of capitalism that own NFL teams. And frankly, to most very large corporations and the senior executives that live off them too.

  39. 39.

    Amir Khalid

    @NorthLeft12:
    Alas, I’m well aware of that. Those titans would never agree to any dilution of their power to avoid competition, exploit players and fans, and shake down city governments for money and new stadiums. They don’t like community ownership of local sports teams either, do they? I’d like to make that a rule, too.

  40. 40.

    FlipYrWhig

    @Amir Khalid: That’s what they should do with NCAA football. Just make it all one structure, and the Tuscaloosa Crimson Tide FC can decide to keep together their squad to make a run at competing in the Premier League with Philadelphia, Kansas City, Green Bay, et al.

  41. 41.

    mad citizen

    I’ve bought a couple Bafflers over the years, and was looking at this very piece in the book store the other night. Didn’t buy the issue. I don’t disagree with it, but dang it’s hard to read. Too pithy and dense. Some of the Baffler authors seem to just be trying to jam as many references as possible into one sentence/paragraph. So I’m not sure I consider it good writing.

  42. 42.

    Davebo

    While there’s a lot of truth in that article it leaves out one of the big issues in the owner/player relationship mainly the ineptitude of the NFLPA and the fact that it’s members just can’t seem to coalesce into a strong union.

    Until they do they will continue to have the worst bargaining position (and contract structures) of any professional sport in America.

  43. 43.

    Just One More Canuck

    @Mike J: The Simpsons explain it all:

    Milhouse: The Rand Corporation, in conjunction with the saucer people…
    Bart: Thank you.
    Milhouse: …under the supervision of the reverse vampires…
    Lisa: [sighs]
    Milhouse: …are forcing our parents to go to bed early in a fiendish plot to eliminate the meal of dinner!

    In the same episode, young Homer dreamt of becoming president, until Abe set him straight:
    “You, President? This is the greatest country in the world. We’ve got a whole system set up to prevent people like you from ever becoming president. Quit your daydreaming, melonhead”
    If only that system were still in place

  44. 44.

    burnspbesq

    @jl:

    Just hope he keeps his head low on this kind of agitation if he wants to keep playing.

    He has a degree from a good school and an eight-digit bank balance. If the NFL goes away for him, he probably won’t miss it much.

  45. 45.

    burnspbesq

    @FlipYrWhig:

    Or, alternatively, colleges can stop giving the NFL and NBA a multi-gazillion-dollar subsidy by running their player-development systems for free. Let the pro teams have (and pay for) their own academy systems. The Cameron Crazies will go just as nuts for a team of four-year guys as they do for the current crew of mercenaries.

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