Is the NFL a Socialist Plot?
Read below and see what you think. The article doesn’t mention that the teams are also immune to anti-trust laws and they don’t pay federal taxes.
James Pilant
From a British perspective, American football and the Super Bowl look downright socialist | Joe Ware | Comment is free | theguardian.com
Although known as “America’s game”, the National Football League’s success has been built on the model of a socialist state. It has a salary cap which limits each team’s spending, a revenue-sharing system – effectively a tax – which transfers money from the high-earning franchises to the poorer teams and most interestingly of all, the NFL Draft.
The Draft is the lifeblood of the NFL. Unlike British football where each club has its own academy system to develop young players, in America that job is left to the universities. The Draft is the three-day jamboree at which each team takes it in turns to select the best of the upcoming graduates from the college ranks. Like a huge American Football version of the Hogwarts Sorting Hat. But in contrast to the Randian economics of the Tea Party movement, it’s not the best team that is rewarded with the first pick in the draft, but the worst.
The first shall be last and the last shall be first.
The most pathetic and miserable outfit is awarded the top pick. Next is the second most feeble until right at the end, after all the other 31 teams have snapped up the best of the talent, it’s the turn of the previous year’s Super Bowl champions.
What this rather socialist approach does is create parity. Which leads to hope. Fans of teams in the doldrums know that the silver lining of a few poor seasons will be a crop of good young players which could transform their team into winners again. This is how the New Orleans Saints could pick second in the 2006 Draft and win the Super Bowl four years later. And the players don’t get any say in the matter. Unlike in Britain where the best players can choose to join already established powerhouses, in the US, the equivalent superstars have to join the teams most in need of their services.
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