The Football Trust also endows men like Paul Allen with the power to extort money from taxpayers(6).
According to economist and author Andrew Zimbalist, the Justice Department could take action against the NFL, but it is "susceptible to political pressure not to upset sports."(7) What a shocking revelation!
Hey, Coaches, Leave Our Kids Alone!
Lamentably, the NFL also reflects the covert, and sometimes overt, racism which still pervades our society. In a March 2006 interview with former NFL player Anthony Prior (about Prior's book, The Slave Side of Sunday) James Harris noted that:
"In the NFL, 65% of the player force--as you know and well document in the text--are Black. Six percent of the general managers are Black. No--as you noted--no owners in the NFL are Black (8)."
Later in the interview, Prior commented:
"This is what I call "mental slavery." Slavery is not limited to bondage and chains. You got parents, preachers, teachers, coaches, fundamentally imposing these characteristics on these young Black children in America, that without sports, you're going to amount to nothing. Every Black athlete we see on a professional level, he is one in 12,000. There are two things that can't lie: That's God and mathematics."
Prior's quote underscores what is perhaps the NFL's greatest sin. Mirroring the deeply duplicitous Horatio Alger portrayal of upward mobility in the US socioeconomic hierarchy, the NFL, its loyalists, and a multitude of college and high school coaches perpetuate pernicious myths. Myths that motivate our children, particularly those who are Black and impoverished, to pursue pipe dreams, embrace vacuous values, and severely skew their priorities.
Contrary to the fallacious belief that football is a viable route to a free college education, only 20% of college athletes receive full scholarships. At least 55% play with zero financial assistance. A 1996 study determined that a mere 45% of Black college football players attained their degrees.
Another study revealed that 66% of Black teenagers believe that they will become professional athletes. 33% of White teenagers share the same misconception.
Here are some sobering statistics which reveal the virtual impossibility of their dream:
The US population is 300 million. In 2000 the US Census indicated there were 10 million males of typical NFL draft age. Each individual's odds of experiencing life as an NFL player drop precipitously when one considers that there are only 15,000 football players eligible for the draft each spring. Of those 15,000, 160 young men secure NFL roster spots. 160 out of 10 million!
While it is understandable that many Black teens facing significant structural barriers to escaping a life of poverty aspire to be the next Michael Vick, Harry Edwards, a Black sports sociologist, put their false hopes and vain efforts into perspective:
"Statistically, you have a better chance of getting hit by a meteorite in the next ten years than getting work as an athlete."(9)
Infantile Self-Absorption
Imagine what our youth (and the rest of us) could accomplish if we focused more of our time, energy, resources, and efforts on attainable goals and socially redeeming activities.
Jason Miller is a recovering US American middle class suburbanite who strives to remain intellectually free. He is Cyrano's Journal Online's associate editor (http://www.bestcyrano.org/) and publishes Thomas Paine's Corner within Cyrano's at http://www.bestcyrano.org/THOMASPAINE/.
"What could better reflect the collective psychosis of the American Empire than our mass obsession with the NFL? Born through violent revolution, expanded by genocide, enriched by slavery, and elevated to hegemony through imperialism, militarism, and economic tyranny, the United States, like NFL football, embodies avaricious savagery masked by a fastidiously maintained illusion of benevolent civility."
I'm committing this to memory.
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on Saturday, January 13, 2007 at 4:33:20 PM
