It’s the classic story on ESPN about an athlete; how he or she goes from welfare to becoming a super athlete who is super-rich. Consider LeBron James, Michael Oher (“The Blind Side”), and Usain Bolt. We all admire these athletes for their skills, but also their dedication to the principle of hard work to make it from rags to riches. Once they are rich, we like to think that they are well beyond needing any kind of financial support from society in order to further pursue their endeavors.

Let’s say that you are a successful athlete like Kevin Carter, a college football studio analyst for ESPN. Carter was a two-time Pro Bowl selection in his fourteen year career as a defensive end in the NFL. He was a Super Bowl champion with the 1999 St. Louis Rams.

The relationship between an employer and an athlete who once was on welfare is rather curious. Both live, in part, on welfare, but the athlete’s family was obviously poor, and ESPN is extremely rich. ESPN is not an ordinary company. It takes in nearly $6 billion a year, and in truly a grass-roots fashion, with nearly one hundred million household subscribers paying $5.54 a month to receive ESPN. It has a solid business model that gives it a seemingly endless demand for its products. Sports is a multi-billion dollar enterprise in the United States and around the world. While the means of delivering it to the fans will undoubtedly change, it will remain electronic for the foreseeable future. A company like ESPN has been and is likely to remain on the vanguard of any changes.

ESPN’s headquarters is located in Connecticut. But the sports channel’s presence in “the Constitution state” has not been a guaranteed fact as it has expanded. Nor is it guaranteed for the future. Like the many professional sports teams that it covers, ESPN is constantly threatening its home base that it will pick up stakes and move elsewhere if it doesn’t receive “necessary” tax abatements. Maybe it’s necessary if ESPN’s goal is to “keep up with the Joneses” when it comes to wealthy companies squeezing state and local governments for largess that contributes to its profits. But it certainly is not necessary when you think of all the other responsibilities that these state and local governments have.

So, as Connecticut tries to properly fund New Haven and Hartford’s struggling schools, and to address an increasing heroin problem, ESPN has been bilking it for significant dollars over the past dozen years. The New York Times reports that ESPN “has received about $260 million in state tax breaks and credits over the past 12 years. That includes $84.7 million in development tax credits because of a film and digital media program, as well as savings of about $15 million a year after the network successfully lobbied the state for a tax code change in 2000.” Back in 2011, Connecticut Governor Dannel P. Malloy had to visit ESPN three time  to ensure that the proper tax breaks were in place for the sports media giant to begin its nineteenth building on its campus.

Is it possible that ESPN would abandon its existing eighteen buildings and move elsewhere just because it did not receive the tax breaks it wanted? Apparently, the fear is being felt. It’s similar to when the St. Louis Baseball Cardinals owners threatened to move the team out of town in the early 2000s if a new stadium wasn’t built (this at a time when the team had an excellent facility designed by world-famous architect Edward Durrell Stone). It’s hard to imagine St. Louis losing its Cardinals, but sports capitalism allows entrenched teams to threaten to leave their home bases as a way of getting  more concessions from government.

There just seems to be a fundamental irony in the whole system. A sports media conglomerate whose wealth stretches into the millions continues to ask for tax breaks, while it covets athletes, many of whom came from families that really needed welfare to survive. Yet the “makers and shakers” of our society tend to moan about the welfare that goes to needy families, while accepting corporate welfare as just another legitimate cost of doing business. No wonder discussion about redistributing income is becoming acceptable in our society.

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There has been a mini-firestorm over sportscaster Bob Costas’ remarks during halftime of a recent Sunday Night Football game.  Costas said that our country needs to be more serious about addressing the issue of handguns in our society.  His comments were in the wake of Kansas City Chiefs linebacker Jovan Belcher having used a gun to kill his girlfriend and shortly thereafter committing suicide in front of his coach and others at the Chief’s training facility.

There are some who think that his comments were out of line; others who think that they were words that need to be spoken.  You can hear his remarks work for word by watching the one minute forty-one seconds YouTube video below.

Several days after the game, I was listening to the local ESPN radio outlet in St. Louis, MO.  On the program called Fast Lane, there were three commentators (Randy Karraker, DeMarco Farr, and Chris Duncan), who at times agreed on what Costas had said and at other times were selectively disagreed with his words.  Among their comments were:

• I support the 2^nd Amendment, but I think that Costas had every right to say what he did.
• We take time to support our veterans at sports events, why not what Costas said?  Of course, everyone agrees about supporting our veterans.
• During news programming, they cover President Obama filling out his bracket for the NCAA college basketball tournament.  Why not address the issue of control during a sports presentation?
• People watch sports events as an escape from the issues in the news.  That’s why talking about things such as gun control or abortion should not be discussed in sports programming.

Alvin Reid, another commentator at ESPN 101 wrote:

Costas is one of few national sports broadcasters that dares to delve into real news. Unfortunately, most American sports fans don’t want their broadcasters having anything relevant to say when it comes to our society.

As a result, most sports media people avoid controversial subjects that don’t pertain to a game, player, fans, owner or stadium. In fact, here in St. Louis, most sports media people are avoiding discussion of the Edward Jones Dome lease and other stadium issues like a snarling pit bull.

Most of us want no part of real news. I am not putting myself on the level with a Costas or Washington Post columnist George Will. But I am one of the sports nuts who began his career as a news nut. I still am involved in both.

We are fewer and farther between than in any time since the 1960s.

One last note: I wrote after the late Junior Seau took his own life that the NFL has a problem with suicide. The column got dismissed in many circles.

My guess is that more people – hopefully in NFL offices – are coming around to my way of thinking.

There are many people who in Reid’s words are both “sports nuts” and “news nuts.”  In considerable ways, they share common characteristics:  Winning and losing; playing by the rules; playing under pressure; strategizing in the shadows of secrecy but playing before the public; succeeding by appealing to a great number of people; developing a “fan base.”

In the aftermath of his remarks, Costas, who by many is considered the best sportscaster of his generation, took himself to task.  While he stood by his comments, he said, “My big mistake was in trying to tackle a complex issue in just one minute 20 seconds.  I violated my first rule; that a broadcaster should never discuss on the air an issue that he or she does not have sufficient time to fully explain.”

Given more time, Costas crystalized his main point in the Los Angeles Times:

“Give me one example of an athlete — I know it’s happened in society — but give me one example of a professional athlete who by virtue of his having a gun, took a dangerous situation and turned it around for the better,” Costas said. “I can’t think of a single one. But sadly, I can think of dozens where by virtue of having a gun, a professional athlete wound up in a tragic situation.”

Too many times our leaders fail to address the role that guns play in our societal violence.  Whether it’s the horrendous massacre at a school in Newtown, CT; the senseless shooting of a congresswoman in Tucson, AZ, a slaughter at a movie theater in Aurora, CO; a shooting rampage at Virginia Tech University, many deplore the perpetrator but fail to express concern about the availability of the weapons that they used.  Three cheers to Bob Costas for filling the void created by most of our leaders, including many of our finest, who cower from addressing the issue of gun control because they fear public retaliation.  First we must talk; then act.  Thanks, Bob, for rekindling the dialogue.

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