Like many people, I have mixed feelings about the Rams leaving St. Louis for Los Angeles. In some ways, they parallel the mixed feelings I’ve always had about football. Football strategy brings a dimension of chess to the world of athletics, but the inherent violence is in conflict with what might be called healthy competition (witness the Cincinnati – Pittsburgh playoff game of January 9).

It has been said that life imitates baseball, and in many ways I think that is true; I hope it is. Baseball is essentially a happy game that runs the entire emotional gamut of the human experience. Life also imitates football, but football is a much more foreboding and grim game than baseball.

Despite the fact that I feel that a part of my life has been pilfered by the move of the Rams, and that I have very little love for the NFL or the ownership of the Rams, I will not turn my back on the game. Rather, I’ll lament that I will no longer have a front-row seat to the drama that characterizes so much of what in my view is wrong with American life, but also includes moments and individuals of inspiration. I’ll miss not being close up to:

• Hearing how coaches, commentators and others say that what’s most important is the well-being of each player. This, while every effort is made to make players robots and cogs in the wheel of a well-oiled offense or defense.
• How the captains of industry, the owners and the NFL administrators, are driven by private avarice at the expense of the public good. Yes, it happens all over America (and the world), but nothing exemplifies it better than the NFL.
• How the League incessantly engages in self-congratulation for being so charitable – something that is easy to do when you’re wealthy. Just like Republicans, they’re charitable at the expense of supporting justice. Not a word about the “haves” in society having an obligation to help those who are most in need (i.e. support for a government social and economic safety net).
• The omnipresence of gaming the system, whether it’s the illegal or questionable drugs that players take or the gambling by tens of millions of addicted fans.
• The organizational psychology of both winning and losing coaches. Bottom line is that some nice guys finish first and some nice guys finish last. Tyrants also take turns winning and losing. Go figure.
• The empty seats at the end of virtually all games, indicative of how many fans love the game so much that they can’t wait to beat others out of the venue to get home first.
• The “officials’ time-outs” that come at the most non-natural of times and thoroughly interrupt the game, but are necessary because the game is really just a vehicle to drive viewers to the commercials.

On the good side

• The beauty of a sweep play with the pulling guards getting in front of the runner and clearing the path for a graceful runner to elude remaining defenders
• The arc of the long pass (captured so beautifully by NFL films); the pass that falls into the hands of a receiver in stride.
• The fact that some really decent human beings can play this often-savage game and come out with their personalities intact.
• The fun of being a fan and wondering whether the quarterback-impaired Rams will look outside the box for bad-boy Johnny Manziel or good-soldier improviser Robert Griffin III. Also, isn’t it about time for the Rams to at least have a high level African-American coach?

What the Rams do on a day-to-day basis will become more and more distant to me, and I’ll miss that. But maybe that won’t last forever. “Shark” and basketball’s Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban said a year ago that the NFL will self-implode in ten years. I could kind of go for that, no more violent tackle football. Instead we could have a low-budget friendly Touch Football League featuring the athleticism and the mental rigor and creativity that makes football so great. Well, I’m dreaming wildly, while the Rams are simply California dreaming.

The post Life will be harder to understand without the Rams appeared first on Occasional Planet.

Stan Kroenke’s recent verbal abuse of St. Louis may, at long last, have awakened this town to the sick relationship it has had with the NFL and Kroenke, the owner of the St. Louis Rams football team.

The verbal abuse came in Kroenke’s application to the NFL to relocate the team to Los Angeles.In an attempt to justify moving the team, Kroenke said:

St. Louis lags, and will continue to lag, far behind in the economic drivers that are necessary for sustained success of an NFL franchise…

Any NFL Club that signs on to this proposal in St. Louis will be well on the road to financial ruin, and the League will be harmed…

St. Louis is not capable of supporting three major sports teams. No other NFL franchise would be interested in the current proposed riverfront stadium…and it doesn’t make economic sense to be in the city.

That hurt. And this cruel assault on St. Louis’ self-esteem is typical of abusive behavior. [Interestingly, the harsh criticisms in Kroenke’s letter to the NFL came after years of zero communication from Kroenke, who St. Louis pundits have dubbed “Silent Stan.” The silent treatment is yet another symptom of abuse.]

But until the Rams—curiously—made Kroenke’s letter public, St. Louis football fans and civic “leaders” desperately wanted to keep the Rams in town. So desperate, in fact, that city leaders were willing to spend hundreds of millions of tax dollars to build a new $1 billion football stadium to regain Kroenke’s love, and that of the NFL, too.

Now, the anger aroused by the otherwise silent Stan’s criticisms of St. Louis may be raising awareness of just how unhealthy this town’s relationship with Kroenke and the league has been.

Abuse

What’s an emotionally abusive relationship? The Center for Relationship Abuse Awareness defines abuse as

…a pattern of abusive and coercive behaviors used to maintain power and control…. Abuse can be emotional, financial, sexual or physical and can include threats, isolation, and intimidation. Abuse tends to escalate over time.

An abuser is a grand manipulator and will sulk, threaten to leave, and emotionally punish you for not following their idea of how things should be. An abuser will try to make you feel guilty any time you exert your will and assert what is right for you.

In the St.Louis/NFL case, the abuse began years ago, in 1995, when the city built a domed stadium as a way of enticing an NFL lover, er, team to town. Then, city leaders agreed to lease out the newly constructed dome to the Rams under a rather strange contingency forced on them by the NFL: The Rams’ lease required [St. Louis] to provide an updated “first-tier” stadium for the Rams — in the top eight of 32 National Football League teams — first by 2005, and again by 2015.

In other words, the stadium had to stay pretty to keep the love. Then, in 2013, the Rams complained that the dome had let itself go, was soft in the middle, and needed $700 million in cosmetic surgery and body work. And when the city said no, the Rams threatened to walk away.

More recently, less than a week after Kroenke submitted his St.-Louis-hating proposal, the NFL piled on. Preparing for the long-awaited owners’ meeting, at which the fate of three teams [St. Louis, San Diego and Oakland] could be decided, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell dissed St. Louis’ proposal for a new stadium, calling the plan “inadequate and unsatisfactory.”

An emotional abuser goes through life feeling entitled to be treated like royalty, and wants you to be a willing servant. He or she expects you to do everything and will not help at all.

Rams owner Stan Kroenke got rich by marrying a Wal-Mart heiress and by developing Wal-Mart anchored shopping complexes all over the US. He wants out of St. Louis, and he apparently feels entitled to get his way, even if he violates NFL rules. He has already purchased hundreds of acres of land in Inglewood California, where he intends to build a sports-stadium, entertainment and shopping mega-complex—with his own money.

He has offered zero dollars to help build a new stadium in St. Louis.

Victims’ reactions to abuse

The Advocacy Center says

When an abuser calls their partner names, puts them down and plays mind games it can make the victim feel bad about themselves. Many times victims believe that the abuse is their fault or that they deserve the abuse.

Over the past few years, as Kroenke and the NFL escalated the threat to leave St. Louis without a football team, fans responded as abuse victims often do: They begged and protested their undying love.

A facebook page launched in 2014 by Rams fans said: “Our mission at Keep the Rams in St. Louis is continue to build our tradition in St. Louis, with our passion and commitment. Let’s show the world that we LOVE and support the Rams; and we want them to stay in St. Louis.” The group said it hoped to show Los Angeles and the rest of the country that St. Louis loves its football team and that team should stay right where it is.

There are probably even some St. Louis football fans who actually do blame this whole mess on themselves and on the city’s political leaders, for not attending games, for not supporting the stadium tax giveaway, and for not being the razzle-dazzle city that would make the NFL and Kroenke love us more.

Breaking away?

Kroenke’s gratuitous comments to the NFL have sparked an angry backlash from his victims. They’re calling his criticisms “preposterous pot shots.” Missouri’s governor zinged back, saying, “Our fans support their professional and amateur teams—Especially ones that win.” St. Louis Mayor Francis Slay shifted the blame back to Kroenke, saying “If the Rams leave, it will not be for something the region failed to do. Or the fans.” The St. Louis Post-Dispatch published a half-page dartboard, with Kroenke’s image in the bullseye, and the best of #kroenkecomplaints around the perimeter.

But is any of this enough? Vicitms can cry, hurl zingers, self-justify, or throw the blame back to the abuser, but will it make a difference? Kroenke and the NFL still have the power to decide. The only power citizens, policymakers, and the little people have is to walk away—not just physically, but emotionally, too– from the madness. Some suggest that victimized cities band together and form a coalition–perhaps even a collective-bargaining organization–that would refuse to be blackmailed, extorted and pitted against each other by professional sports leagues and teams.

This is not just about St. Louis. I’m looking at you, too, Oakland and San Diego, and all of the other cities who have  been–and will be in the future–bullied and abused by NFL owners and the league.

So, instead of continuously trying to placate these abusers, maybe NFL cities should be going to court to petition for orders of protection.

The post The NFL’s abusive relationship with cities and fans: St. Louis edition appeared first on Occasional Planet.

Assigned reading for today: Huffpost article on the pros and cons of publicly subsidizing wealthy NFL team owners’ desire for new stadiums. Along with other stuck-in-the mud cities, the article cites otherwise impoverished St. Louis’ current pathetic efforts to retain a NFL team (any NFL team). The money quote:

If the benefits aren’t flowing to cities, they are instead going primarily to NFL owners. A 2012 Bloomberg analysis found that since 2000, new stadiums had helped double team values across pro sports, and Baade noted that while it appears NFL teams are now putting more of their own money in than they used to, they are doing so primarily out of revenue streams — luxury boxes, personal seat licenses and other in-stadium revenues — that either wouldn’t exist without a new stadium or are larger because of it.”The public sector is underwriting most of the risk,” Baade said, “while most of the benefits that accrue, accrue to the teams.”

No real news there, but the point of view still seems to be too revolutionary for set-in-their-ways Missouri political elites represented by Governor Nixon and St. Louis Mayor Slay.

I do understand that Mayor Slay and Governor Nixon like the idea of union jobs that would probably result from a stadium project along with what they possibly hope would be some concomitant North Side development. But there are other ways to spend infrastructure dollars and create jobs that would actually benefit the city’s citizens instead of ripping off taxpayers. In this regard, the article notes that a new report “links the subsidization of new stadiums to higher poverty rates and lower median incomes in their home cities, and it found that most NFL cities fared worse by both measures after paying for a new stadium.”

[This post was originally published on Show Me Progress.]

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It may be that the movie “Draft Day,” currently in theaters, is just a niche film for football fans. It’s for real fans who know the game; not those who go to the game and act as if it is an extension of a frat party.

Being engaged in this week’s actual NFL draft days (Thurs., May 8 – Sat., May 10) is of interest only to the fans who are curious about what is involved in building a team.

I had the pleasure of seeing the movie the day after watching the White House Correspondents Dinner on that big sports channel, C-SPAN. It may be surprising to some, but the skills that an NFL general managers and coaches need are remarkably similar to those needed by both top level government and media officials. For example:

Job openings:

• President of the United States

• General Manager and coach of Cleveland Browns

Skills needed:

• Ability to evaluate talent

• Ability to get people to work together.

• Ability to sense what other people are thinking

• Ability to understand your own needs

• Ability to understand other people’s needs

How far could a president go if he/she could not evaluate talent? John McCain flunked his first big test in 2008 when he selected Sarah Palin to be his running mate. Barack Obama hit the jackpot with Vice-President Joe Biden as well as most of his cabinet appointments and White House staff. The ability to judge talent, and to understand people, is of high value in most walks of life. We all make mistakes, but for some the stakes are higher than for others. For the general manager of an NFL team, failure means being shown the way to the exit door, in all likelihood never to rise to such an important position again. For the president of the United States, it can determine whether or not his/her agenda for the country succeeds and whether he will return for a second term.

In sports, there’s always the question of team chemistry. How well do the players get along with one another? Does everyone know what his or her role is and can each player come through so that others on the team can properly utilize their skills? Are they competitive enough with one another to bring out the best in each other without tearing others down?

The same is true for the president. In the words of historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, the president frequently puts together a “team of rivals.” Can members of the team subdue their egos so that the decision-making process will result in desirable outcomes?

Many government officials work in the shadows of the decision-making process. The president may know a great deal about how they are doing their jobs, but the public is either clueless or possibly misled by rumors leaking out of the government.

Transparency is what makes most sports, particularly professional football, so interesting to watch. Along with the general managers and coaches, the public is aware of the players already on the team as well as the prospects that Draft Day will bring them. We can speculate about what a team should do with current players and how the draft should be used to improve the team. This can be quite enjoyable for fans, and beyond that, it can give fans an opportunity to test their judgment against the results of the future. This becomes excellent training for the lifetime skill of trying to “get a bead on others.

Like many, I abhor much of what goes on in football. The violence is not only extensive and regrettably essential to success. In many ways, the game is a substitute for war. It includes violence, demonizing, hype, excess, irresponsible behavior, “group think” and many other characteristics that are not helpful in trying to promote a just and fair society.

Like many people, I have a love/hate relationship with football. I love all the strategy that goes into making a team, putting together a game plan, and reacting to success and adversity. I love the athleticism but I hate the violence and the bravado that often accompanies it. But on draft day, there is no blocking and tackling, no cheap hits, only mental gymnastics. That’s good for our minds, and certainly good exercise for anyone who aspires to be a leader of our country.

The post “Draft Day” offers tips on what it takes to lead the country appeared first on Occasional Planet.

The NFL’s Washington, DC. team has announced that it is officially changing its name to something more politically correct and less racially insensitive. Native American groups have long advocated for a change to bring the team’s image in line with modern sensibilities. While the new name does not address many fans’ desire for the team to become more like others named after ferocious, untamed, predatory animals, the new moniker presents a wealth of new marketing opportunities, says highly unpopular team owner Dan Snyder.

“The new name is a happy hybrid, allowing us to retain our team’s longstanding, beloved [by me] racially inappropriate identity, while offering a sponsorship-friendly tie-in, and also saving me a wagon-load of wampum in lawyers’ fees,” said Snyder.

As of April 1, 2014, the team will be called the “Washington Redskin Potatoes.” Its mascot will be a character beloved by generations of children—Mr. Potato Head, who will roll around on the field and pierce himself with a fork during Half (Baked) Time. Other changes at the stadium will complement the team’s new identity as well: Before each home game, the stadium will be preheated to 350 degrees. Potatoes au gratin will be served gratis, the official team dance will be the Monster Mash, and the team’s new victory chant will be, “Pass the butter.”

Reportedly, former U.S. Vice President Dan Quayle initially received a large consulting fee to advise the team on the proper spelling of the new name. His fee was later revoked when the 8-year-old son of the team’s equipment manager informed a stunned board of directors that potato does not end in “e,” thus necessitating the reprinting of 5,000 bushels of fan t-shirts emblazoned with “Proud to be a Potatoe.”

The rebranded team’s first pre-season game will be against Cleveland. Already demonstrating their identification with the team’s new name, Washington fans have begun creating banners with the rallying cry, “Hash the Browns.”

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It’s Super Bowl weekend, and the National Football League is about to reap its biggest payday of the year. Funny thing about that, though: The NFL won’t be paying any taxes on the profits it will be raking in from advertising revenue, ticket sales, or merchandise.

In fact, the last time the NFL paid taxes was in 1966. That was the year when lobbyists convinced Congress to change the definition of organizations categorized by the Internal Revenue Service as 501 (c)6 not-for-profit organizations. Previously, a sentence in Section 501(c)6 had granted not-for-profit status to “business leagues, chambers of commerce, real-estate boards, or boards of trade.” Since 1966, the code has read: “business leagues, chambers of commerce, real-estate boards, boards of trade, or professional football leagues.”

In return for this incredibly lucrative, sweetheart deal, Congress asked for just one concession from the NFL: its promise not to schedule games on Friday nights or Saturdays in autumn, when many high schools and colleges play football.

The new provision gave the NFL a way to skirt taxes, while also granting it an uncommon anti-trust exemption, allowing it to create a monopoly to negotiate TV rights at the same time. Under the rule, leagues qualify for the tax-exempt status by stating that their purpose is to help promote their respective sports and membership instead of themselves. More specifically, 501(c)6 organizations — essentially industry trade groups, are defined as “associations of persons having some common business interest, the purpose of which is to promote such common interest and not to engage in a regular business of a kind ordinarily carried on for profit.” Hmm.

So, at the Internal Revenue Service, NFL stands for Non-profit Football League.

It’s a special status that the NFL continues to work hard to maintain. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, the NFL has spent $2 million in campaign contributions since 1992, and $12.7 million on lobbying efforts since 1998. That’s a lot of money, but clearly, the NFL is getting a to-die-for return on its lobbying investments, because its fair share of taxes would be many millions more. According to Forbes Magazine, 2013 revenues for the National Football League [were] just north of $9 billion, which means the league remains the most lucrative in the world. NFL commissioner, Roger Goodell—whose annual salary is $30 million–is aiming even higher, hoping to reach $24 billion in annual revenues for the league by 2027.

And it’s all tax-free, subsidized by NFL fans and taxpayers. If the NFL were taxed as a normal corporation, it would be subject to the standard 35% corporate tax rate.

Just to clarify, the tax-exempt status applies only to the league—more specifically, its headquarters, which administers the league and its all-important television contracts. Individual teams are considered for-profit organizations, and presumably pay taxes—except for the tax credits, subsidies and giveaways they routinely get, most notably for billion-dollar stadiums, at the expense of the taxpaying public.

It should also be noted that, while the league claims that it shares much of its untaxed revenue with teams, it still manages to pay Goodell $30 million a year. According to CBS News, Steve Bornstein, the executive vice president of media, made $12.2 million in 2010. Former NFL commissioner Paul Tagliabue earned $8.5 million from the league in 2010. The league paid five other officials a total of $19.2 million in just one year. In comparison, the next highest salary of a traditional nonprofit CEO is $3.4 million.

How much do individual teams pay in taxes? That’s hard to know, because the teams—except for Green Bay—are privately held and don’t open their books to the public..

Bottom line, It’s scandalous to know that the NFL has the same tax status as a soup kitchen and other charitable groups that actually do some good for society. I recently received an email from Credo that put this issue in a wider political context:

As Republicans in Congress vote to cut food stamps and obstruct the extension of unemployment benefits, it’s time to highlight the hypocrisy of letting a multi-billion operation like the NFL get away with paying no taxes while they stick us with the bill. Though the NFL has successfully held back efforts to make it pay its fair share for nearly 50 years, Congress has the opportunity to change that by updating the Internal Revenue Code.

Credo is asking citizens to sign its petition urging Congress to change the IRS code regarding tax-exempt status for the NFL.

To that same end, in September 2013, Senator Tom Coburn [R-OK] introduced a bill that would ban pro sports leagues with more than $10 million in revenue from receiving tax-exempt status. He dubbed the bill the PRO Sports Act, with PRO as an acronym for Properly Reducing Over-Exemptions. Coburn also released a government “waste book” decrying the nonprofit status of the NFL, NHL and other professional sports organizations, estimated to cost taxpayers between $10 million and $91 million annually.  Coburn said:

Tax earmarks are essentially tax increases for everyone who doesn’t receive the benefit. In this case, working Americans are paying artificially high rates in order to subsidize special breaks for sports leagues.  This is hardly fair. This bill would require major professional sports leagues to be prohibited from qualifying as non-profit organizations under the tax code. This would help give all Americans, not just athletes and owners, a break and pave the way for the kind of tax reform and job creation our economy desperately needs.

Coburn should get some credit for the effort, although he couches it in typically Republican language, decrying earmarks and touting “job creation.” Not surprisingly, Coburn’s bill gained only one co-sponsor—Angus King, (I-ME)—and Govtrack rates its chance of passage by the Senate Finance Committee as 0%.

Andy Kroll, a reporter at Mother Jones, puts the issue this way:

So as you settle onto the couch next Sunday for a full day of gridiron action, don’t be fooled by the NFL’s manly, to-the-victor-go-the-spoils ethos. The league is one of the biggest welfare queens around.

The post The National Football League is a non-profit organization. Huh? appeared first on Occasional Planet.

I always thought that it was a problem for the Occupy Movement to begin in late summer (2011) and then basically close up shop as fall turned to winter. Demonstrations like those of Occupy Movement are more what we would call “fair weather sports.” It takes a great deal for a person to camp out in an urban center under the best of circumstances, and only the real pioneers among us can endure the hardships of winter camping.

Since the movement began, there has not been a massive flow of money from the very wealthy to poor and middle income citizens. If economic conditions have gotten better for those who were suffering in late 2011, it is primarily due to the “rising tide lifts all ships” phenomenon. The wealthy seem to have their status in our society well established, maintaining their so-called fair shares of the income and wealth pies.

I recently read a critique of the Occupy Movement, suggesting that what the movement lacked was a clear and definable goal. I’m not sure that I thoroughly agree with that contention. But if organizers were looking for an issue that is clear, definable, concrete and outrageous, they might want to focus on the way professional sports barons in America and the players who do the heavy lifting for them systematically screw communities in need all across America.

Nearly twenty years ago, the civic and state leaders of St. Louis, Missouri ponied with hundreds of millions of dollars to lure the Los Angeles Rams football team from the West Coast to the Midwest. It may seem odd, an aging rust-belt city like St. Louis out-bidding a fast and furious metropolitan area like Los Angeles, but the situation was complicated. St. Louis private financiers  who were willing to underwrite what Los Angeles’ leaders would not. The state of Missouri had fewer obligations than the state of California, and so the situation was ripe for Los Angeles’ loss to be St. Louis’ gain.

The St. Louis consortium wanted the Rams so badly that they focused almost all of their attention on the front end of the agreement, feeling that, if they could perform magic for 1995, they would be able to duplicate it in the future. The tail end of the twenty year stadium agreement had a “killer provision” in it. It stipulated that the Rams were free to leave St. Louis if, in the team’s opinion,  the St. Louis stadium was not in the top 20% of all NFL stadiums. In another era, such a provision might not have been a problem. For instance, when the Astrodome opened in 1965, it was so far advanced compared to other facilities for both football and baseball that it was certain to be among the top 20% in 1985. It was, but then a plethora of new domed and outdoor stadiums were built for prosperous teams. The status of the Astrodome sank so quickly that by 1998 the Oilers football team left America’s fourth largest community and fled to Tennessee. A new domed stadium had to be built in Houston in 2002 to attract an expansion franchise.

Here’s a key thing about the St. Louis Stadium (currently named the Edward Jones Dome). Even if it’s somewhere in the bottom 80% of NFL stadiums, it’s in excellent condition, and it’s a fine place to watch football, as well as a number of other events. Presumably fans go there to see two teams compete against one another in one of America’s most popular sports. They can do that. No additional money other than for normal maintenance needs to be spent.

In Miami, the Dolphins football team is trying to get hundreds of thousands of public dollars to cover the cost of improvements to Sun Life Stadium. Again, the football team can play there for decades, and the fans can enjoy the game for decades without any major improvements.

What’s key is that the NFL is forcing perpetual “improvements” to existing stadiums of construction of new stadiums, all to bring in more revenue for the teams and its players. If St. Louis spends money to put its venue in the top 20% of stadiums, then some other city’s stadium falls out of the top 20%. The NFL will then push that city to put in improvements, needed or not. The public continues to get screwed and the wealthy become richer. The same is happening in virtually every other major sport in the United States and many other countries as well.

So if the Occupy Movement wanted to focus on an example of the top 1% getting richer while the poor and middle class citizens getting poorer, the National Stadium Subsidy Dance would be a good place to start. The more silent the public in any one city, the easier it is for teams in other cities to screw their fan bases, the residents of their community, and America at large.

If I ever was a decent organizer, those days are behind me. But I would love to see a community organizer in any of the three dozen or more U.S. communities with professional sports franchises come forward to network with like-minded people in other cities and get such a movement rolling. Maybe for the sake of theater, they could even occupy a stadium or two.

The post Municipal stadium rip-offs: A new direction for the Occupy movement? appeared first on Occasional Planet.

The “real” NFL officials are back, but that doesn’t mean that all will be well.  One of the key areas of contention in the dispute was evaluation of the referees’ work. Sound familiar? It has a certain parallel to the Chicago teachers’ strike in September.

As a society, we love to measure just about anything, whether it lends itself to quantification or not.  A clear example would be the yearly rankings of U.S. universities and colleges by the magazine U.S. News & World Report.  Is Harvard really better than Yale?  Is it better than your local community college?

It all depends on what your criteria are and to whom you are applying it.  For many students, the local community college is a far better fit than Harvard.  But for U.S. News & World Report to acknowledge this fact would undermine what they are doing in their best-selling issue of the year.

Every play in a football game is full of actions that require subjective evaluation by officials, or at least assessment that is tainted with uncertainty.  Did that offensive lineman really grab the defensive tackle by the jersey?  Did the defensive back hold the wide receiver five or six yards downfield from the line of scrimmage?  When the quarterback released the ball, was he throwing a pass or fumbling the ball?

All of these are variables subject to interpretation.  There will be many occasions when the best of referees will make “damned if you do; damned if you don’t” rulings.

The same is true for teachers.  However, most officials who “run” schools be it from the federal government or the local school board and administrators are fixated on assessing teachers based on the scores of their students on standardized tests.  As Chicago teachers said, the performance of their students is affected by numerous variables other than the quality of their teaching.  This includes the socio-economic background of the students, the crime rate where the students live, the nutritional value of the food they eat, the violence in the home and any other number of factors.

Recently Rebecca Mieliwocki, America’s most recent “teacher of the year” (that too, a rather subjective designation) was interviewed by Ray Suarez on the PBS NewHour.  She teaches English to 7^th graders in Burbank, CA.

At the very least, we can say that she is an experienced and well-versed teacher.  The video of the interview clearly shows that she cares about students and is highly invested in her work.  Consider her words about the value of standardized testing:

SUAREZ:  If I looked at the results of standardized tests from your students, would I find something measurable in numbers about what you’re doing in the classroom?

MIELIWOCKI: Well, you know what, the numbers tell a picture; the numbers tell a story, but just part of the story like the beginning or just the middle or just the end.  It definitely does not tell you the whole of what great teachers do with kids.  It would be like going to the doctor and having your temperature taken and the temperature telling us everything we need to know about you.  It doesn’t.  It gives us one number on one day and it tells you something about your health and wellness at one moment, but it’s not really that useful a piece of information taken in isolation.

Watch 2012 Teacher of the Year on What Helps Students Succeed on PBS. See more from PBS NewsHour.

 

It’s good that the best of the best NFL referees are back on the job.  It’s also good to know that our classroom have teachers as good a Rebecca Mieliwocki.  But regardless of how good they are, they’re not perfect.  Let’s praise them for what they do well, but also be willing to cut them slack when everything does not go as planned.

The post What evaluation of NFL referees and teachers have in common appeared first on Occasional Planet.

The answer to the question of what NFL bounties and Super PACs have in common, is one word, “excess.” If we were to expound on it, we might use terms like too much testosterone, bullying, little regard for fairness, and the ends justify the means.

Bountygate is the system in which Gregg Williams, a defensive coordinator in the National Football League, paid bribes to players if they hit opposing players with such violence that they knocked key opponents out of the game. Williams was hired as defensive coordinator of the St. Louis Rams in February, 2012, but has never coached a down for the team. Over the three previous years he committed his greatest transgressions when he worked for the New Orleans Saints. This included the 2009 when the Saints became “America’s Team” because four years they won the Super Bowl just four years after the area experienced the devastation of Hurricane Katrina. There’s a certain irony in Williams being a renegade in New Orleans. I hadn’t known that putting bounties on people’s heads was part of the job definition of a Saint.

Previously, Williams had utilized this technique with the Washington Redskins and the Buffalo Bills.

Fortunately for the NFL, its commissioner, Roger Goodell, (a) doesn’t like any more violence than is “necessary” in a clean game of tackle football, and (b) doesn’t tolerate having someone tell him a lie to his face. Once he became aware of Bountygate, there was little doubt that the consequences to the perpetrators would be firm and iron-clad.

Goodell is the son of former Senator Charles Goodell of New York City. The senior Goodell was among the last of the vanishing breed of civil, moderate, thoughtful Republicans. The junior’s politics are also known to be moderate, but his commitment to honesty is a fierce as can be.

Senator Charles Goodell campaigned longer before Super PACs had been invented. Super PACs have come into existence over just the past few years. They are less a creation of political parties than they are of the Supreme Court. In 2010, the Court ruled in the Citizens United case that the First Amendment prohibited the government from restricting political expenditures by corporations and unions. The Court ruled that restrictions could still apply to candidates’ official committees, but that anyone or any non-tax-exempt organization could give as much money or in-kind contributions as it wanted to a separate committee that worked on behalf of a candidate. These committees became known as Super PACs. PAC is an acronym for Political Action Committee. They are indeed super because the magnitude of the money that they receive and spend is unprecedented.

David Axelrod, a top political consultant to President Barack Obama, reluctantly agreed to allow Super PACs to form and help the president. Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum, and Newt Gingrich already have huge ones. When asked why he was following suit, Axelrod said “we can’t play touch football while they’re playing tackle.”

Super PACs can do virtually anything legal on behalf of a candidate, except coordinate directly with the official campaign committee of the candidate. The extent to which this “restriction” is described in a previous Occasional Planet piece that reports on former Federal Elections Committee Chairman Trevor Potter being interviewed by Stephen Colbert.

While a Super PAC is supposed to be separate from a candidate’s official campaign committee, its leader can be the candidate’s best friend. The head of the Super PAC can be a business partner of the candidate. A candidate can’t sit down one-to-one with an official from a Super PAC to discuss strategy, but the candidate can deliver a speech to an audience in which he describes what he would like to see someone (e.g. his Super PAC) do to advance his cause. Newt Gingrich did exactly that prior to the South Carolina primary.

Just as bounties in football thoroughly undermine the limited civility of an inherently violent sport, Super PACs undermine the limited moderation in a political campaign. Football bounties take cheap shots at opposing players; Super PACs run the dirtiest commercials against opponents of their candidates.

Perhaps the one difference is that bounties may well be eliminated because the NFL has a strong commissioner in Roger Goodell. Super PACs thrive because there is no commissioner of our political process, unless you think that Chief Justice John Roberts and the eight other Supremes are capable of limiting the excess in campaign. It’s a sad state of affairs when the NFL is more civilized than our political process.

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A popular perspective on the current work stoppage in the National Football League is “Who cares about billionaires fighting millionaires?” It’s a fair question to ask; the kind that Republicans might ask about an internecine dispute within their vision of the middle class.

Even if you’re not a sports fan, there are issues in this dispute that relate to a panoply of struggles between labor and management. There’s even a fairness component, something that may be hard to imagine as rich people argue about how to divide up their money. Since Wisconsin’s Gov. Scott Walker has done us the favor of re-awakening America’s concern about labor unions, we can use the current NFL situation as a window into a number of other disputes.

1. This is not a strike. The National Football League Players Association, which was founded in 1956 and did not achieve collective bargaining powers until 1968, did not vote to go on strike. In fact, when an agreement was not reached by the March 11, 2011 deadline, the union actually collapsed. This is not because they were beaten; it’s because many of the players have brains to match their brawn. Without a contract or one in sight, the players voted to decertify the union, essentially making each player a free agent. When that happened, the owners voted to lock the players out from team practice facilities. The signing of free agents and trades between teams ceased.

2. The players chose decertification because it put them in a much better position to take on the owners in the area where they are most vulnerable, violating the Sherman Anti-Trust Law of 1890 and being in restraint of trade. The central question is, “Are the players employees of the team for which they play or of the National Football League?” Yes, Sam Bradford is the quarterback of the St. Louis Rams, but what he signs is a standard National Football League contract. The League likes to act as one, while pretending to be thirty-two (teams), because that way it would not be violating the Sherman Act. But teams are restricted in what they can do in a variety of ways by league regulations. An employee in the office of the St. Louis Rams cannot say, “I have a new idea for a mug with a Rams logo on it to sell to fans,” because the League has exclusive rights to novelty marketing.

In fairness to the League, the current system is very beneficial to fans, particularly if you live in St. Louis, Cincinnati, Jacksonville, or other small-market cities. Left to a completely free market, cities of this size could rarely compete with teams from larger cities, such as New York or Chicago.

The owners assert that they need anti-trust exemption to protect competition. However, baseball, where there is less revenue sharing, has shown us that teams from Cincinnati, Tampa, and St. Louis can frequently be in the playoffs. From a fan’s perspective, and possibly even the players, breaking the NFL monopoly carries the serious risks of unintended consequences.

3. There is the issue of working conditions, something that exists for all employees. Factory workers, teachers, farm workers all have valid concerns about the conditions in which they work. Without the presence of unions in their industry or similar industries, we would be in jeopardy of owners going back to demanding that employees work six days a week for fourteen hours each. Oops, I forgot, they have already resumed that, it’s just that it’s happening in Bangkok, Ho Chi Minh City, and Mexico City rather than Detroit or San Francisco.

But the NFL players are not without legitimate concerns. The game that they played and the way in which they are allowed, even encouraged, to play is about as hazardous to one’s health as any occupation. No matter how safe Riddell and Rawlings try to make the helmets, concussions happen every week. A player suffers the effects of the concussions, and then post-concussion syndrome. Players’ knees and other joints are twisted in ways for which the human body is not designed. The number of knee operations that some players have had is in double digits. Most former players over 50 years of age have difficulty walking and rarely are pain-free. The lingering effects of the concussions make NFL players seven times more likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease, to experience depression, and to commit suicide. One former player, David Duerson of the Chicago Bears, recently committed suicide in a way that he thought would be beneficial to other players. He shot himself in the stomach but before doing so he sent a text message to his family saying he wanted his brain to be used for research at the Boston University School of Medicine, which is conducting research into chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) due to playing pro football.

The owners now want to increase the regular season schedule from 16 games to 18 games. That would mean two less exhibition games; games that don’t draw particularly large crowds. The players don’t want the expanded schedule, at least not without further compensation. The expanded schedule would clearly be detrimental to the health of the players. The “regulars” play very sparingly in exhibition games, primarily to avoid injury in games that don’t count in the standings. Besides that, a shorter exhibition season would make it more difficult for unheralded players to show their skills and make the team.

The NFL can’t outsource the games, although they have previously used scabs or strike-breakers. Fans saw right through that; the games generated very little interest or revenue. There are many intriguing components to the current work stoppage, most of which relate to other labor disputes. And even though many, but not all, of the players are millionaires, their economic concerns seem much more valid than those of the owners. They risk their health; owners risk making a smaller, but still excessive, profit. There’s much we can learn by following this dispute.

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