Socialist Football

I don't know about you, but people in America seem to have a love affair with football. It doesn't matter where you go, there's always someone talking about what their team did or didn't do in the offseason, and what their chances are for next season. Think about it: the NFL season only has a 16-game regular season schedule, with only three to four games in the playoffs (if your team were to make it all the way to the superbowl). Including the four game preseason, you're looking at about 23 or 24 games for the best NFL teams and about 20 for every other team. For all the talk and hype that goes into this league, there isn't much action to substantiate it. Don't get me wrong, I love the NFL (especially my Colts and Cardinals) but I just don't understand why it has to be a full year topic for sports writers and fans alike. It should be important when it's appropriate; in the fall. It's kinda like the Fox show "24"; it's on for 4 months out of the year, and for that stretch, it's the best thing on television. But the rest of the year nobody talks about it or discusses the intricacies of that following season.

Some people will argue that the NFL offseason gives shitty teams hope. With the NFL draft and other offseason acquisitions, a team can dramatically change from year to year. Theoretically speaking, a team that went 5-11 or 6-10 in 2005 can turn it around in just one year and become a playoff contender that following season. For that reason, fans think the offseason is important to talk about.

Setting aside my position that the offseason in any sport is a waste of time, I am surprised that the NFL has implented programs that, while very effective, would get any politician out of office. If you were to carefully inspect the NFL, I mean really pay attention to how they operate, you will notice an interesting trend. Haven't you ever wondered why teams in small markets stay competitive with teams in big markets? The answer is very simple. The reason why teams can turn things around in the NFL more so than in any other American sport is simple: THE NFL IS A FORM OF SOCIALIASM.

Think about it, all teams have to abide by the salary cap, which limits certain teams in the league who are more weatlhy from outspending other teams in league. Furthermore, the revenue sharing plan that the NFL uses is a form of economic redistribution. Basically, all the teams pool in their revenue from their respective football stadiums, and they equally dole it out to all the teams.

Baseball, on the other hand, uses a form of capitalism that Americans are more familiar with. Rich teams prospser, poor teams don't. If the Kansas City Royals - New York Yankees series' isn't an example of the 'haves and have nots" then I don't know what is.

Yet despite all this, the NFL has become the most popular league in the country. The most hardened conservatives even love the NFL, yet they fail to realize the irony in all of this. Americans will oppose universal health care and anything relating to economic redistribution. But for some strange reason, they love the NFL for those very same reasons (sans the health care part).