Midway through December, I sat on a bus bound for northern Maine, firmly sandwiched between a morbidly obese woman and the grimy windows of Concord Coach. The in-drive movie was the shockingly horrendous "The Back-up Plan," so I was forced to turn to my iPhone to pass the time. Luckily, I had just downloaded the latest Bill Simmons podcast, in which he had interviewed Washington Wizards and Washington Capitals owner Ted Leonsis.
What he said in the two-hour interview blew my mind, but can all pretty much be summed up in this quote: "It's their team," he said of Washington's fans. "I might write the checks, but it's their team."
Woah.
The words every fan wants to hear out of their team owner's mouths.
Now, it's a given that any owner would say that if they thought it would get fans on board and create more money for them, but in the interview Leonsis came off as genuine. The way he spoke of Washington, fans and winning, he sounded like a man who really believed that, with his money and position, he had an honest civic duty to create the best team for his fans. Since Leonsis took over the Caps in 1999, the team has morphed into a perennial contender at the expense of his pocketbook.
I can't stress enough that I understand Leonsis was likely using the interview as a way to monger up support, and simply saying all the right things.
But still — that's an intoxicating idea, isn't it? The wealthy earning their money, but feeling a human and civic duty to share it? At Brown, we are often mocked as the bleeding hearts, the hippie children stuffed with ideals and ignorance, the elitist socialists who haphazardly condemn the greed of the business sector: the liberals.
Now, I don't do politics. Entertaining a "nuh-uh"-themed conversation with someone who will cling to any point, no matter how ridiculous, as long as it supports them, is not my idea of an adult dialogue. Fox News is the most egregious offender in my opinion, but MSNBC is often just as ridiculous. No congressman hears a speech by an opposing party member and goes, "That's a great point! I'm changing my vote to do what I believe is right. Voters and job security, be damned!" I lack the wherewithal to face that without depression creeping into every corner of my body. Hopefully, someone with more stomach than I will fix this someday.
But — what happened this Friday was disgusting. For the next couple paragraphs, I'm not the cheery, joke-cracking columnist. I'm the latest in a long line of jaded fans.
As the NFL's lockout begins, there is a wave of finger-pointing from both owners and players, with each side pointing to the greed of the other. The argument is how to split nearly $1 billion in leftover revenue. The owners have cried poor and claim they need the money to help pay for things such as stadiums, which are often supplemented with a city's tax money. Players, who get a slight majority of the cash, are not unwilling to let the owners have this money. They just want to see the 10-year financials of the clubs so they can make sure the owners need the money.
Yes, everyone, the main reason why we will not have football this year is because owners refuse to hand over their ledgers.
Sounds fine to me.
NFL players are not sympathetic figures. When people look at players, they see cockiness and arrogance. Men who are more successful on the luck of possessing natural talent: men of the entertainment industry. You will often hear grumbling about the millions that players make. Maybe that's how the owners actually managed to turn this into an argument.
But let's look at this. These guys don't "stumble into" the skills required of NFL athletes. These guys practice and practice and practice. Not to mention the gambles these kids take from a young age. If you are a budding NFL hopeful, you have to gamble much of your future away for that chance. If you have a good season, you have to leave college or risk hurting your own draft options. For every star, there are four young men staring at the practice squad final cut list, tears in their eyes and broken dreams around their feet.
These men aren't here through dumb luck and accident. These NFL players took serious risks.
And they are still taking them. As more data on the dangers of concussions becomes apparent and NFL players continue to drop dead in their 40s, we are left to ponder: Who is really cashing in on the game? Who is really writing the costly checks? Who is the one paying?
Capitalism has a place. It's worked in our country for generations. I'm not arguing that the owners don't deserve their money — though maybe I could.
It's when the curtain is lifted back on sports, and the ugly "money talks" philosophy rinses its greed-caked hands in the pure water of sport, that I just can't take it anymore. Maybe I'm an idealist. Maybe I'm just the latest of Brown's ignorant bleeding hearts. Maybe I'm just a fool.
But I'm sticking to my beliefs.
This labor strike stopped being about football a long time ago. It isn't the millionaires versus the billionaires anymore. It's about the 32 men with more money than they can spend in their lives. The 32 men who hide behind the rights given to them by capitalism to dodge the responsibilities tied to their humanity. It's about the 32 men who look down on the 46-year-old on his deathbed and callously dismiss him as "knowing the risks."
Football is just a game.
Tell that to the stadium workers who now need employment in a down market. Tell that to the would-be draft picks, who gambled everything on football and suddenly have nothing. Tell that to the bar owner outside Soldier Field in Chicago with a mortgage to pay. Tell that to the people of New Orleans who fell with Katrina only to rise with Braylon Brees, as his father held him aloft with the championship trophy. Tell it to the widowed Lisa McHale and her young sons who lost their husband and father to a drug overdose brought on by concussion symptoms.
As fans, we need to remember how far the owners are going in hopes of getting more, how we fans were tossed aside and how the true colors of the owners have bubbled to the surface. When deciding between a football game and basketball or baseball game, remember this.
Football isn't about football anymore. I know I'm not going to forget.
Sam Sheehan '12 blacked out there for a second. What did I say? Talk sports with him at sam_sheehan@brown.edu or follow him on Twitter@SamSheehan.
