Reply to Big game? Who cares - The NFL, and football in general is worthless.

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[quote=Anonymous]I love football and am enthusiastic about this super bowl which I think has an above average potential to be a good game.

It's a really exciting game to watch. And I'm not alone. Football is enormously popular.

There are really important points to be raised about racism in the sport and yes, as a viewer, there are times when I really question the dynamic of these white owners and the way they treat the mostly play players.

HOWEVER.

Those players are unionized and many of them have a kind of leverage that most workforces will never have (fame, fandom, and money). Does that mean they are more powerful than the owners? No. Certainly not on an individual basis. But collectively, they do have power and they do sometimes leverage it for their collective good. I think the union could do more and also thing the league needs to be more closely regulated. However, the best thing we could do to level those power dynamics more fairly tax the ultra-wealthy families that own the teams.

If you don't like the power dynamics of rich white people employing less rich black people in a sport with a lot of contact, I wonder how you feel about, say, the meat packing and canning industries. Similar dynamics but no union, the workforce is often largely immigrant and uneducated, exploitation is common. Do you boycott all the food that comes out of those industries? They are in my opinion far worse than football in terms of the sort of "plantation" dynamics you are talking about. And no one ever got rich working on a meat packing plant floor. At least in the NFL, we get to see black stars who earn good money excel in their chosen line of work.

The league needs to do more to protect the players, the media and governing bodies need to do more to hold the league to account, and we as a society need to stop just giving these owners whatever they want (there should be no such thing as a publicly funded professional sports stadium, please).

But the idea that football is inherently bad whereas every other part of our economy is filled with the same dynamics and and even less empowered workforce? Whatever, you just don't like football. Which is fine, don't like it. No one is making you watch it. But a lot of us like it.[/quote]

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