Being a diehard Oklahoma Sooner fan and fan of college football in general, I do not follow the pro game other than maybe to see from time to time how former OU players are doing. Some who were drafted into the pros after their playing days at OU went on to have stellar careers. Admittedly, some have been disappointing for things that have nothing to do with football, Adrian Peterson for example. All that said, I really don’t have a dog in the fight that is Super Bowl XLIX. I am just sitting back and taking in the spectacle like so many other people, some 186 million other people, will be doing this evening. Yes, this Super Bowl could set records for viewership and spending. Hmmm, 186 million viewers. That is like 134 million more than watched Game 7 of the 2014 World Series.
In the run up to the Super Bowl four years ago Bill Maher, the host of the HBO show Real Time, made the same observation. He even went so far as to compare the business models of the National Football League and Major League Baseball. It was an interesting comparison of a very workable and solvent socialist model vs. an archaic capitalist model whose following and viewership are no longer in the same league and hasn’t been in several years. I cannot articulate it any better than Maher did and the popularity of pro football has only increased as the projected viewership of Super Bowl XLIX indicates in spite of the season’s ugly sideshow issues like domestic violence and traumatic brain injury among others. It is hard to believe that such a spectacle has grown to command possibly the largest audience in sports broadcast history. It is my hope that an enterprise that puts all its TV revenues into a central pot and splits it 32 ways and awards the winner of tonight’s game with last pick in the upcoming pro draft can teach the most unaware of fans that socialism is a fact of American life, leveling the playing field by not allowing any one member to fall too far behind is a good thing and these efforts to ensure competitiveness are not inherently evil. America is some country and tonight’s spectacle more than any other annual event is defined by our national love of watching something that has grown out of a child’s game. Here’s to the process starting all over in the morning!
Bill Maher New Rules 1.28.11, NFL Socialism vs. MLB Capitalism
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