Tag Archives: NFL

Aaron Hernandez and Urban Meyer

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Win at all CostsFor my followers who are not sports fans there is a terrible story making headlines in the National Football League (NFL) these days. A player in the league is accused of premeditated murder. That he killed one of his friends reportedly because that friend was talking to some other people.

The case is in its infancy and guilt or innocence will not be determined for a long time so I’m not going to get into the particulars of the incident. Likewise there is much talk about the violent tendencies of NFL players but statistical analysis seem to indicate that professional athletes, football players included, are no more criminally inclined than the rest of the nation, actually less so.

What I do want to talk about is the culture of winning that pervades college and pro athletics. The responsibility a coach has when one of their players commits crimes, particular violent crimes. In this case the player in question, Aaron Hernandez, was coached at the University of Florida by Urban Meyer. There were apparently a number of incidents at Florida that put a question to Hernandez’s character, and more importantly to the NFL, his potential to be a great player instead of a public relations nightmare.

Meyer told Coach Bill Belichick of the New England Patriots that Hernandez was worth drafting although he was drafted well below his ability level, likely because of his off-field problems. Meyer has said that it is wrong and irresponsible to connect either he or the University of Florida to the misbehavior of Hernandez.

I strongly disagree. I will not lay the blame squarely on Meyer, Belichick, Patriot’s owner Robert Kraft, the University of Florida, the NCAA, or the NFL but there is certainly a connection. People with special ability in the sporting world are given chance after chance that other people do not get. They are entitled, coddled, favored, and allowed to behave badly without consequence again and again.

Here in St. Louis we drafted an extremely talented cornerback named Janoris Jenkins with a troubled past including failed drug tests and an arrest in a nightclub fight.

It angers me when I hear Meyer instantly dismiss any responsibility in the situation. Not only dismiss responsibility but actually attack anyone who dares suggest that he might have done something to prevent the situation. Meyer could have kicked Hernandez off the team, as Meyer’s successor Will Muschamp did to Jenkins almost immediately upon taking over as head coach at Florida.

It can be argued that Jenkins was a far more talented player than Hernandez. That Muschamp’s decision to kick Jenkins off the team was a much more damaging move than would have been removing Hernandez.

So far Jenkins has been a relatively trouble-free in St. Louis. He missed a curfew and Coach Jeff Fisher suspended him for one game. That’s what I’m talking about here today. That’s my point. Muschamp made Jenkins responsible for his actions. Fisher made Jenkins responsible for his actions. Apparently Meyer and Belichick did not do the same for Hernandez.

Who is ultimately responsible for our own actions? We are. Hernandez is. Jenkins is. But so is Meyer. He allowed Hernandez to continue to play and recommended him to the NFL. Personal responsibility doesn’t mean blaming everyone else when you make a mistake in judgment.

Meyer could have said that he understood Hernandez had problems. He tried to help. He wanted the best for the young man and gave him chances with that in mind. Instead he chooses to deny all responsibility. To bury his head in the sand and avoid any consequences to his actions. A terrible role-model, a terrible person.

I’m not blaming Meyer for Hernandez, I’m blaming Meyer for Meyer. Taking responsibility doesn’t always mean taking the credit when things go well. Personal responsibility means accepting consequences, or at least scrutiny, when things go wrong.

Tom Liberman
Sword and Sorcery fantasy with a Libertarian Twist
Current Release: The Sword of Water ($2.99 for hours of reading pleasure)
Next Release: The Spear of the Hunt

NFL a non-Profit is that a bad thing?

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Non-Profit OrganizationCorporate tax status is in the news lately with Apple but I just read another interesting story about the NFL. It turns out that way back in 1966 in a deal negotiated by then commissioner Pete Rozelle the NFL and sports leagues in general were declared non-profit organizations. What this means in practice is that the NFL doesn’t pay taxes. This despite the fact that the NFL earned about $10 billion in revenue last year.

If the comments on the story are to be taken as any indicator then most people are fairly upset by this state of affairs. Just as many people are upset with GE for paying no corporate taxes or by Apple avoiding paying taxes by shipping billions overseas to phony companies in Ireland.

The question I want to pursue today is the effect of the fact that the NFL doesn’t have to pay taxes. That NFL employees don’t pay taxes on hotel rooms when they come to visit your city, but I pay huge tax rates on my hotel room, on my rental car, on my airline tickets. Those are the taxes everyone is for, taxes on visitors to the city.

The result of this tax-free status is that the NFL has more money to spend on salaries. They have more money that they didn’t spend on tax lawyers. They have more money to build their league. The result is the NFL pays great salaries (which are taxable) and puts out a product that people apparently want to see. I do, I have season tickets to the Rams and gladly fork over my money every year. The result of the NFL not paying taxes is good for everyone. Now, could the NFL do things differently, do I quibble with the way they’ve run their long-term disability insurance for former players injured while playing the brutal game? Yes. But, would taxes help? To my way of thinking absolutely not.

Are corporate taxes, as they are structured today, totally counterproductive? In my opinion yes. Basically, the way it works today is that any business large enough to help Congress members get elected gets laws passed that make it relatively easy for them avoid taxes while small businesses, who can’t afford to bribe congress members, bear the brunt of the corporate tax burden. Now we begin to understand the root of the problem.

Congress passes laws not to help businesses in general but to help a particular business. Generally the one that pays for their political campaigns. When Congress passes laws that will supposedly ensure the safety of our food in reality they are passing laws making it impossible for a small cattle rancher to slaughter cows because the owner of the feed lots foots the campaign bills. When Congress passes a law to help the technical industry with overseas business they are actually passing a law that allows Apple to store huge sums of money overseas to avoid paying taxes while a company like Acumen Consulting gets stuck with the real tax bill.

These laws, passed by supposedly pro-business Congress members discourage competition and destroy business. These laws help huge companies like Pfizer and make it an unfair playing field for small companies like Jost Chemical Co.

Congress is currently in the business of deciding which company will succeed and which will fail. This is not capitalism. This is Crony Capitalism.

Detractors will argue that a business that gets to keep all its profit will simply pay the upper management even larger sums and there is that possibility. The pay structure of average employee to CEO is way out of whack but I think part of that is the unfair business model that Congress has created. When the model is biased towards large companies, and it is, then smaller, vigorous companies have a far more difficult time supplanting the behemoths. Not to say it can’t happen, it’s just more difficult. If a huge multinational company pays all its top executive outrageous sums but neglects its best workers then they will quickly lose all their talented people to smaller companies that treat their employees better.

The current system allows huge companies to pay little or no taxes while small businesses pay close to the ridiculous 35% rate. That’s one reason big companies aren’t all that eager to encourage the Obama administration to lower the corporate tax rate. Or at least those businesses that benefit from the current system. Walmart, for example, doesn’t have a huge corporate tax law division and largely pays their taxes. They want to lower the rate. GE, they like things just the way they are.

I’ve gone on a little long here but I want to sum up. The corporate tax rate as it stands today helps only the largest businesses that help fund the election cycles. It doesn’t help small businesses. It doesn’t help employees, it doesn’t help anyone. One look at the tax-exempt status of the NFL proves it. Their league is doing great and generating profit for many people; jersey sales, parking lots, hotels, construction companies (Jerry Jones spent $2 billion out of his own pocket to build a stadium), and many others. It’s a model we should at least consider. Don’t tax business profits at all. Tax salaries, capital improvement projects, purchases, whatever. At least give it a try because the current system is broken.

Tom Liberman
Sword and Sorcery fantasy with a Libertarian Twist
Current Release: The Sword of Water (Jon Gray v. Eleniak the Golden Flame c’mon, that’s awesome stuff)
Next Release: The Spear of the Hunt

Enough is Enough – Say No to Superbowl LIX

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Superbowl 48Ok, so it’s a few years from Superbowl LIX but I’m already annoyed. We’re only at Superbowl XLVIII which means we have LIX minus XLVIII divided by L, carry the V and … merciful Flying Spaghetti Monster someone please kill the  roman numerals. I mean really, Superbowl XLVIII?! What sort of madness is this? How did the Roman Republic ever last long enough to become the Roman Empire? Roman frigging numerals?!

Thank you, Khwarizmi, for introducing the west to the Hindu-Arabic numeral system. We’re grateful. Really, really grateful.

Why? Because it works. I admit that binary numbers held a certain charm for me as a not so young computer nerd, can you say Superbowl 110000? Of course there is no substitute for hexadecimal – Superbowl 30 it is.

Why not simply Superbowl 48? Good old Khwarizmi would be proud. If we continue down this path of madness we have Superbowl LI and Superbowl LIV on the horizon. Sure, it was cool back in Superbowl XIX and Superbowl XXI. Roman numerals have a certain romance up to a point.

I wore a toga at a few college parties back in the day and I have a fondness of Julius Caesar (yes I practice a day of mourning on March 15 and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that) that some people don’t understand but even I’ve had enough of this number craziness. How can anyone say Superbowl XLVIII with a straight face? It’s only going to get worse. Someone has to take responsibility and step in before it’s too late.

Stand up! Join me! Say no to Superbowl XLVIII. Shirt printers out there, I beg you to try the number 48. It’s a good number. A sound number. It foreshadows the deliciously round 50. It says I’ve been around a while. Maybe I’m not the 139th running of the Kentucky Derby (who doesn’t like to say Ooooooooooorb). Maybe America’s Pastime has had 109 Fall Classics (go Cardinals!). But 48 isn’t anything to smirk at.

I’ll not besmirch anyone who tries forty-eight. It’s a double-factorial of six (whatever that means). It’s a semiperfect number. Did you know that 48 is the smallest number with exactly ten divisors? I didn’t but now I do. 48 is a Stormer number, it’s a Harshad number, and believe it or not, it’s a Narcissistic Number if subtracted instead of added.

So, join me my loyal followers, find your black sharpies! Where you see the offending XLVIII take to the warpath!

For – tee – Ate!!

For – tee – Ate!!

For – tee – Ate!!

Tom Liberman
Sword and Sorcery fantasy with a Libertarian Twist
Current Release: The Sword of Water (300+ pages of ripping good fun)
Next Release: The Spear of the Hunt

Teaser – Linsanity versus Tebowmania

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Jeremy LinTomorrow I’m going to examine the phenomenon of Jeremy Lin’s Linsanity and Tim Tebow’s Tebowmania. The two men have captured the attention of the sporting world in the last few months and one thing that struck me strongly was the passion and anger they engendered. In particular I noted the anger and apparent hate that Tebow has generated and that Lin has largely managed to avoid.

Both men are strongly religious and this is usually a recipe for public adulation in the United States. I’m going to try and examine why there was such a large negative reaction to Tebow, not withstanding his legion of fans.

Stay tuned!

Tom Liberman
Sword and Sorcery fantasy with a Libertarian Twist

P.S. I got a “Like” from Tristan Nagler and Alternate Economy and his blog is well worth a perusal for those of you who are interested in the well being of the earth and the economic ways we can help. Take a look.