Irsay Is No Isolated Fluke
I read where Irsay, one of the wealthy owners in football, is likely to get a 6 game suspension for something like drunk driving. I suspect most general managers and head coaches just wish most of the drunk with money owners would just get drunk daily and disappear somewhere with a hangover. So I guess a suspension for 6 games would be the next best thing for this media revered owner. Of course they are all media revered, or their flagship station will be cut off from lucrative media contracts with the NFL.
I thought drunk driving is something citizens deal with solely in a courtroom unless driving is what they do on their job. Like what relevance is it whether an owner gets drunk to the actual game of football? I can see perhaps if a general manager gets drunk or a coach, but then in that situation it would seem an ownership decision what to do about it. What does suspension mean? He can’t attend any games? He can’t have contact with anyone on the team?
I do understand that any owner in the league can be ignorant about football, senile, their only accomplishment in life to have inherited a lot of money, or have earned their wealth in predatory or devious ways, or have the personality of a Donald Trump, or be as useless as a witch’s tit, along with not being the sharpest knife in the drawer, BUT they just can’t get drunk or be racist. Why would players agree to play for a racist owner? Oops, that’s right, the players don’t get to choose, they are drafted or traded, and given contracts binding only to the player. They can’t just switch employers like in normal professions.
In any business arena where the corporation polices itself, most or all, injustices or abuses, or financial rip-offs are protected and the only crimes addressed are those which are bad for the public image. So this 6 game suspension will mean what? I guess that Irsay cannot drive drunk. Usually the courts handle drunk driving cases and are the sole source of legal punishment, like losing one’s driving license, or a fine, or whatever. None of this is particularly painful for the owner of a professional sport team. It would have to be quite a fine to be felt by one who makes millions of dollars a year off a $2 billion dollar team. Most probably have chauffeurs so not being able to drive is hardly a hardship. Of course the NFL has it’s own legal system complete with a Judge and Jury guy hired by the owners. Now what could be a fairer system of justice than that? Well, one might say, they are big on illegal drug use. Really? Which owners are ever tested for drug use? Well, one might say, they are just going after performance enhancing drugs which give a player an unfair advantage. Like marijuana? That could get the player suspended for years. But the player whose off the field activities endanger the well being of others via drunken behavior, assaults, theft, sexual improprieties, etc. can remain playing, with team paid security guards around them 24 hrs to protect the public as in the case of Dez Bryant of the Cowboys.
Who is Jim Irsay anyway? How did he get to become the owner of the Colts?
For a start Jim Irsay made some early good decisions. He chose the right parents, one of whom owned the Colts. Jim went to good schools and graduated from college in 1982. Two years later he was named Vice-President and General Manager of the Colts. This was another good decision on his part, a very good business decision that practically anyone else could never pull off at that age. His resume for the job must certainly have been an impressive one to run a professional football team. Remember, in America anyone can earn such accomplishments. Well, maybe not in football ownership. How Irsay earned his parents is just puzzling, but however he did it should make us admire him even more.
Myself, if I were going to hire someone to be Vice President and General Manager of a professional football team, Jim Irsay would not make the initial cut. But that is just me. Perhaps one really does not have to know much about football to be General Manager, one could simply hire consultants. But if that is true, and probably is, why does Jim Irsay get this plum? Why not have a lottery to pick any ole die-hard football fan to get this wonderful opportunity? Or maybe just pick any name out of the phone book, preferably one in which my name is listed. On the other hand I would just think the cities in which the team play and all the fans deserve a much more professional football owner of their team. Americans long ago rejected royalty to run the country and yet today Professional Sport teams are set up with that exact form of administration of their beloved sport teams. Long live these ‘Kings’, no matter how stupid, senile, unfair, etc. they may be. A lot of Kings eventually got deposed or hanged etc. Not that it would be my nature to put such an idea in anyone’s head.
http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/nfl-shutdown-corner/nfl-has-quite-an-extensive-list-of-demands-for-the-super-bowl-host-174827650.html
The above is just another example of wealthy professional football owners blackmailing cities to sustain their franchises in a manner royalty deserves. Just remember this: half of all professional football income goes to the players and half to the owners. There are 32 owners. There are roughly 1600 players. The gross income is listed at 9.6 billion dollars a year. That leaves 4.8 billion for the 1600 players and 32 owners. If I do the math correctly that leaves each franchise 150 million dollars income to spend on non player salaries. Before any city could be blackmailed into funding stadium construction or paying the above expenses for a playoff game, it seems reasonable that the owners would need document where all this 4.8 billion dollars went. Congress created the laws which let this corporate monopoly be exempt from anti-trust laws and why doesn’t Congress at least make this wealthy good ole boys club prove why the public anywhere has to be bilked any more money to support their royal kingdom? When enough is never enough any responsible government need step in. Maybe responsible government is a thing of the past. It seems like that today---no matter what party wins the Presidency, their policies will not be put in place and nothing gets passed in Congress unless it is the will of those who lost the election. What a mess. One thing is for certain. Congress will not remotely act to provide professional sports with regulations that make them responsible to the fans, players, and cities where they play. The players may be at the professional level with their talent, but the owners, with precious few exceptions, are hardly the cream of the crop.
Probably at least 80% of the public would vote to leave football ownership as it is. Just like those who support the Tea Party, a high percentage of whom are poor, prejudice against all sorts of people, hate diversity, and want the government out of their lives, support the party even though they themselves suffer greatly from the trickle down economic theory of the party leaders. Of course little can top those who gathered to support some wealthy rancher who uses public land to generate a huge profit, and himself fumes at all the lazy worthless ‘trash’ living off public subsidies. Of course he has a right to use public land for his own business operation and the solution perhaps to those without jobs and income would be for all of them to just move on public land and raise cattle. Problem of poverty solved. Perhaps a lot of us are just a tad slow, not the sharpest knives in the drawer, but if the Red States understand the best form of governance why are the red states all the poorest states, with the highest crime rates, and little excellence in most any category——why are all these poorest states all Red States? Perhaps it is true—misery loves company.
I make this observation all the time and will continue to do so. When any species overpopulates its habitat, the obligate predatory activity by all members of the species to survive in a healthy fashion will become increasingly vicious, self centered, violent, mean spirited, winner take all, barbaric, and the death toll from this contest, all over access to enough natural resources to survive, causes major adjustments in the evolutionary process. So far, humans cannot accept this evolutionary fact applies to our species, and so like lemmings, we race ever so faster to the edge of the cliff. Every year now it gets worse, with more and more humans suffering misery of various sorts, conflicts everywhere soaring, and the death toll mounts. Mother Nature is now at bat, and no longer waiting in the on-deck-circle. The bright side is that the evolutionary process never ends, and the future, with new species or improved older species progresses, sometimes after lapses of hundreds of thousands of years, but the genius of the process has always prevailed.
