We all have different ways to rationalize our support for the NFL, but Max Ornstein might have found a way to fix it.
According to the Internet, the NFL Lockout might end soon. When it does, we can stop wondering when the season will start. We’ll be able to leave questions like “If they really wanted more games, why not have play-in games for the bye seeds?” behind and go back to questions like “How will the Jets keep Braylon and Santonio?” and “How do we, as fans, reconcile rooting for a sport that is anecdotally (see: Chris Henry, Dave Duerson, and Brent Boyd) and scientifically documented as destroying its players?”
There’s growing evidence that football’s a lot closer to ancient Roman blood sport than we might be comfortable with, but who’s going to stop watching football? We’re addicted to football and need our Sunday fix—even if our Sunday fix is comprised of watching people slowly kill themselves in the hopes of eventually lifting a trophy.
Playing football leads to CTE, which destroys your brain and leads to an early death. And that’s barely scratching the surface. There’s a slightly greater than 100-percent chance that, within the next decade, research will exist that shows head injuries are being suffered on every play, not just on defenseless hits or at the line of scrimmage.
As a fan of the NFL, what options do I have, though? I’m a jaded idealistic liberal. I spend a lot of time thinking about how far away we are from my ideal America: the one where a plurality of Americans don’t deny climate change science for the better part of a decade, where there are no Bush tax cuts, where people realize that Medicare for all was a better plan, where the banking bailout has oversight protocols instead of none at all, and the Federal Reserve can’t do whatever it wants. Oh, and in my ideal America, I have a job.
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In my ideal world, everyone involved with football would admit the facts about concussions and take some sort of action. There would be some mechanism for fans to use the influence they have—as the people enabling the NFL’s profit—to hold both sides accountable to broad-stroke edicts like “A retired player’s pension should include full medical coverage paid for by the league, for life.”
Instead, in reality, we’re going to deal with the occasional-disturbing-player-death news cycle by deploying an army of talking heads to shout at each other about what should be done (but won’t be) until the story is used up, and then neatly sweeping the story under the rug to be forgotten.
So why, then, am I excited football’s coming back? Is it because I care about the Jets wide-receiver corps more than I care about the health of thousands of athletes that have entertained me for the better part of two decades? Not exactly.
Last year I went to six of eight Jets home games and plan on doing the same this year. My favorite thing about the NFL is the knowledge that the Sundays and Mondays after Labor Day are going to be the best Sundays and Mondays of the year. I’m either going to be grilling and getting quite drunk in a parking lot with about a dozen friends that I, for the most part, only see regularly during football season. Or, I’m going to be at my friend’s bar doing roughly the same thing with the same group of friends.
The Jets being good, getting to the Super Bowl, and winning it all only really matters to me in the context of my friends who are Jets fans (to share it with), Giants fans (to good-naturedly gloat to), and Patriots fans (to rub their faces in). When the Jets win, I have more fun with my friends. It’s that simple; the better they are, the more fun I have.
I’m implicitly admitting that my week-to-week fun with my friends is more important to me than the health of the thousands of athletes that have helped to create it. Whenever I think about it, it makes me feel like a terrible person. I don’t like feeling like a terrible person, but what can I do? If I stop watching the NFL, nothing changes, save for the fact that I miss out on the shared experience with my friends, end up seeing the highlights on SportsCenter, Facebook, or Twitter the next day, and put myself at a huge competitive disadvantage as an aspiring sportswriter.
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The NFL owners currently put $40 million aside for pensions. It sounds like a lot, and they pat themselves on the back for it, but do some (admittedly rough and oversimplified) math, and it’s approximately $2000 per player, per month. The NFL also lauds itself for contributing $5,200 to an ex-player’s knee replacement surgery. That’s great, except that knee replacements can cost upwards of $35,000. Former Oakland Raider Dave Pear has paid over $600,000 in medical fees since his playing career ended.
NFL owners are at best Scrooge McDuck and at worst Daniel Plainview, drinking everyone else’s milkshake then beating people to death in a bowling alley. To hell with the consequences. Now, I’m at the opposite end of the spectrum, unemployed with my Macbook Pro as a key asset, but I’d give someone two percent of pretty much anything I can think of if they had a reason—two percent of my apartment’s electricity to charge their iPhone, two percent of my grocery bill to some charity that gets Malaria nets and clean water to kids around the world that need them, two percent of my PB and J? Sure, enjoy your thumbnail sized piece of crust.
If owners and players forked over two percent of their annual revenue and fans and sponsors paid a two-percent ticket and luxury suite tax, NFL players would have lifelong, top-of-the-line healthcare, with room to spare. Here’s how, courtesy of Wikipedia and some almost obscenely rough math.
Estimate total owner revenue at $5 billion a year (two percent is 100 million). Estimate total player salaries at $4 billion a year (two percent is 80 million). That’s $180 million from the owners and players. Advertisers, corporations, and sponsors that profit from football’s existence buy luxury suites. Tack $500 onto all the luxury suites Wikipedia accounts for (2200, 18 of 30 teams), crank it up to $1000 for the playoffs, then $2000 for the Super Bowl, and that’s $50 Million. If anything, these estimates are below two percent, because luxury-box pricing details are hard to find. It’s almost like they’re keeping it secret, because the real figure is more lavish than we can imagine.
Since the best way to lead is by example, fans pony up an extra two percent per $75 ticket (that’s $1.50). That increase creates $60 million. Including the playoffs (a $10 increase for playoff games and a $50 increase for Super Bowl), that figure jumps to $72 million.
Add it all up, and that’s just over $300 million per year. $100 million goes to the NFL pension fund, $150 million goes to medical research and infrastructure, and $50 million goes to NFL and player charitable foundations. Any money unused by medical procedures, research grants, or infrastructure improvements goes to subsidizing medical care for children in the US that don’t have it (the future stars of the NFL).
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Aside from members of JSOC and similar organizations, nobody puts their bodies through more punishment, on a more consistent basis, for a longer period of time, than professional football players. There is an opportunity for medical research and advancement that is slowly being realized after Dave Duerson’s death, but could and should be institutionalized.
The research opportunities that would result from formalized comprehensive healthcare for NFL athletes could accelerate advancements in orthopedic surgery technology, biomechanics, our understanding of brain damage, and neurological imaging and surgery technology. Worst case, doctors figure out how to get players back on the field faster, keep them there for longer, and keep them safer. Best case, they make serious inroads into neurological disorders like Parkinson’s or Alzheimer’s.
The owners wouldn’t even have to give up their second yacht, just the cigarette boat tethered to it or the helicopter on board ($ 3.3 million per owner, per year). The players would have to lie low on two weekends they would have gone to Vegas—maybe just one, depending on how hard they’re balling ($50,000 per player, per year). The fans fork over less than the cost of a cup of coffee. And honestly, who cares what big corporations pay for skyboxes and luxury suites?
Seeing Earl Campbell need a wheelchair to move around is existentially depressing, and I would gladly pay an extra $12-a-year if it meant that the players I’ve developed a connection with over the course of their careers are substantially less likely to be shattered 20 years after retirement. The players should give two percent because it’s in their long-term self-interest. The owners and sponsors should give two percent because the affection the players create (see: fandom) is the lifeblood of the NFL. The owners (and implicitly, the sponsors) are stepping all over it.
The two-percent plan should happen and ideally, it would, but it won’t, because the NFL owners would charge fans for “Personal Breathing Licenses” if they could figure out how to monetize stadium oxygen. NFL sponsors are the backbone of the group referring to a bill to end tax breaks on private jets as “class warfare,” weeks before their country’s debt ceiling implodes. Maybe I’m just a jaded idealistic liberal, but I’m also a fan of the New York Jets and would feel like a real asshole if Curtis Martin needed, but couldn’t afford, knee replacement surgery in 2030.
—Photo Flickr/NYCMarines