National Football League sins: a one-man tribunal to judge them

Should you have the kind of entertainment compass that allows you to divine what’s special on Apple TV, you’ll have found Super League: The War for Football.

The new documentary series has as its protagonists professional-league owners and executives who guide the sport as though it’s part of the public trust. But the “football” under consideration here is European soccer — not the National Football League’s brand of American football.

What if professional football in America actually was a public trust where true accountability and enhancing community were foundational to the NFL experience — and domination by the game's monied overlords, closed consortium of owners and a subservient media ended?

With Super Bowl LVII having just been waged, and preparations for the 2023 season already underway, it’s time to judge the NFL for what it is — and isn’t.

Join me in a fantasy where I’m the one-man tribunal and you are my would-be truth and reconciliation commissioners. These are the charges against professional football:

Unnecessary militarization

The most insidious part of Top Gun: Maverick’s 2022 box office supremacy is the new passivity toward burning massive amounts of fuel in service of propaganda.

On Sunday, a five-jet flyover preceded the big game. Five women flew the planes, to some applause. A few saw the problem. Sports writer Dave Zirin tweeted, “An all-women’s flyover at the Super Bowl is not progress. Sounds more like Olufemi Taiwo’s writings on ‘elite capture.’ Sounds more like the movement for women’s liberation being cynically used for the purpose of U.S. militarism.”

Rather than pandering homage, clear-eyed military veterans would almost certainly choose to divert the money spent on pageantry toward funding adequate resources for those who’ve served.

Weed resources

Last year, the NFL contributed $1 million to research cannabis as a pain remedy. This sounds bold until you understand that the league’s annual revenue stands at about $18 billion.

Pain is arguably the defining feature of NFL life, even leading to a massive lawsuit from players who received harmful painkillers. Raiders quarterback Derek Carr wept openly this season about “what we have to put our bodies through to sleep at night.” Prohibition has consistently derailed cannabis research. The NFL could be one of the leaders in reversing that pattern.

Elite pricing

Even as NFL attendance drops, ticket prices are rising. The average ticket price on the secondary market in 2021 was $252 per game, according to a Bookies.com analysis. Concession stand prices defy reality. The price of parking at an NFL stadium is what you remember the cost of a ticket being not long ago. The only thing more sad than true fans being priced out is when those fans run through a price barrier. One objective-minded Canadian tweeted of the Philadelphia fan who cashed in his 401K in order to see his Eagles fly in the Super Bowl: “I do not find that cute at all, which is how the news portrayed it. It’s sad. That guy deserves to retire AND be a sports fan.”

Cleveland’s unhappy beginning

In 1995, Cleveland Browns owner Art Modell brazenly moved my favorite franchise from its rabid northeast Ohio fan base to Baltimore — because the city of Cleveland wouldn’t build him a stadium. A bridge too far, the move ended my love affair with that team and, to an extent, professional sports as a whole.

Difficulty in rooting for Cleveland took a quantum leap last year when Deshaun Watson, accused of numerous incidents of sexual assault and harassment, joined the team. Suspended half the season while he attempted to make almost two-dozen lawsuits go away, the talented quarterback returned to muted commentary and normalizing tones from announcers and sports news anchors.. By summer training camp 2023, admiring youngsters will be buying Watson jerseys with nary a recollection of what made — and continues to make — the player problematic.

The house that you built

As former Department of Labor Secretary Robert Reich points out, the threat of taking teams away from addicted and adoring fans remains a favorite from the NFL playbook. Arizona’s State Farm Stadium — this year’s Super Bowl host — was built that way.

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, spent much of last year pushing for a $1.4 billion Buffalo Bills stadium with taxpayers shouldering the majority of the cost.

“The lack of transparency is astounding,” said Assemblyman Ron Kim of New York City. “It’s one giant scam.”

Brett Favre’s interception

Legendary quarterback Brett Favre allegedly misused millions of dollars in funds meant to reach impoverished Mississippi residents. Instead of helping welfare recipients attending Favre’s alma mater the University of Southern Mississippi, the federal funds were steered toward building a volleyball facility. (His daughter plays on the school team.) A chunk of the money found its way into Favre’s account.

Farve has not been charged with a crime. But the Mississippi Department of Human Services has sued Favre and 37 others for misappropriation. On Friday, he filed a request to be removed from the lawsuit.

Racially suspect, still

Two Black quarterbacks — Patrick Mahomes and Jalen Hurts — started the 2023 Super Bowl. I like halftime shows featuring pregnant R&B superstars as much as any football fan, and I appreciate Jay-Z for moving NFL entertainment into the 21st century. The public is grateful, but by no means is the league over its race problems.

Ten years ago, Colin Kaepernick was a wunderkind QB who nearly led the San Francisco 49ers to a title. Today he’s a content creator with no relationship to pro football. As long as his disfellowship from the league for protesting cop abuse sits without acknowledgement, the NFL remains awaiting indictment. As if to underscore ownership’s suspicions of Black Americans: This season a marquee, wealth-accruing owner — who has only hired mediocre white men to coach — was revealed to be at an active presence at an critical civil rights moment. Black coaches continue to have trouble securing head coaching jobs.

And fans have been robbed of an opportunity to explore why it’s taken so long to get yesterday’s all-Black field general game. An ESPN special hosted by Warren Moon — who had to go to Canada to get his shot — and Tony Dungy — a winning college QB whom Pittsburgh turned into a defensive back — might have educated with photos and stories from Black college quarterbacks who were shunted off to wide receiver, running back and safety.

Concussion, continued

In October, fans saw a grotesque scene: the fingers of concussed Miami Dolphins quarterback Tua Tagovailoa twitching while he lay on the turf. Doctor and forensic pathologist Bennet Omalu said then, “If you love your life, you love your family, you love your kids, if you have kids, it’s time to gallantly walk away.” Instead, that injury marked Tua’s sickening and protracted concussion odyssey, which continues with a Tagovailoa return as its goal.

The quarterback had as many as three concussions last fall. A league concerned with modeling behavior within its dangerous product would facilitate Tuavailoa’s exit. Honest announcers can now shelve the saying, “that guy’s really going to feel that hit tomorrow,” and substitute, “that guy’s going to be significantly disabled a decade or two from now.”

Forgetting retired players

In a Maryland court earlier this month, 10 retired players sued the NFL for denial of benefits.

The lawsuit alleges the league acted in “an overly aggressive and disturbing pattern of erroneous and arbitrary benefits denials, bad faith contract misinterpretations, and other unscrupulous tactics” in withholding disability benefits, as well as a lack of thoroughness when reviewing players’ medical records. The lawsuit also claims that when the league reviewed disability claims, they used case summaries from a biased law firm rather than full records.

The suit is not to be confused with the player concussion lawsuits of 2013, which resulted in a $763 million settlement.

American contagion

Possibly the most unnerving fact revealed in Super League: The War for Football is that Los Angeles Rams owner Stan Kronke ushered in Europe soccer’s so-called “Sugar Daddy” era.

Since his 2018 takeover of Arsenal, the international investor class that looks for prestige when not pressing for profits has destabilized the continent’s local soccer leagues.

Small club owners “were forced out without a thank you, without a choice by one man who doesn’t attend games.”

The worst thing that American football does is remake the sports world in its image.

Donnell Alexander was a 2021 USC Center for Health Journalism fellow. He is co-author of Rollin’ with Dre (Crown, 2008).