When The NFL Has Not Place Left To Go

When I was a kid, a popular party favor was a small plastic square with movable tiles numbered one through 24. All spaces on the square were taken by a number –except one. Once the numbers were scrambled, your job was to try and get them all back to sequential order using only the blank space to manipulate the digits back in the correct position.  

I remembered that game as talks are heating up about bringing an NFL team back to LA.

Ah yes - the potential of a pro football team in the City of Angels.  The great “White Buffalo” of sports. 

Currently, the former LA Rams are posturing to move back to SoCal, and the San Diego Chargers are rumored to be moving north. Of course the Oakland Raiders are threatening to drive south.

Now first of all, I don’t care a wit about any of these teams and I have no favorite to eventually call LA home, but, I very much want some team to do it. I want some team to eventually become the metaphorical tile that occupies the blank space.

You see, if a team finally breaks through and becomes LA’s football team, it will hopefully remove the wiggle room that the blank space of Los Angeles has provided the greedy NFL owners over the years. The blank space they could previously use as leverage to threaten their current market and fans into paying for new stadiums. The blank space the owners could use to move the team if demands were not met.

If LA is occupied by an NFL team, so much power is stripped away from owners.  LA is the last great market available to the NFL, and if it comes off the table so goes the bargaining power of a team owner dissatisfied with his current lease, stadium age or fan support.

LA always provided a disgruntled owner with a credible threat to face the fans and media and say, “unless I can get X or Y or Z, I will unfortunately, begrudgingly have to consider a move to LA in order to remain viable in the hyper competitive landscape of pro sports.”

But, if the corpulent and fleshy owners don’t have an LA to spirit their billion dollar plaything away to…?

What would they do?  Would the Vikings really threaten to leave a market that supported the franchise for decades in order to see if they can get more from Columbus, or San Antonio or Salt Lake City? Do the Saints really think they can do better in Portland, El Paso or Oklahoma City?  Maybe, but are they really willing to take that risk?

An owner and his team could fail spectacularly in LA, yet due to its size and revenue power, they could still make ends meet.  But, if a middle-of-the-pack owner and team in a middle-of-the-pack market wants to try its luck in another middle of the pack market?  The results could be epically bad.

And one last thing about LA.  America’s second largest city, the entertainment capital of the world, one of the most influential metropolis’s on the planet has been without an NFL team for 20 years. It’s stronger than ever, more prominent than ever and more populous than ever. LA lost its football in 1995 and didn’t slide into the ocean. Instead, it went on and its people found something else to do. The city and its people thrived without pro football.

Once the space is occupied, NFL owners will be force to look around, bite their tongues and decide that staying put and paying for stadium upgrades out-of-pocket is the last recourse they have.

And that will be a good day for all.

Too comfortable?

A famed free diver dies while doing what, for her, is relatively easy.  A well-known Yosemite rock climber and wing-suit flyer also dies doing what he does.  A Woman becomes the first female ever to swim from the Farallones to San Francisco, only a few weeks after a swimmer attempting the reverse course, had to cancel the journey due to a great white following him.

Meanwhile Tom Cruise leaps off tall buildings, The Avengers subdue evil with the most daredevil-ly actions and fantastical hobbits and dwarves battle overwhelming forces with just swords and axes.

And here is the narrative for both situations:

“I’m sorry they died or didn’t achieve their ultimate goals, but it was their fault because daredevils are stupid adrenaline junkies.”  Look at the comments section of every online newspaper which chronicled their death or failure. It's as if these daredevils personally attacked the readers. Simultaneously: “I love action movies!  I can’t wait to see the next one!  Gosh, they are so exciting!!”

I’ll stop right here.  The true life daredevils died and left behind families and friends, whereas Mr. Cruise still draws a Hollywood paycheck and no actual Hobbits, Orks or Transformers were harmed during filming. I get that.  I understand that.

But, what does it say about us as a culture that we rail against individuals who get seriously hurt or even pay the ultimate price in pursuit of their dreams, while we breathlessly spend our money and fill up our discretionary time with action packed, synthetic drama?

It’s almost as if we are angry at the rock climbers, bungee jumpers and extreme athletes for interrupting the bargain of modern life: Watch much, but do little. Or maybe we are angry because they actually got off the sofa and sought their own real-life adrenaline.

Sure, many skeptics exclaim with the best of intentions that the daredevils acted selfishly because they engaged in tremendous risks despite having families and children who needed them.

But what about the millions of dads who live safe and ordinary lives yet still carry about 50-100 extra pounds of fat on their bodies and pools of cholesterol in their veins?  Or the millions of moms who text while driving – perhaps after consuming four to five cocktails?

Aren’t they acting selfishly and irresponsibly? 

Yet the public doesn’t seem to unleash righteous anger via Twitter and Facebook because a 54-year-old father of three died of a heart attack, or a hard-charging career women wrapped her Mercedes around a light pole still clutching her smartphone.

Perhaps – just perhaps – jealousy rears its predictable and ugly head in the case of daredevils who risked and lost. Perhaps our anger at the ill-fated daredevils is misplaced longing for thrills and risks we’ve steadily diminished in our modern world.

John Stewart Made it OK To Go All in Against Power

I’m not a good enough writer to do adequate justice to John Stewart’s career on The Daily Show as he walks away this week.  Others can weigh in on how significant he has been to late night comedy and the form of satire in general (hint: it was significant).

But, I will add my two cents for what he meant to me and people like me.

You see, if you are center-left, but pretty compliant and obedient in your everyday life, you reserve a little bit of skepticism regarding the ineptitude and evilness of powerful people and institutions.  There is some small but durable piece of your mind that stops the rest of you from complete immersion into the realm of utter failure.

That small sliver of doubt says things like:

·         “OK, what the president just said is pretty dumb, but he really isn’t that stupid.  He’s the president after all!

·         Or: “OK, that network is really pandering to viewers, but they aren’t going to outright lie about the facts.”

·         Or, “I must have missed some part of the story, because no politician is dumb enough to say one thing at 9 a.m. and completely contradict himself at 6 p.m. on the same day.”

But John Stewart helped slay that small part of the brain and allowed us to go all-in on the reality that yes, many politicians, reporters, news organizations, government bureaucrats, etc. are and will always be stupid, lazy, corrupt, and bat-shit crazy.  End of story, no need for nuance and explanation. John and the staff of the Daily Show through great research, great wit and great writing shined a bright light on the obvious and allowed us to jump in and bathe in its simple truth.

The simple truth?  Yes, President Bush was dumb and lazy and would do anything his handlers told him to do. Yes, Fox News is not a news organization; it is a tool of very rich people to mold stupid, old white people through fear and racism into a political force that would move an agenda. Yes, politicians are mean and petty and are only interested in staying in office. Yes, we the American public are lazy and fat and only able to focus our attention on the brightest and shiniest object glittering in front of us.

Stewart and the Daily Show emphatically illustrated that our first impressions were right on. They showed us that we didn’t need to temper our anger, angst and apprehension. We need not bother with reservation or caution. The idiots in charge are indeed the idiots in charge.

And the final and immortal brilliance of Stewart and his show? He could still make us laugh in the face of this very disturbing truth.

Vaya con dios John.

Of Sharks and Men

Look, I don’t profess to know the mind of a cop: a good cop or a bad one.  I do know something about fear however.

Fear can be for real and it can also be for not. It can be experienced based, and it can be imagined.

Example.  I’m afraid of sharks. However, I have never had any kind of encounter with a shark in my life. Never been attacked, or bitten.  I’ve see a few small sharks in the ocean and they tranquilly and peacefully left me alone.  But, if I go into the surf, I ALWAYS think of sharks.  There is nothing I can do about it – I will always have fear of sharks tucked away in my head. And while I still go to the ocean and swim, I know in my heart of hearts, that shark fear might very well affect my behavior in a high stress situation.  Meaning that I truly believe I would instantly attempt to rescue a child who is being attacked by a pit bull, but I’m almost sure I would hesitate if the same child was being attacked by a sand shark.

And I have been bitten and snarled at by dogs. One might say I’m prejudicial toward sharks because I judge them harsher then dogs based on no real evidence.

I bring this up because of what is going on with policing these days.

This story is an amazing example of how – in my mind – prejudicial thoughts towards African Americans by white police officers is deeply rooted in fear.  The story juxtaposes how far a white police officer will go to avoid shooting an armed and crazy white man, while showing how quickly another white officer will gun down an unarmed black man.

In my mind, the white officer in the first case simply does not fear the white man – even though he has every right to – enough to kill him.  Whereas the second case shows how much the officer must fear the black motorist, as evidenced by his incredibly quick trigger finger for a non-threatening action.

It seems to me that a lot of (not all) white cops have a deep-seated fear of would-be black criminals that they simply don’t have of would-be white criminals. And like me with sharks, I also believe that fear is based on prejudicial feelings not based in experience or fact.

I’m not saying that the cops in the news recently never had difficult and stressful run-ins with blacks during the course of their policing.  I’m sure they did. But the statistics show us unequivocally that those same cops must have had even more frequent difficult and stressful run-ins with whites. I just believe that the fear of the black criminal is given unequal attention in the mind of many cops than that of the white criminal.

And for the vast majority of us white people, the same holds true.  We fear blacks unequally to those who share our skin tone. 

A black person has never done anything negative toward me.  I have never been punched, threatened or victimized by a black person.  I have been punched, pushed, threatened and victimized by white people.  But if I’m walking down a lonely street at night by myself, who would I fear more walking toward me – a black man or a white man?

I know the answer and I feel shame.

Crime and Terrorism

I remember a Hill Street Blues episode from back in the day where the plot focused on two separate arrests. One person was obviously crazy as he set fire to his entire family. The other was of a woman who was the mother of a prominent politician and had shot an intruder coming into her home. It later turned out she intentionally left her window open and a TV in full view to entice the young criminal to commit burglary.

The climax of the show is when Captain Furillo confronts the presiding judge over the sentencing hearings as said judge bows to public pressure and declares the crazy person sane – so he gets a maximum penalty - while declaring the mother insane so she can avoid jail time.

I instantly thought of this episode when reflecting back on the terrible tragedies in Tennessee and South Carolina.  Both horrible crimes committed by terrible people.

But like the episode of Hill Street Blues, I am left wonder about the role of public perception.

In the first case, where Dylan Roof shot eight unarmed churchgoers in South Carolina, he is being charged with murder and now a federal hate crime.  And while both of those charges are absolutely appropriate, I hear very little in the media or in the public describing his action as an act of terror committed by a terrorist.

However, in the Tennessee episode, where Mohammad Abdulazeez killed five marines on active duty, every news story and every conversation includes words such as terrorist, radicalized, Jihad, etc.

But here’s the thing.   Roof killed unarmed civilians with the expressed purpose of creating fear and terror within the black community.  Just like the intentions of Osama Bin Laden and the 19 high-jackers, the entire reason for his infamous act was to terrorize.

However, and in no way meant to dismiss the barbarous act, Abdulazeez shot and killed soldiers. That’s not terrorism, that’s a crime committed under the auspices of war.

In my opinion, we as a people have to get passed the idea that only people of Muslim faith can be terrorists. The FBI has.  Reading this shows that homegrown extremists are more deadly than Jihadists since 9-11.  The FBI states that terrorism: “Involve acts dangerous to human life that violate federal or state law; appear intended to intimidate or coerce a civilian population.”

But we still have the mindset that only young men with long beards from the Middle East are terrorists while white guys who kill minorities are just criminals. Timothy McVeigh was a terrorist.  Eric Rudolph – the Olympic bomber was a terrorist. The KKK are terrorists.