How Football Fleeces Taxpayers: Gregg Easterbrook on The King of Sports

[Timshel]

http://reason.com/reasontv/2013/12/0...asterbrook-tac

“The [state-supported] University of Maryland charges each...undergraduate $400 a year to subsidize the football program," says Easterbrook, who notes that only a half-dozen or so college teams are truly self-supporting. Even powerhouse programs such as the University of Florida's pull money from students and taxpayers. "They do it," he says, "because they can get away with it.”


At the pro level, billionaire team owners such as Paul Allen of the Seattle Seahawks and Shahid Khan of the Jacksonville Jaguars benefit from publicly financed stadiums for which they pay little or nothing while reaping all revenue. Easterbrook also talks about how the lobbyists managed to get the NFL chartered as a nonprofit by amending tax codes designed for chambers of commerce and trade organizations.


As ESPN.com's Tuesday Morning Quarterback columnist, Easterbrook absolutely loves football but also isn't slow to throw penalty flags at the game he thinks is uniquely America. In fact, he sees the hypocrisy at the center of the business of football as "one of the ways that football synchs [with] American culture....Everyone in football talks rock-ribbed conservatism, self-reliance. Then their economic structure is subsidies and guaranteed benefits. Isn't that America?"

[canceled.2021.1]

Publicly financed stadiums is one of the biggest rackets going. It is extortion and the taxpayers get screwed. They always promise all of these jobs but it never comes to fruition

It is crony capitalism at its finest