Commentary
Having a pro football team may make us feel good, but is it worth it?
by Jim Foti
Jim Foti, a former newspaper journalist, is a ministerial intern at Unity Church-Unitarian in St. Paul. He lives in Minneapolis.
Professional football games make people feel good. They can create a sense of community that's otherwise not easy to come by, and they can give fans feelings of euphoria. But as Minnesota weighs whether to hand over enormous public subsidies toward the building of another stadium, here's a tip for all those who proclaim to love the Vikings:
No matter how good something feels, it isn't love if you have to pay for it.
The Vikings fans decked out in horns and jerseys while visiting the State Capitol are just one reminder that the debate over the stadium goes far beyond the rational. Professional sports are businesses that exist to funnel money from everyday people to extremely wealthy men. Those men do not live in our community and are continually looking for the next team or city that will make them even richer. Pro football's owners and players do not at all care where or whom that money comes from.
No matter how good something feels, it isn't love if they don't love you back.
Whenever someone worries about the fate of Minnesota if the Vikings were to leave, I like to point to NFL-free places such as Portland, Ore., and Austin, Texas, with their vibrant cultures for young adults and growing populations. Then, for comparison, I like to point to NFL-blessed places such as Detroit, Buffalo, Cleveland and St. Louis.
If this were a rational decision, and not one based on the tribal impulses involved in the worship of football, there would be no new stadium. It's impossible to make the case that having a team is make-or-break for a major metropolitan area.
But it's not at all hard to make the case that football creates a trail of broken lives for the players and their families. The fans who cheer those bone-crushing hits on the field quickly turn away when the conversation shifts to brain damage and even suicides among former NFL players.
And at the amateur level, parents are struggling to reconcile a familial love of the game with their love for their children. Studies are beginning to show that children regularly suffer measurable cognitive damage from contact sports.
How good do football games have to feel for brain damage not to matter?
I know, I know — this kind of thinking is such a buzzkill, and in our culture there's no bigger failure than failing to be entertained. But as the stream of injury lawsuits from former NFL players turns into a torrent, the sport may well go bankrupt from litigation — or become so dainty as to be unwatchable.
If that happens, Minnesota would be mighty glad that it hadn't taken a half-billion dollars from ordinary citizens and spent it on an NFL stadium — just to have something to do on Sunday afternoons, just to try to have good feelings about our state and ourselves.
Comments (17)
So rational you're sure to be ignored. Let the Vikings build their own stadium, or get private funding.
John,
You are severly misguided. Detroit has a huge growing young adult population. Twitter actually just moved an office and crew down there from San Fransisco.
Jim, great article and excellent points! Good to know what one of my Strib friends is up to now!
What most people do not seem to get, is most people are not against the Vikings. Yes they are a great asset to both Minneapolis and Minnesota, but they are not worth just handing over $675 million (Minneapolis's share of the costs). The Vikings get all the profits, all the naming rights, all the benefits & perks, and Minneapolis gets nothing but a huge 30 year bill. It seems like a break even deal at best when you look at any potential taxes for the next 30 years versus what we just give them for the privilege of having the Vikings here. On the positive we get 2 years of construction jobs. There will not be any new jobs created as the jobs already exist at the Dome, so will just move to the new stadium.
I just do not get it how anyone can defend paying this amount with these results.
"Detroit has a huge growing young adult population. Twitter actually just moved an office and crew down there from San Fransisco."
This is true. Detroit is attracting young artists and young professionals. However, large company relocations are coming from the public purse. Lots of generous tax subsidies are involved, and there shifting jobs from Point A to Point B - not creating them - and moving them from economically productive places like San Francisco to elsewhere.
it isn't love if you have to pay for it. But as any parent could tell you love means you end up paying for stuff. "If this were a rational decision, and not one based on the tribal impulses involved in the worship of football, there would be no new stadium. " Are you claiming that rational decisions can't be based on tribal impulses? The correct answer to the headline question, as to so many others is, "it depends". In this case two things it depends on how good the Vikings actually make us, feel and at what cost. To help understand this question, we could use a standard for comparison. Do the Vikings make feel better than a bottle of vodka? How does the price of a bottle of vodka compare with the cost of the Vikings?
Think of all the money spent having a pro sports venue. Millions and over!
Mr Hood,
My point exactly! They go for lower taxes and a well trained workforce who are willing to work cheap. A stadium TAX does the opposite.
PS Gov Snyder lowered taxes on businesses which is where a lot of this growth is coming from.
I guess we should just wrap our kids in bubble wrap before letting them leave the house. We don't want little Johnny or Susan getting hurt.
Thank you for speaking some inconvenient truths about sports, and particularly football.
Jim, thank you. This is a well thought out piece.
I would like to add that the Vikings have been asking for a new stadium ("asking" being the most polite synonym) for 10 years now. In all that time, have they done any appreciable amount of work toward finding enough private financing to make this happen? Their lack of planning should not be the state's (or Minneapolis') emergency.
"Those men do not live in our community...." This is not really a persuasive argument. I love to go to movies--I don't think too many of the actors & actresses or directors who receive the lion's share of the money live in our community. Should we close all of our theaters? They make money off of theaters we built! I even suspect they don't love me back! I go to rock concerts (of the "big name" acts)--again, few if any of these folks live in our community. Should we ban them from performing here?
The fact is that people make money from various endeavors each and every day--and many (most?) of them make a significant amount. When I fly in an airplane...stay at a hotel...buy a new computer...drink a soda pop...etc...somebody is getting wealthy, and often times that person isn't someone local. That's capitalism. It may not be fair or Godly, but it is what it is.
With that said, I am NOT saying that I whole-heartedly support a new stadium. I understand that there are solid, reasoned arguments against doing so. But I think too many people believe we can have an egalitarian world where no "rich guys" get any breaks. It's a pipe dream. Whatever it is that you enjoy (sports, music, food, cinema, you-name-it), I guarantee you there are some people raking in some serious cash thanks to things provided in-part from you and me, often (indirectly) in the form of tax money. I would rather have sports, music, etc. than not have them--even if a few people are getting rich.
Fantastic article with a salient point of view. Modern sports are not much different than gladiator shows. Players are traded between teams for money much like slaves are traded between slave owners. They get paid well but they do not have much freedom when they're sold to another team.
The same applies to movie and music industries, which represent businesses run for profit with a brutal underlying culture that does not care for the artists' well being.
Being passionate about a team enough to idolize it or its players is a reflection of the lack of awareness of what these teams really are: businesses run for profit whose owners don't care about much else.
Bravo, Jim! I feel compelled to comment on what I see as Michael Zaske's apples-and-oranges argument. With the notable exception of "when I fly in an airplane" the businesses and individuals that profit from the activitities he mentions have not threatened to leave the state unless public financial support is extracted. And in regard to the above-mentioned notable exception, public financial support of Delta airlines did not guarantee the company's commitment to headquarter in Minnesota. The actors and producers who profit from films we see in our local theaters do not feign loyalty to our community. But the billionaires who tap our public trough for money they don't need capitalize on overblown notions that football is central to our state identity. How can you be a part of a community when your relationship to it is based on extortion. Jim is right. Those men do not live in our community. They live in Football.
How about funneling the money for the stadium into our children? aka schools with smaller class sizes and more teachers, ending hunger, especially for children, cleaning up our parks, health education for parents and teens, etc. You get my point.
I'm sorry but these "intangible" arguments for billion dollar pro-sports welfare programs are simply ridiculous. Portland OR only has one professional sport franchise and it's outgrowing and outperforming the Twin Cities by 14% over the last ten years.
If you want to know what MN looks like without the Vikings, look around, it looks exactly like TODAY and the other 355 days and 42 weekends a year that there is no Vikings game downtown. If you think MN is some of cultural wasteland 355 days a year, then by all means, create a $40 million a year government entitlement program for a Jersey Billionaire.
Personally, I think we'd be better off without the Vikings. I think we'd be more culturally diverse, more community focused, and more prosperous. The Vikings simply contribute to a sports-centric mono-cultural brand that diminishes our true diversity of entertainment and activity options.
Excellent essay, Jim.
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