If you’ve watched Real Time With Bill Maher then you’ll know like I do that he often engages in provocative, factually ignorant diatribes on subjects he knows nothing about.
On Friday’s program, Maher used the Super Bowl as an opportunity to suggest that the NFL is successful because of socialism and that Major League Baseball is failing because of capitalism.
Maher’s ignorance of the day-to-day business operations of the National Football League shouldn’t come as a surprise, given that his greatest asset appears to be a willingness to humiliate himself once a week.
Maher uses arbitrary facts to support his argument, citing the NFL’s television revenue sharing plan, the draft and saying that, “a small town like Green Bay can go to the Super Bowl, while the Pittsburgh Pirates haven’t won the World Series in a long time.”
Just as I graciously educated Mark Cuban on the finer points of college football, NFL 101 is now in session for the sole benefit of Bill Maher.
While it’s true the NFL currently has a revenue sharing plan in place, the Packers ability to reach the Super Bowl didn’t have anything to do with the league sharing money with the franchise.
Green Bay is the only non-profit, community-owned team in professional sports. The franchise has a total of 112,158 stockholders who own 4,750,937 shares in the Packers.
Throughout the franchise’s history, the Packers have been in need of financial rescue.
In 1923, 1935, 1950 and 1997 the Packers raised funds through the sale of stock, and the first three instances occurred long before the NFL’s revenue sharing plan was implemented.
Raising capital through the sale of stock doesn’t sound like socialism to me.
Long before the NFL became the dominant sports league in America and its revenue sharing plan was implemented, Green Bay was winning championships and Super Bowls.
Their early success could be directly attributed to coach Vince Lombardi, a man who was as far from being a socialist as Maher is from original thought.
Green Bay is known in NFL circles as Titletown USA, and most of the titles the Packers won were because of Lombardi’s coaching and the franchise’s ability to effectively manage its limited resources.
Several NFL owners – the Cowboys Jerry Jones primary among them – have indicated that the NFL’s revenue sharing plan could become a thing of the past.
In September 2009, commissioner Roger Goodell fined Jones $100,000 for comments he made regarding the league’s revenue sharing plan.
Jones was attempting to support Vikings owner Zygi Wilf’s effort to have a new stadium built for Minnesota, a team that currently plays in the sorely outdated Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome.
The Dallas owner said that revenue sharing is “on its way out” and is considered a critical component of the NFL’s pending collective bargaining agreement with the players that is set to expire on March 4.
Jones is one of the more influential owners in the NFL and has a major role in negotiating the league’s television contracts. And when it comes to revenue, he’s exceptionally well educated on how to market a successful franchise.
The Cowboys are the second most valuable sports franchise on the planet, currently valued at $1.8 billion. Dallas is one of six NFL teams that are among Forbes top 10 most valuable sports franchises, and 16 of the league’s teams have values that exceed $1 billion.
Each NFL team operates as a separate entity in negotiating advertising, sponsorship and apparel deals that generate millions of dollars for each franchise.
Last year, revenue sharing from the NFL’s television contracts only generated $95.8 million for each of the league’s 32 teams, thus the majority of each franchise’s revenues were derived from independent revenue streams.
The Washington Redskins are the third most valuable franchise in sports and are the NFL’s most profitable team, but they have been to the playoffs only six times in the past 20 years and haven’t been to a Super Bowl since 1991.
In short, the NFL’s revenue sharing plan, a franchise’s worth and it’s profits have never translated into on-the-field success. And socialism had nothing to do with any franchise’s success or failure.
Maher also brings up the fact about the NFL Draft giving the first pick to the team with the worst record from the previous season.
But what Maher fails to point out is how the draft doesn’t guarantee a team will have success.
Since 1968, the Detroit Lions have had a top 10 draft pick 18 times and remain one of the four teams that have never reached a Super Bowl. The Lions have had a top 10 draft pick six times since 2000 but haven’t been to the playoffs since 1999.
The Lions are a perfect example of a franchise that’s had ample opportunity to improve their team through the draft, but have consistently failed to acquire the players needed to make them competitive.
Conversely, teams like New England, Pittsburgh and Indianapolis all operate under the same salary cap that Detroit does, yet they’ve managed to rebuild their teams over the years through the draft, trades and free agency.
The NFL was the second major sports league in the U.S. to implement a salary cap in 1994. The league also uses a salary floor that forces teams to spend a minimum amount on player salaries in an effort to prevent a franchise from pocketing revenues and assuring a top draft pick.
In an era where managing the salary cap is just as important as scouting and drafting players, the suggestion that socialism is the key component to a team’s success is utterly absurd.
It’s unlikely that a league whose political contributions lean heavily towards Republican candidates would consider itself a bastion of socialism.
Mention the words socialism or communism to a Republican and watch them turn into the Tasmanian Devil.
In 2009, a report from the Center for Responsive Politics reviewed political contributions dating back to 1989.
The report found that combined contributions from players, owners and officials on 22 of the 32 National Football League teams had given more cash to Republicans than Democrats, and that several teams have given more than 90 percent of their contributions to the GOP.
The NFL team that contributed the fewest dollars to political campaigns? That would be Green Bay, home of the Packers and a future vacation spot for Bill Maher.
The National Football League is a perfect example of how capitalism drives success through independent initiative and innovation, the very core of what this nation was founded upon.
While it’s doubtful Maher will learn any lessons from this beat down, it does prove one very cogent point – I know a hell of a lot more about the NFL than he ever will.
New Rules: When it comes to the NFL or sports in general, I’ll do the thinking and the talking. Bill Maher, class is dismissed.
