https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/john-elway-blames-colin-k...
> Not that it was hard to find: you can easily fire up a search engine and figure out that Elway talked to the 49ers about trading for Kaepernick, before the quarterback was released, back in April of 2016. [...]
> In other words, this is also not great for Elway [...] because it creates a pretty clear juxtaposition: the Broncos were interested in Kap before he began to protest and not so much after he began to protest.
Before last season he met with the Seahawks about the backup position and apparently wanted anywhere from $3-5 million to be the backup. There are very few teams that would waste that salary cap space for a backup QB, when that can pay for another player or two who can actually contribute to the games. The Seahawks declined signing him, and got a backup that only cost them $700k for the season.
It's hard to win a collusion case when you have job offers but you just don't like what they are paying.
Despite the fact that most of the teams will still be owned by the same individuals, and definitely the same families....
IF I was a conspiracy guy I would almost think that all the flag waiving and controversial decisions are designed to distract us from the fact that the NFL is the world's sketchiest non-profit. Not only does it not pay taxes as an entity despite its CEO's $31 million dollar salary, but the teams receive billions in tax payer funds to build the new stadiums they require.
And they must have these new stadiums to stay competitive with the other NFL franchises... who just got new stadiums. It's a crazy arms race to keep your NFL team, and no one is talking about that fact that we could also level the playing field by having all the states agree NOT to build stadiums with tax payer dollars, instead of letting the NFL play different tax bases off each other to extract the maximum dollars from us.
While I don't disagree with the rest of your post, I'd like to point out that the NFL is no longer a non-profit:
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/tax-season/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/business/wp/2015/04/28/t...
Building stadiums with public money and then charging the public to enter is really crappy, but in the end it does in fact benefit the location in some cases.
And you can see the pushback already starting. San Diego and Oakland wouldn't build new stadiums, so those teams moved. One went to LA, where they are building a new stadium with Olympics money which will be used by the Chargers, and Las Vegas was happy to bring in all the extra people to gamble. So in both cases those stadiums will probably be net positives for their cities.
The vote to approve the stadium will rank as one of the top 5 most corrupt things to ever happen in our city... which was formerly ran by the mob.
And think about this... the capacity of the stadium is 65,000. If all 8 games are SELLOUTS, and every single attendee looses $100 to the casinos after every single game, that's 52 million dollars. So it would take about 20 years to pay for the Billion dollar stadium.
Obviously thats disastrously simplified, but if you think we can pay for this stadium with just a small tax on the increased revenue.... that's way way off.
Now the new traffic on the other hand...
Obviously those people will spend a lot of money, but even if they ALL fly here Airport visitation stats won't go up 1%.
If we wanted to bring more visitors to Las Vegas pretty much any other way to spend a Billion dollars would have been more productive. The politicians never even tried to make that argument, at least to a sophisticated audience.
It's all about legacy, and home town spirit. Apparently a lot of people can't really be proud of a city that doesn't have an NFL team to root for.
Bottom line is we spent more to get an NFL team than any other city, and we are getting less out it than most cities, because we already have to many things to compete for a tourist's dollar and we didn't need a "star attraction" to revitalize an aging downtown or some of the other rationalizations other cities have used.
So it would take about 20 years to pay for the Billion dollar stadium.
This is a really low bar for redistributing money from taxpayers to wealthy owners. It also ignores opportunity costs.
As far as Olympic revenue, I wonder how the stadium's income from a day of the Olympics will compare to a Rams game or a Taylor Swift concert? Supposedly LA isn't giving the stadium any money for capital improvements, just whatever they get for renting it out and a few million for a temporary archery building. Maybe the stadium gets a cut of the $2,000 opening ceremonies tickets, but I imagine that'll be less than they make from the 2022 super bowl. I know a lot can change before 2028, but I'm cautiously optimistic that LA won't screw anything up too bad.
*which IMO are pretty tame— Inglewood pays for police overtime, shuttles to train stations, utilities improvements, etc but only for the first 5 years that the city makes $25+ million from the stadium
The NFL isn't the only sports league who once rocked the not-for-profit status, NHL is currently a nonprofit and MLB was formally one.
I can think of much. much sketchier non-profits.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/business/wp/2015/04/28/t...
The public is starting to lose interest in subsiding for-profit teams, thankfully.
So it operates like every single partnership out there, tax-wise.
Ehh, broaden your perspective.
At its absolute worst, the NFL can't begin to touch the corruption of FIFA at its absolute best.
I'd never shy away from ragging on the NFL for being a shady organization, but:
a) The NFL gave up its tax-exempt status in 2015 (and even then, it was only the head office [~$10M in new taxes paid], not the teams, that was tax exempt).
b) What does the CEO's salary have to do with it? The salary itself is taxable as income. Non-profit employees don't get to dodge the IRS. (Of course, I expect Goodell to do his best to avoid paying income tax as many wealthy people do.)
I wouldn't be so sure about that.
Remember Craig Hodges? Michael Jordan's teammate, who won two championships and lead the NBA in 3-point shooting for three years? Probably not. He was the Colin Kaepernick of the 1990's, and virtually doesn't exist now.
Never underestimate the ability of money and power to shape the history books. Likewise never overestimate people's attention spans.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Craig_Hodges#Political_activis...
That being said, he statistically was a really mediocre QB. You can be as outspoken as you want if you are good, but if you're mediocre and you bring distractions (and while important, it was a distraction), you're not going to get hired in lots of industries.
IIRC, Kaep got a tryout by the Ravens and his girlfriend called the owner a plantation owner. That kind of stuff isn't going to fly, you can't just burn bridges. But teams like the Hawks (who seem progressive enough) declined having him as a backup, so maybe he wasn't good enough.
You can look it up yourself. His last two years in the league Kaep had a QBR of 43 and 49. Bortles, who nobody feels is great, had a QBR of 59 and 44 his last two years, in comparison. He's a backup level QB in a league with lots of backup level QBs.
It really helps your cause when you are great, and you gotta be realistic about consequences (and narratives) when you aren't because people will find every reason to tear down even those that are great.
Nike's selling shoes off that. That's not commercially exploitative?
He never got any try out's. That's the whole basis of his grievance. The Bronco's offered to trade for him before he was cut, but he'd take a $4million paycut so he declined. After he was cut there were no try outs or offers.
I say this as a 49ers season ticket holder who saw every game and training camp he played.
Every NFL bad actor with talent gets lots of second chances. He simply lacked the necessary mindset.