Another reason to hate the NFL, as if you need one in this town. Feel free to share you hearts away. From Cincinnati and Paul Daughertys blog The Morning Line 1/29/14: * MAYBE YOU KNOW THIS, MAYBE YOU DON’T. The NFL is seen as a non-profit entity, thus the league office is tax exempt. Greg Easterbrook explains. Read it, then pick uo your jaw: The 1961 Sports Broadcasting Act was the first piece of gift-wrapped legislation, granting the leagues legal permission to conduct television-broadcast negotiations in a way that otherwise would have been price collusion. Then, in 1966, Congress enacted Public Law 89‑800, which broadened the limited antitrust exemptions of the 1961 law. Essentially, the 1966 statute said that if the two pro-football leagues of that era merged—they would complete such a merger four years later, forming the current NFL—the new entity could act as a monopoly regarding television rights. Apple or ExxonMobil can only dream of legal permission to function as a monopoly: the 1966 law was effectively a license for NFL owners to print money. Yet this sweetheart deal was offered to the NFL in exchange only for its promise not to schedule games on Friday nights or Saturdays in autumn, when many high schools and colleges play football. Public Law 89-800 had no name—unlike, say, the catchy USA Patriot Act or the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Congress presumably wanted the bill to be low-profile, given that its effect was to increase NFL owners’ wealth at the expense of average people. While Public Law 89-800 was being negotiated with congressional leaders, NFL lobbyists tossed in the sort of obscure provision that is the essence of the lobbyist’s art. The phrase or professional football leagues was added to Section 501(c)6 of 26 U.S.C., the Internal Revenue Code. Previously, a sentence in Section 501(c)6 had granted not-for-profit status to “business leagues, chambers of commerce, real-estate boards, or boards of trade.” Since 1966, the code has read: “business leagues, chambers of commerce, real-estate boards, boards of trade, or professional football leagues.” The insertion of professional football leagues into the definition of not-for-profit organizations was a transparent sellout of public interest. This decision has saved the NFL uncounted millions in tax obligations, which means that ordinary people must pay higher taxes, public spending must decline, or the national debt must increase to make up for the shortfall. Nonprofit status applies to the NFL’s headquarters, which administers the league and its all-important television contracts. Individual teams are for-profit and presumably pay income taxes—though because all except the Green Bay Packers are privately held and do not disclose their finances, it’s impossible to be sure. Roger Goodell makes $29 million a year. Not bad for a non-profit. Meantime, the league strong-arms communities into paying for stadia and enforces blackout rules. And now this, from the NYTimes: Michael Gonnelli, the mayor of Secaucus, said local leaders in his town had planned a black-tie party to be called the Super Ball, but heard that even that appellation could run afoul of league restrictions. The event lost momentum and has been canceled. The league, he said, “should be embracing these things, not throwing up obstacles.” Rich McMahon, Montclair’s councilor at large, said an effort to make souvenir footballs for local festivities had lost some steam once word came down that the Super Bowl logo could not be used. “Then they said we couldn’t even use the Roman numeral 48,” he said, and things “went downhill from there.” The NFL won’t allow local NJ merchants to use the term “Super Bowl” to sell stuff. The NFL has revenues of $9 billion annually. It won’t let a guy who runs a cigar store in Lyndhurst, NJ, make a few extra bucks selling smokes: He planned to hang a Super Bowl banner out front, and to have customized cigars made bearing the Super Bowl name and logo. But he canceled those plans after some customers who are lawyers advised him against it, and after online research demonstrated that the league vigilantly protects its trademarked Super Bowl name and logo from groups and businesses that use it without authorization. You might love the product. But the people who lord over it need to be slapped around. Since when is a Roman numeral protected? The greed and arrogance of the NFL has been over the top for awhile. What needs to happen, but never will, is laws need to be redone to strip the league of its ridiculous non-profit status, and to strip it of its ability to conduct business as a monopoly. The NFL has smart people doing its lawyer-ing, and rich lobbyists twisting arms on Capitol Hill. It will continue to get its way. There’s a part of me that wishes people would simply stop watching. That’s the part that believes in the Tooth Fairy. So, watch on. Just know the people giving you the product are arrogant as hell. And arent about to change. * ALONG THOSE LINES... The smartest man in the room at Media Day was M. Lynch, who showed up and said nothing. But that’s not the real story here. Skip to the last line: “He doesn’t feel comfortable in settings like this,” Seahawks coach Pete Carroll said. “And he doesn’t like to do things he’s told to do. Fortunately that hasn’t been a factor for our football team. “But in this setting, he becomes something of a recluse and he doesn’t want to be part of it. We try to respect him as much as we can.” The largest fine in Super Bowl media day history is believed to be the $100,000 the league levied on Chicago Bears linebacker Brian Urlacher seven years ago for wearing a hat with the logo of Vitaminwater, a non-league sponsor.
Posted on: Wed, 29 Jan 2014 23:35:37 +0000
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