It's Super Bowl Sunday: Is the NFL Rigged?

"Ready to Launch"

As most of us are aware, money is a big part of what this event is all about. In basic economic terms, it's a matter of supply and demand. There is only one Super Bowl per year and the stadiums have a finite number of seats. As a result, tickets come at premium prices and for this year's game the average ticket costs $6,800. If you think that's a lot, last year the average ticket cost $10,000. No kidding. It was in Los Angeles, and the home team was there on the field for that one.

Then there's all the gambling revenue generated. Over-unders and all kinds of other bets can be placed. Since much of this is black market activity, it's hard to say exactly how much money is riding on the various outcomes, but one estimate is that a half billion dollars is on the line tonight.

Then you have the money pouring in from companies that spend millions on advertising at this once-a-year event. The cost for a 30 second spot seems to rise with every passing season, now in the range of five or six million dollar. Advertisers who play this game do so because there's a massive captive audience.

Advertisers do more than just advertise during the game. Most have integrated campaigns that incorporate other forms of advertising and marketing including digital and social media, product placements and branded content. The big guys can easily spend tens of millions around this singular event.

Which leads some people to believe that the NFL has a vested interest in delivering a close game that keeps viewers watching all the way to the end so that advertisers get their money's worth and return again next year.

Sometimes it seems like a lot of games hinge on a penalty call by the refs, or the lack of one. Defenders of NFL integrity correctly point out that it's only one play, so it shouldn't really matter all that much. On the other hand, a single play can shift the game's momentum in a big way. How many times have we seen a fumble, interception or missed field goal spook the crowd and turn the momentum in favor of the opposing team? Those controversial calls by the refs can produce a sea change in a tight game. 

Conspiracy theorists are quick to jump all over those bad calls, and with the megaphone of social media the doubt gets carried off like dandelion seeds whistling in the wind. Controversial calls make many people skeptical about the integrity of the league. There's also the perception that the NFL favors certain teams or players.

None of this has been proven, and the NFL bends over backward to preserve the perception that everything's above board. The problem is, when it looks like you're trying extra hard to look clean, cynics jump on this as proof that you have something to hide. 

Alas. People will believe what they want to believe, no matter what anyone says.

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As for this evening's game, it's only the 13th time the two number one seeds have come through the playoffs unscathed. Which of these will step up and dismantle the other?  Let's wait and see.

Photo: Creative Commons. Attribution: Andy Morffew 

Complicit Support for Stalin Showed Media's Lack of Integrity: Mr. Jones Tells the Story

Over the years I've had a number of writers influence me in significant ways. Upon discovering a writer I resonated with I would dig through their works the way a miner follows a gold vein through a mountain, reading everything I could get my hands on. Hemingway, C.S. Lewis, Jorge Luis Borges, Graham Greene are a few such writers whose works I collected.

Another was Andre Gide (1869-1951), the 1947 Nobel Prize winner who was at the center of the French literary scene for decades. An author of more than 80 books, he exemplified beautiful writing, integrity and original thinking.

At some point in the mid-nineties I read The Journals of Andre Gide, all four volumes, from which I learned much about the writing life and have frequently shared insightful quotes. One incident especially stuck with me, from his 1936-37 journal notes.

While the Great Depression rocked America, economic trauma was also eroding European confidence about the future. As Marxist/socialist idealism swirled through intellectual circles, the notion emerged that over there, in the Soviet Union, a Golden Age was dawning. The workers paradise was being praised and the promise of a brighter future.

Writers were being invited to come see with their own eyes what was taking place so they could tell the story of what was happening. One of these was Andre Gide. He went expecting to see something promising, or at least evidence that something promising was happening. Instead what he saw and learned resulted in a book that discredited what many other writers were saying. His 1936 book of essays began with "delightful approval" but ended up a denunciation.

I'd never read that book, but saw clearly in his journal entries for 1936 that things were not what they purported to be and he could not, with good conscience, parrot what others were saying. His September 3 journal entry begins, "A tremendous, a dreadful confusion." Then he describes a conversation with another who spoke of his "disappointment" with the U.S.S.R.  Gide responds that the word disappointment is not really accurate, "but I do not know what to suggest in its place."

Because he was expected to come away from his U.S.S.R experience with a book that praised Stalin's achievements, he writes in a later journal entry that he must write an introduction that "warns the reader at the outset." It took courage to publish this book so out of alignment with what his peers were saying.

The book he published was titled Return from the U.S.S.R. Here are excerpts from a review on Amazon that offer a snapshot of what Gide saw.

Publicity still from Mr. Jones

The political situation André Gide noticed that now that the revolution had triumphed, those who kept the revolutionary ferment became an embarrassment and were hated by the powerful; worse, they were simply swept from the earth. What the Politburo demanded, was a full endorsement of all that happened in the USSR. 

Attitudes
André Gide saw the inertia of the masses, the complete depersonalization of the individual.

Education
Critical thinking was forbidden and soviet citizens remained in an extraordinary ignorance of what happened in foreign countries.

The Social Situation
André Gide saw the emergence of a new aristocracy ... of conformists. Joining the Party was the first and indispensable step for a successful career.

Art
In the USSR, an artist had to follow `the line'. Art had to be popular; otherwise it was branded as 'formalism'. But André Gide correctly stated that without liberty art loses all its meaning and value.

André Gide expected to find in the USSR at least the beginnings of an anti-capitalist State. But, his hopes were bitterly dashed and he had the courage to publish his devastating verdict. He should be an example for all commentators and writers today, who should speak out and tear the curtain of the virtual world created by the media.

* * * *

All of the above came to mind when I read about a new film called Mr. Jones that has been released on Amazon Prime. I read about it in a review titled The Media's Role in Concealing Stalin's Evils Exposed in Mr. Jones.

The setting is Moscow 1932. The review begins (T)wo reporters are in a venomous argument. One has just admitted to filing false stories attributing miraculous economic achievements to Joseph Stalin while ignoring the fact that he's systematically starving peasants by the millions. Hitler, she declares, is on the march in Germany and, soon, the rest of the world, and without Stalin's help, he'll never be stopped.

"You sound like you work for Stalin!" the other reporter declares in horror.

"I don't work for Stalin," the first reporter haughtily insists. "I believe in a movement that's bigger than any one person."

The convergence of all these things is somewhat striking. The movie that had circulated through European film festivals in 2019 finally came to theaters in February and now to the public right in the middle of a new historical zeitgeist involving clashing cultures and competing worldviews. Notions of right and wrong are being turned on their heads.

A second article from Reason this week highlights a new attitude being proposed by some journalists. The article is titled Journalists Abandoning 'Objectivity' for 'Moral Clarity' Really Just Want To Call People Immoral. There are journalists who wish to abandoned the notion of objectivity. My response is two-fold. First, it's long been apparent that news is not always objective. Second, isn't this why Opinion pages exist so that people can express opinions on whatever is happening?

Maybe the solution to the latter problem would be to make larger opinion pages. As for the former issue, every fiction writer knows that if you want to create empathy between a reader and a character in a story, you hurt him or her. It's a normal human response. So it is that when covering riots, by focusing on rioters being hit, you create empathy for these "victims" of brutality. Why do we never see all the bricks and bottles that have been smashing into the faces and heads of police, sending them to hospitals around the country?

The coverage this past month has not been objective. Neither was the journalistic coverage of Stalin's atrocities.

Related Links
The Death of Stalin
The Media's Role in Concealing Stalin's Evils Exposed in Mr. Jones
Carol Veldman Rudie Sheds Light on Soviet Era Art in Lecture at the Tweed
Local Art Seen: Tweed Spotlights the Art of Russia
Karelia: A Finnish-American Couple In Stalin's Russia, 1934-1941