Sports owners often make or break a professional teams success, and unfortunately a lot of the time owners know a lot about money, and not a lot about sports. Jerry Jones put together a billion dollar stadium for the Dallas Cowboys in 2008, including the worlds largest televsion jumbotron. Before Jones, the Cowboys were a great dynasty winning multiple super bowls with players such as Troy Aikman, Michael Irvin, and Emmitt Smith. However over the past 14 years, the Cowboys have won one measly playoff game and a lot of fans blame Jones for the teams struggles. In fact, fans made a petition to president Barack Obama in an attempt to get Jones fired.
Many may argue that trying to get the President of the United States involved with the Dallas Cowboys business decisions is kind of ridiculous, and it probably is. But there are different perspectives that need to be considered in something like this. Is Jerry Jones responsible for deceiving people's hard earned money for his own personal income? With a payroll like the Dallas Cowboys and the amount of effort he put forth his billion dollar stadium it's fairly conclusive that Jerry Jones likes his money.
Jones of course wants the Cowboys to win, seeing as it benefits him, the fans, and maybe even the NFL from an economic standpoint considering the high amount of payroll Dallas gets. As a result of the dynasty I previously mentioned, and the impressive history of Dallas involving hall of famer and football pioneer Tom Landry, there are numerous Cowboys fans from all over the country. I know from experience, whenever the Cowboys are on the road, there are still numerous fans rooting them on wherever they go.
The point is Jerry Jones is probably not a good dude. Over the years Jones has argued that he does not support the concept of revenue sharing in the NFL. A concept that ex-Giants owner Wellington Mara founded for the good of the league, so football would be able to spread and grow as time went on. Jones may have an arguable point that an individual team should have the rights to their own payroll, but he definitely supports it for the good of the Cowboys, and not of the NFL.
Another example of irrational owners is that of the Miami Marlins Jeffrey Loria. Loria recently traded away five of his teams best players for a 160 million dollar salary dump. What makes matters worse, is the the Miami Marlins had just funded a brand new 515 million dollar stadium that was largely funded through the taxes of Florida citizens. For the team to struggle at base of the owner should be an outrage, especially when fans hard earned money is practically being stolen.
Jerry Jones and Jeffrey Loria are both hated by the fans of their teams, not only for the team struggles, but from the failure to capitalize with the fans hard earned money at stake. Media activist Dave Zirin went as far as to say that Loria should be arrested for his recent abominations. This may be a bit much, but it's perfectly logical to say that changes should be made when people are blatantly being ripped off.
This is an example of some of the things we talked about in Chomsky's Occupy, and some of the concepts we discussed in class. These owners are taking advantage of middle class citizens hard earned money for their own personal benefits. People may not take it as seriously due to the fact that this is about something like sports, but it's certainly something worth thinking about when people are trying to get a petition to the president of the United States. In this country, a huge majority of people are passionate about their sports, and frankly don't deserve to be taken advantage of in the way that too many fans know all too well.
I've learned that sports are more political then people would like to admit. Sports are an important tradition in this country, and the world for that matter, to billions of people. I believe that these controversies with struggling owners should be taken more seriously. These wealthy owners have too much power and don't suffer the consequences as much as the fans do when teams struggle. The irony is, the fans are the reason these owners are so wealthy in the first place.
This is a concept that Occupy Wall Street protesters know all too well.
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