Top Seven Progressive Policies That Strengthen The National Football League
Posted in Main Blog (All Posts) on September 11th, 2011 4:36 am by HL
Top Seven Progressive Policies That Strengthen The National Football League
As the NFL begins a new season this weekend, America will celebrate the sport not just as a wonderful national pastime, but also as a prime example of progressive policies in action. We’ve cataloged seven unique ways in which the NFL is strengthened by its progressive approach to the sport, including equality, fairness, and diversity: […]
As the NFL begins a new season this weekend, America will celebrate the sport not just as a wonderful national pastime, but also as a prime example of progressive policies in action. We’ve cataloged seven unique ways in which the NFL is strengthened by its progressive approach to the sport, including equality, fairness, and diversity:
1. Revenue sharing: Fifty years ago, NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle set the NFL on a strong progressive path by implementing a system of revenue sharing between the teams. In essence, revenue from the league’s massive TV and radio contracts is divided evenly amongst the 32 NFL teams today. As a result, smaller market teams like the Green Bay Packers and Minnesota Vikings are able to stay competitive with big market teams like the Dallas Cowboys and New York Giants.
2. Salary cap: The NFL currently sets a team salary cap at $120 million. This prevents teams with wealthy owners from simply purchasing all the best players in the league, as the New York Yankees have done in Major League Baseball. As a result of the salary cap, the NFL enjoys much more equality, competition, and fairness than it would if owners were permitted to field teams with as high a salary as they pleased.
3. Strong unions: One primary reason there was an extended lockout during the offseason was because NFL players enjoy a strong union that did not back down in the face of new demands from the owners. Indeed, over the past few decades, the National Football League Players Association has used collective bargaining to win such concessions from owners as free agency, pension and health care improvements, and minimum salaries.
4. Affirmative action: Since 2003, the NFL has enforced the Rooney Rule, which requires teams to interview minority candidates for head coaching vacancies. The impact has been undeniable; the percentage of minority coaches increased from 6 percent to 22 percent over the past eight years. Among these new leaders are some of the most successful coaches in the league, including Pittsburgh Steelers coach Mike Tomlin and Chicago Bears coach Lovie Smith, both of whom who have taken their teams to the Super Bowl.
5. Progressive draft system: At the end of every season, the league awards the first pick in next year’s draft to the team with the worst record, followed by the second worst, and so on. By taking a progressive approach to the distribution of draft picks, the NFL fosters competitiveness and parity among the teams. This has allowed teams like the 2008 Atlanta Falcons to make the playoffs under the leadership of a star rookie one year after having the third worst record in the league.
6. Schedule equalizing: Just as the worst-performing teams are given a boost in the draft, so too are the following year’s schedules tweaked to improve equality. In other words, the better a team does in one season, the more difficult their schedule will be the following season. This focus on equality makes the NFL far more exciting than a league dominated by a static group of elite teams.
7. Socialistic Super Bowl champions: Last year’s Super Bowl champions, the Green Bay Packers, are a socialist organization. Rather than being controlled by a single owner like the 31 other teams, the Packers are owned by the community – 112,158 shareholders to be precise. (This is what an owners meeting looks like.) The team is a nonprofit and has rules in place to prevent any individuals from taking control of the franchise. Were the Packers controlled by a single owner, it’s unlikely they would still play in Green Bay, the smallest hometown of any NFL team, particularly while a vacancy in the highly profitable Los Angeles market exists. It’s no stretch to say that socialism saved the Green Bay Packers.
Exxon Makes Billion-Dollar Bet Climate Change is Real, Here Now and Going to Get Worse But Keeps Funding Deniers
Hard-core deniers assert that the current warming is just part of a natural cycle. Joe Bastardi, for instance, in a Climate Progress comment, absurdly predicted that “the earth will cool back … to levels we saw in the late 70s, and the [Arctic sea] ice will increase back to those levels in the N hemisphere.“ Not. The […]
Hard-core deniers assert that the current warming is just part of a natural cycle. Joe Bastardi, for instance, in a Climate Progress comment, absurdly predicted that “the earth will cool back … to levels we saw in the late 70s, and the [Arctic sea] ice will increase back to those levels in the N hemisphere.“ Not.
The cynical, climate-destroyers at Exxon, however, are placing a massive bet that global warming is real and that the Arctic will keep warming — even as they keep funding deniers to obfuscate the science and block action (after they publicly stated they would stop such funding).
Below is a guest post by Christopher Jones on this subject. Jones is a Ciriacy-Wantrup fellow at the University of California-Berkeley.
Exxon’s Climate Admission
by Christopher Jones
This just in: Exxon Mobil has made a multi-billion dollar acknowledgement that climate change is real and is happening now.
Don’t hold your breath waiting for them to admit this, though. Exxon would like you to believe that climate change is neither real nor urgent. That is why they have spent millions of dollars over the last several years funding climate skeptics and fighting legislation that would regulate the emissions of greenhouse gases. When you hear climate skeptics speak, there’s a good chance that Exxon money is in their pocket.
Actions, however, speak louder than words. And Exxon’s most recent action was a thunderclap. According to reports, Exxon has just signed an extensive deal with Rosneft, the Russian state oil company, to develop promising offshore oil and gas deposits in the Arctic Ocean. The companies will begin by investing $3.2 billion to explore in the Kara Sea, with the potential of increasing the investment to $500 billion in the future. Exxon is so convinced of the potential of these sites that it is giving Rosneft ownership rights in several of its global properties to complete the deal.
Large deposits of gas and oil have been known to exist in the Arctic Ocean for decades. So why did they make this deal now? One key thing has changed: the arctic ice is melting rapidly. The Kara Sea has typically been covered by ice floes nine months of the year or more, making commercial development of its resources unprofitable. But for the last several years, the extent and duration of the arctic ice has been diminishing, a phenomenon the vast majority of scientists believe to be caused by climate change. Suddenly, oil and gas exploration in the Arctic Ocean is looking far more attractive. Exxon has realized that a warming planet offers some new opportunities for profit and is adjusting its strategic decisions accordingly.
Exxon is not the only big oil company whose actions show it believes climate change to be real. British Petroleum made a major play for developing the same resources several months ago, but the proposed deal was rejected by a coalition of BP’s other Russian business partners. Not only does big oil know climate change is happening, it is planning its future around it.
That does not mean Exxon is likely to publicize this knowledge. Despite issuing a tepid statement acknowledging anthropogenic climate change in 2007 and promising to cease funding anti-climate change groups in 2008, Exxon remains up to its old tricks. Freedom of Information Act requests have revealed a continued pattern of funding for climate skeptics as well as collaborations with the conservative Koch Industries to support legislation that removes any restrictions on carbon emissions.
We should no longer be distracted by these words. Exxon is a smart and savvy company, and even if its actions are reprehensible, they make sense in a political system that allows corporations to pay millions of dollars to avoid costly regulations. Blaming Exxon for these activities is like blaming a raccoon for going through your trash. They’re simply responding to available opportunities.
This is exactly why we should focus on actions, not words. This deal is a multi-billion dollar investment predicated on Exxon’s belief that the planet is warming. It is one of the most powerful admissions of the reality of climate change imaginable. Michele Bachmann and the other Republican presidential candidates cannot blame this on disconnected academic scientists or members of a liberal conspiracy. This is the embodiment of free market American capitalism saying climate change is real.
All this begs the question: If Exxon Mobil believes climate change is worth acting on now, isn’t it time for the rest of us to follow suit?
– Christopher Jones is currently writing a book on the history of energy transitions.
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