football

On September 29, two police officers, 31-year-old Zach Moak and 35-year-old James White, were killed in a shootout in Brookhaven, Mississippi. “This is the worst day we can have in law enforcement,” said Public Safety Commissioner Marshall Fisher in the wake of the murders.

As the leaves start to fall and tailgaters fire up their grills, the eternal question of whether or not college athletes should be paid has returned to the forefront of barroom banter.

Sports team owners, and the elected officials who enable their graft, say using taxpayer money to pay for stadium construction is an investment in local economic growth.

The huge dust-up over the protests of the American flag during the presentation of the national anthem by National Football League players has served to dramatize a massive deficiency in civics education in this nation.

Elected officials often say using taxpayer money to pay for the construction or renovation of sports stadiums is an easy way to boost local economies and revitalize the flagging fortunes of downtown areas. But what really happens is that these teams pit cities against one another in competition for franchises, using their scarcity as a way of wresting ever-greater subsidies from taxpayers while team values rise to astronomical levels.

This is the real thing the NFL is concerned about: as a seventh round tweener DE/LB, the odds don’t favor a long career for Sam. Maybe he’ll beat those odds, and the league would love it if he does.