Chamblee54

This weekend is the start of the NFL season. At the first game, the players, from both teams, stood silently and held a finger in the air. The gesture meant that the players were united in the negotiations with the league for a new union contract.
During the game, an announcement was made. Tom Brady, a quarterback, signed a contract. Terms were not released, but the estimate was that he would be paid $18 million a year. This works out to a bit over a million dollars a game.
The New York Times had a story this week about stadium debt in New Jersey. It seems like the old Meadowlands Stadium, now a parking lot, has roughly $100 million dollars in debt remaining. The taxpayers of New Jersey, for some reason, are responsible for this. The Giants and Jets open a new stadium this weekend. Somebody paid $1.6 billion for the new facility. HT to aimlow.
Locally, the Falcons are clamoring for a new stadium. Twenty years ago, the team threatened to move, if a new stadium was not built. A hotel-motel tax was passed to pay for it. Today, the state is broke, and Atlanta is poised to run out of water. Where will the money come from to pay for a new stadium for the Falcons?
America is in an economic mess. We are borrowing to pay for two wars, eight time zones away. The needs of education, health care, and infrastructure are immense. Can we afford to pay a quarterback a million dollars a game? Where does the madness end? Is football about to become the luxury our culture can no longer afford?