College Football Now a Business
Here’s a link to a recent New Yorker magazine article on college football. Just copy and paste this on your browser line: https://www.newyorker.com/sports/sporting-scene/army-navy-and-that-old-timey-football or CLICK HERE to get to it.
The Army-Navy football classic takes place this year on Saturday, December 14. If you watch it on TV, keep the New Yorker article in mind.
Permit me to add that in watching the local college football team (Florida Atlantic University) play at its Boca Raton stadium, I noticed that the gridiron’s decorations, in addition to the school’s ‘owl’ emblem and the naming of the venue after the late Howard Schnellenberger, there also was a plug there for a link to FAU’s own ‘Paradise NIL (rewards for use of an athlete’s Name, Image, or Likeness) associated website. Complete with a palm tree, it suggested the lure of playing ‘in paradise’ to potential transfers from other schools, as well as soliciting donors.
Really, that is nothing to be proud of for an aspiring educational institution. It’s just another nail in the coffin of the ‘old timey football’ written about in the New Yorker article.
Major college athletics, like football and basketball, have taken on a role that is the equivalent of baseball’s minor league system. Just look at the number of college football and basketball players whose resume includes moving through two or three institutions via the ‘transfer portal’ seeking greater opportunity for themselves, not to mention these institutions’ efforts to build winning teams, ignoring what their primary purpose is supposed to be. Education, maybe? Will the day ever be reached when cheerleaders and marching band members can enter a ‘transfer portal’ of their own?
I find it hard to believe that members of football or basketball teams at major colleges such as those in the SEC, ACC, Big 10, Big 12, and even those conferences one level lower, can find any time to pursue a normal college course of study. Their team activities are a full-time job involving daily practices, travel, and the games themselves. Whom are we kidding?
‘NIL’ and the ‘transfer portal,’ fueled by significant TV revenue for the colleges, and combined with the increasing availability of online gambling to anyone with access to a computer, a credit card, or even just a cell phone, have not only turned big time college sports into a business, but set the scene for an inevitable scandal that will afflict all college sports, and bring about some kind of reform, including the end of many football coaches being paid far more than University presidents, and perhaps the return of that old-timey-football.
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| A day at work for a 'student athlete' in the College Football business |
It’s just a matter of time.
Here’s the link to that article again. https://www.newyorker.com/sports/sporting-scene/army-navy-and-that-old-timey-football. Find time to read it. CLICK HERE to get to it.
JL
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About Democracy ... Number 3
Because of the great difficulty in passing Constitutional Amendments, don’t look for solutions in our Constitution itself for our ‘undemocratic’ Senate problem written about here in earlier postings.
Rather, look instead to reforms the Senate can bring about on its own, as it is presently constituted, reforms that can be effected by Congress WITHOUT an Amendment.
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Let’s start with our federal courts. The Constitution left the basic structure of the American justice system to Congress which quickly passed their first Judiciary Act in 1789. Since then, there have been many subsequent Judiciary Acts which govern the way our federal court system operates, keeping up with the needs of the times, but not challenging the operation of the Supreme Court which sits at the head of the Constitution’s Judicial branch.
Where the Constitution does not provide for something, like the specific number of SCOTUS Justices, for example, a Judiciary Act can address such issues. It has done so in the past.
Supreme Court Justices are nominated by the president and confirmed by a Senate majority without any mention of term limits. That cannot be changed without a Constitutional Amendment. Similarly, right now, the SCOTUS’ ethics can only be monitored by the SCOTUS itself.
But everything else in our system of justice is governed by Congress’ Judiciary Acts. Such an Act in 1891, for example, relieved SCOTUS Justices from having to travel around,‘riding circuit,’ hearing cases when it abolished Circuit Courts and replaced them with Courts of Appeal.
I can see a conflict developing between Congress and the SCOTUS regarding the extent to which Congress can, through Judiciary Acts, bring about changes in the Supreme Court.
Therefore, It seems clear that the remedy for this kind of problem rests with the voters who elect Representatives and Senators, the ones who pass laws such as the Judiciary Acts. Local (or Statewide for the Senate) politics determine who runs for Congress, confirming the late Tip O’Neil’s saying that ‘all politics are local.’
The rules establishing the composition of our undemocratic Senate may not be changed, but the actions of the Senators we do elect can provide solutions. And of course, the Senate has the role of confirming those appointed to the SCOTUS and other federal judgeships.
That’s where dealing with our undemocratic Senate starts, with the voters electing Congresses where laws, including Judiciary Acts, are legislated. Even with the unfair manner through which the Senate is constituted, change can be brought about by voters electing House and Senate candidates who support changes.
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Another area where our undemocratic Senate hampers democracy is the Electoral College, through which our president is chosen. How that can be remedied without a Constitutional Amendment which would take many, many, decades to pass is a difficult question to answer!
Right now, each State gets one electoral vote for each of their House Representatives and one for each of their Senators, regardless of the State’s population. That’s where the undemocratic nature of the Senate, with its overrepresentation of States with small populations, determines who becomes president.
With rare exceptions (Nebraska and Maine divide their electoral votes ‘proportionately’), all a State’s electoral votes usually go to the candidate who wins that State.
To resolve that problem without a decades-long Constitutional Amendment process, something called the ‘National Popular Vote Interstate Compact’ has been developed. That calls for State legislatures to approve a measure whereby all a State’s electoral votes would be cast for the candidate who wins a majority of the nation’s popular vote. It would require, for it to go into effect, that there be States with at least 270 electoral votes signed on to this ‘Compact.’ Then the Electoral College would have no other choice but to choose the voters’ popular choice!
But what if no candidate achieves a national popular majority, which the ‘Compact’ requires!
Possibly the ballots in all States might provide for ‘ranked choice voting,’ providing for the elimination of minor candidates with no chance of winning, whose votes would then go to a ‘second choice’ originally selected by the voter, until there actually is a national popular vote majority candidate chosen to whom a State can pledge its votes as structured in the ‘Compact.’
Gettting all the States to agree to ‘ranked choice voting’ would be one of the obstacles the ‘Compact’ faces. As for the 'Compact' itself, right now 270 electoral votes are needed to elect a president, and advocates of this ‘Compact’ can claim only 207 electoral votes being available from States that have agreed to it. It has been stuck at that number for several years now.
Furthermore, State legislatures can change their minds, and there are several legal questions about the ‘Compact’ that must be resolved, so don’t hold your breath. But this is a way, if it ever comes to fruition, and legal challenges to it are somehow resolved, of getting rid of the present influence of our undemocratic Senate on the Electoral College, and in turn, on the presidency.
This might be an appropriate place to add that at present, if no presidential candidate can get the majority of electoral votes (270) needed to put them in the White House, the Constitution assigns the task to the House of Representatives with each State having one vote. That’s about as undemocratic as possible, considering the wide discrepancies in the populations of our 50 States, but that’s what the Constitution provides.
Yes, there’s a lot wrong with our Constitution and the representative democratic government it establishes, but it has worked for 235 years, so we should not jump to trading it in for some other system. With a population that understands what government is all about, it can survive indefinitely with reforms made within its framework.
There are some people who advocate convening a new ‘constitutional convention’ to solve such problems. I feel that should be discouraged because no one really knows what such a convention, if held today, would produce!
My thoughts always go back to our 16th president who believed in government of the people, by the people, and for the people, words spoken by him at a time when many Americans had given up believing in those ideas. They should not give up on them now either.
JL
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United Health Care CEO Murderer Collared
It looks like the killer of the United Health Care CEO has been caught.
It will possibly turn out that his motivation was either his personal health (UHC claims he never was a policyholder), an antipathy to the private health insurance industry in general, or an undiagnosed psychological problem, which his behavior, withdrawing inwardly from society over the past months, suggests. No one has the right to commit an act of murder to justify their personal opinion as to what is right or wrong. Doing so is a kind of insanity. (That might be his defense in court.) Regardless of whatever specific action an insurance company, if any were involved, might have taken, right or wrong, a normal person doesn’t respond with murder to make their point. The killer should not be made a ‘poster boy’ for health insurance reform.
But it cannot be ignored that this tragic incident points up an inadequacy in our health care system whereby people sometimes choose inadequate insurance plans based on what they can afford and on insurance company advertising rather than on their family’s real healthcare needs.
The accused killer (or his family) could well afford the best of health care, so it remains puzzling why he directed his anger at insurance companies, rather than at whatever physician had treated his 'back' problem.
Misguided as the killer was, his act causes some to rethink the argument for ultimately removing most healthcare from the private sector, as has been done in many western nations. That might have been his intention. The choice of doctors and hospitals, and the care a patient receives, should not be determined by the bottom lines of companies existing in a market-based economy.
Medicare for Seniors, Medicaid for those with low incomes, the Affordable Care Act for other Americans, and similar legislation need to be expanded in order to meet that need.
JL
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A Change in Jackspotpourri
Throughout history there has been disagreement between the ‘haves’ and the ‘have-nots’ leading to conflicts over what kind of governments and economic systems countries, or tribes, or whatever, should have. From lawless anarchy to iron-fisted dictators, from family-based monarchies to populist democracies, and everything in between, that struggle has gone on, sometimes with words and sometimes with weapons.
The cavemen, early tribal groups, the Greeks, the Romans, their many predecessors and many successors all engaged in such disagreement and conflict through the centuries on up to where we are today. The labels may change (Fascists, Socialists, religious leaders, terrorists, Democrats, Republicans, conservative, radicals, etc., etc.) but disagreement and conflict seem to be the way of the world.
There is no reason to believe that will ever change, despite individual and collective efforts and compromises. Throughout history, they have ultimately failed.
The best an individual can do is to try to be as ‘informed’ as possible, perhaps adjusting their lives to this condition, but that solves nothing. With this in mind, look for Jackspotpourri to back off a bit from politics and spend more time looking in other worthwhile directions where human civilization has traveled. Who knows? To quote Steven Sondheim’s lyrics, ‘someday, somehow, somewhere,’ we might find the answers that presently elude us.
JL
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Housekeeping on Jackspotpourri
Forwarding Postings: Please forward
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Either way will work, sending them the link to
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Again, I urge you to forward this posting to anyone you
think might benefit from reading it.
JL
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