Football is Fleecing All of Us

The country, most of it, is going nuts once again. Football is back. College and pro. It's no news that this country is beyond enamored with football, and I would argue overly so, because as Gregg Easterbrook, the author of a recent book The King of Sports:Football's Impact on America, argues, the game is ripping us off right and left. If you pay taxes, you're being fleeced, even if you don't ever go to a game. Even if you don't like football. It's another manifestation of the power billionaires and millionaires have to shape and frame things to their own benefit via an ignorant public and a corrupted political process. (That last part was mine.)

Below is an interview with Easterbrook, only about 8 minutes long or so in which he delivers several telling blows against the way football has muscled into the education dollars and the absurdity of a law that declares professional football a non-profit enterprise.

It's really hard to believe that intelligent people would put up with this kind of abuse, but we do . . . and we glory in it.