Are we ready to get rid of NFL owners yet? Watching a third-generation nepo-baby wander the Colts sideline second-guessing plays has done it for some.
Yes, women heading traditional male institutions is supposed to be of historical importance. That is woke nonsense in respect to football, a sport only incrementally softened from its origins of ancient Greeks hacking each other bloody in clashing phalanxes.
The reason a woman can presume to “lead” an NFL team is that the sport — or at least its management — has been feminized to the point of silliness. Teams are assigned players fairly, for goodness sake, the worst teams getting the first pick.
Try explaining that to Alexander the Great or, for that matter, a fourth-grade flag football team.
No, let’s get back to the basics — men competing with violent intent. That will require stripping away the modern management structure and getting rid of owners, whom Art Modell famously characterized as “fat-cat Republicans voting for socialist football.”
I asked my assistant Grok to imagine what an alternative might look like. He/she/it chose the Green Bay Packers as the model:
Greater stability (teams stay put), reinvestment of surpluses into the product and community, reduced taxpayer leverage by owners, higher transparency and alignment with “common good” externalities (civic pride, local identity). The Packers have competed successfully for decades under this structure. European member-owned or 50+1 fan-controlled soccer clubs (e.g., Real Madrid, Barcelona) show that high-level competition is possible under public/fan models, even though those leagues lack the NFL’s hard salary constraints.
A president, man or woman, could handle day-to-day operations and cast the team’s vote at league meetings. League-level decisions, however, would shift away from a club of billionaires to reduce unilateral owner meddling. Stadium funding might still involve public money but the pattern of vacating unless taxpayers fund a new venue would lose force.
Mostly, we would be free of insufferable, self-dealing, ego-driven owners lording over us like medieval kings (and queens). Look, we are private-property fans here but the NFL is a corrupt cartel, not a free-market model. And football is neither economics nor social justice, it is stylized war. Putting a skirt on it doesn’t change that. — tcl
