Super Boosters' Super Bowl

February 8, 2011, 8:40 a.m.

Champions' Wins Can Be Taxpayers' Losses;
Lessons for Iowa
(bought to you by FromDC2Iowa.blogspot.com*)
There is at least one significant way in which Super Bowls are far less super than the claims in its super boosters' hype.

Sunday's [Feb. 6, 2011] game between the Pittsburgh Steelers and the community-owned Green Bay Packers was by many measures a truly "super" bowl game. It was a great game to watch; which a record 111 million did in front of TV screens and an almost-record 110 thousand did in the Texas-sized and styled super stadium in Arlington. Whether the TV commercials will have a super impact on increasing sales remains to be seen, but they produced some super laughs for the audience, potential super awards for the creators, and at $3 million for each 30 seconds some super revenue for the broadcasters.

The two-year-old Dallas Cowboys' stadium used for the event, Cowboys owner Jerry Jones' three-million-square-foot "Palace in Dallas," the world's largest domed stadium, cost $1.15 billion to build -- of which the taxpayers of Arlington contributed $325 million.

However, its likely impact on the economy of Arlington, Texas (and its Dallas-Ft.Worth environs), is going to be far less super than Super Bowl boosters and promoters routinely claim when their billionaire owners approach local taxpayers, hat in hand, begging for their equivalent of public housing.

With no pro teams in Iowa, and open stadiums during Iowa winters, it's unlikely there will ever be a Super Bowl game played in an Iowa town. Nonetheless, there are still lessons here for Iowans -- for the Iowa City City Council's love affair with the corporate benefits from local taxpayers called "TIFs," and Governor Branstad's apparent belief that transferring taxpayers' money to the bottom line of for-profit corporations (and campaign contributors) is ideologically consistent with "free private enterprise" and an efficient way to "create jobs."

The Super Bowl host committee commissioned a report that says the region will see a $611-million windfall as a result of Sunday’s game. . . . Robert Baade, a sports economist at Lake Forest College, . . . says host committees forget to factor in things like tourists and convention goers who are crowded out during mega-events like the Super Bowl, money that goes home with the players, team owners, and national hotel chains, and costs the city bears in clean-up and safety. 'If you move that decimal point one place to the left, you’re much closer to reality,' Baade says. '[T]he $60 million figure is likely to be far more representative of what we’ll see.' And, Baade says, the real figure might be closer to $30 million. . . . [Do pro teams and Super Bowls bring new businesses to town?] Professor Baade says, corporate sponsors and business executives have much more tangible things to think about . . .. '[T]hey’re going to consider things like: "Is there a skilled labor force?," Baade said. ' . . . the tax environment . . . the school system. . . . [O]ther factors . . . are far, far more important for the bottom line than a Super Bowl or even the presence of a pro sports team.'

"Dallas Expects Super Rewards for the Super Bowl," "Only a Game," WBUR-FM/NPR, February 5, 2011.

The $600 million benefit claimed this year is 50% more than last year's NFL estimate of $400 million -- when economists found the League's math equally flawed.

"'All they do is add and multiply,' [University of South Florida economist Phil] Porter said. 'They never subtract and divide.' . . .

Economists say the NFL-sponsored studies look at the 'gross' spending by Super Bowl visitors but not the 'net' effect.

Some tourists, economists say, may intend to visit South Florida for vacation, but will avoid the area because of the Super Bowl. Also, with Super Bowl attendees spending much of their money with national hotel and rental-car chains, most of the influx is going to corporations headquartered elsewhere, such as Hilton, Marriott, Hertz and Avis.

'The airfare being spent on American Airlines isn't ending up in Miami,' said Craig Depken of the University of North Carolina-Charlotte. 'A lot of it is being repatriated to Dallas.' . . .

'I'm estimating north of $400 million,' said Rodney Barreto, chairman of the host committee. 'This is a huge event.' . . .

But independent economists have tossed the challenge flag and demanded a closer look at what they consider the puffery behind the big game's economic effect.

'If you can move the decimal point one digit to the left, you would get a more realistic estimate,' said Andrew Zimbalist, a prominent sports economist at Smith College. 'If they were arguing $40 million, I would say that's a realistic impact; $400 million is not.'

Victor Matheson, an economist at the College of the Holy Cross, said Super Bowls generate a boost of $30 million to $90 million.

'Absolutely, you'll take it,' he said. 'But on the other hand, it's one-quarter to one-tenth of the figure the NFL is publicizing.'

Economists from the University of Chicago, the University of North Carolina-Charlotte and the University of South Florida have reached similar conclusions.

Phil Porter of the University of South Florida sees a link between the NFL's optimistic economic impact estimates and team owners' lobbying for public money for stadiums.

'The NFL is not in the business of giving us $400 million every year,' Porter said. 'They're in the business of telling us they're giving us $400 million every year so we'll give them things.' . . .

[I]t's unclear when the Super Bowl and Pro Bowl will come back to South Florida. NFL executives say the Super Bowl might not return for an 11th visit without $250 million in improvements to the Miami Gardens facility now known as Sun Life Stadium."

Jeff Ostrowski, "Super Bowl economic impact of $400 million? That's super-inflated, scholars argue," Palm Beach Post, February 4, 2010.

For years I wrote in a similar vein about Senator Grassley's belief that spending $50 million of federal taxpayers' money on an indoor rainforest in an Iowa cornfield could somehow pass the laugh test and make any economic sense. See, e.g., the entire Web site I devoted to the subject: "Earthpark."

More recently I've addressed the triumph of boosterism over economic analysis in some blog entries and Press-Citizen columns.

Nicholas Johnson, "Making 'Shop Locally' a Meaningful Suggestion," Iowa City Press-Citizen, December 3, 2010, p. A9, embeded in "Downtowns' Future: 'Shop Locally' Column & Dialogue; Making "Shop Locally" a Meaningful Suggestion," December 7, 2010 ("[T]he Press-Citizen Editorial Board is urging us to 'shop locally.' But what does 'buy local' mean? [Money spent here doesn't necessarily stay here.] To analyze in detail what happens to each portion of the dollars we spend in Johnson County establishments would require more data and degrees in economics than most of us would ever have or want. . . . [But without it, 'buy locally'] is just a rousing bumper sticker of a slogan, and, as Tom Joad says to the filling station attendant in Grapes of Wrath: 'You're jus' singin' a kinda song.'").

"The $100 Million Hawkeyes' Football Team; Hawks: "How Do I Love Thee? Let Me Count the Dollars," August 28, 2010 ("The Iowa City/Coralville Area Convention and Visitors Bureau says the Hawkeyes' Football Team is about to bring $100 million to Johnson County this fall. . . . Really? $100 million? . . . [T]he only sales that can fairly be attributed to football would be those above and beyond those that would have occurred without a football game. What is the average Iowa City/Coralville revenue for . . . weekends from September through November -- excluding the weekends when there are home football games? What is the average during weekends when there are football games? It is that difference, that 'incremental increase,' that is relevant. Otherwise you're counting revenue that would have gone to local businesses even without the games. Second, how much of that incremental income would never have been earned 'but for' the football game, and how much is merely 'time-shifting'? . . . [Coralridge Mall shoppers who do not attend football games may have] contributed to increased retail income when there was a football game in town, that's true; but they have not contributed more income to merchants for the year in question than they would have contributed anyway without that coincidence. It's not 'but-for' incremental income.").

Nicholas Johnson, "Flying Video Screens, Stories and Tourism," Iowa City Press-Citizen, August 30, 2008, p. A15, embedded in "Tell Me a Story; The Stories Project," August 30, 2008 ("[A]n Iowa City monument to stories is certainly more appealing than 'a rain forest in a cornfield' -- the earlier proposal for Coralville. But good ideas are a dime a dozen. The challenge? Finding the next dime. Something rain forest promoters never found. Whether Stories makes sense requires the same analysis to which I subjected the rain forest. . . . In fairness, Stories’ promoters acknowledge their details aren’t nailed down – ‘"flying video screens" and holographic projections,' school, bookstore, restaurant? But it’s hard to be 'for' or 'against' a thing not knowing what the 'thing' is – the rain forest’s persistent problem. ('It’s a floor wax, it’s a desert topping; it’s whatever they want it to be.') So all I can offer is an all-purpose sampling of issues for any attraction.").

"Chicago Wins Olympics Bid; Why Chicago Won the Olympics Bid," October 5, 2009 ("The fact is that, most of the time, winning an Olympics bid, like many other efforts at local boosterism, turns out to be a Pyrrhic victory. . . . [M]ost community cheerleaders, like modern day George Babbitts [Sinclair Lewis, Babbitt (1922)], with confidence and pride in their town truly believe that their idea -- whether an indoor rain forest, the world's largest ball of string, or hosting an Olympic event -- really will 'put their city on the map,' while bringing tourists and their tourists' dollars to town. Who needs a business plan when 'everyone knows' what a great idea it is? . . . All too often the construction money can't be found, or the project is built but it turns out that 'build it and they will come' only works in the movies. Or enough public debt is incurred that it is, with the declining revenues that could have been predicted but weren't, the death knell for the project and then -- like paying for a dead horse -- takes years, if ever, to pay off. But there is no effort at community promotion for which there is a greater disparity between the promised economic benefits and the ultimate disappointment than Olympic venues.").

For more on our excessive focus on sports reaching from pro to college to high school to junior high and elementary schools, see "Fandom; Super Bowl, Super Mystery," January 30, 2011.

And for more on use of taxpayers' money for campaign contributors, see Nicholas Johnson, "Branstad and Public Transparency," Iowa City Press-Citizen, January 5, 2011, p. A7, embedded in "Governor Branstad's 'Transparency;' Making 'Transparency' in Government Meaningful," January 5, 2011. Accord, see Donnelle Eller, "Study Questions Branstad's Economic Proposal," Des Moines Register, February 2, 2011 ("States that have switched to public-private partnerships like the one Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad has proposed have experienced misuse of taxpayer money, excessive executive bonuses and questionable awards, a national group [Good Jobs First, a Washington, D.C., research group] says. . . . [S]tates like Iowa that are considering public-private partnerships should focus on improving existing economic development efforts rather than seek to create agencies. 'Turning economic development over to public-private partnerships is fool's gold,' said Greg LeRoy, Good Jobs First executive director. 'What really matters is business basics: strategic public investments in skills, infrastructure and innovation - not privatized smokestack chasing.'"). See the similar observation of sports economist Robert Baade in the first major blocked quote in this blog entry, "Professor Baade says, corporate sponsors and business executives have much more tangible things to think about . . .. '[T]hey’re going to consider things like: "Is there a skilled labor force?,"' Baade said. ' . . . the tax environment . . . the school system.'"

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* Why do I put this blog ID at the top of the entry, when you know full well what blog you're reading? Because there are a number of Internet sites that, for whatever reason, simply take the blog entries of others and reproduce them as their own without crediting the source. I don't mind the flattering attention, but would appreciate acknowledgment as the source -- even if I have to embed it myself.
-- Nicholas Johnson
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Fandom

January 30, 2011, 8:30 p.m.

Super Bowl, Super Mystery
(bought to you by FromDC2Iowa.blogspot.com*)

We are sports fans. We love being sports fans, and at times, we live to be sports fans. As loyal fans we empower ourselves to break free of the realities of everyday life by joining a greater cause. We gain access to a community of others like us, a nation of people energetically united by something powerful. The only requirements for membership in this family are loyalty and a belief in the cause.

If we’re fans of the Kansas City Chiefs, we don’t care if our starting running back is originally from Kansas City, Florida, or California—he is a Chief, he is one of us, and he’s in the family. It’s irrelevant that as fans we don’t actually play in the game. We jealously covet our season tickets. We stay focused and disciplined as we, along with 80,000 of our closest friends, show off our spelling and counting skills after every touchdown. We proudly display framed Sports Illustrated covers, faded pennants, and other relics as evidence of memories that we already know will last forever. Like the players, we fans are also in the family, and we know the potential for that family is limitless.

Sports and fandom give us hope. They give us a sense of belonging. They teach us to believe in ourselves and our ability to contribute to something special. Once that opening pitch is tossed, or that ball is tipped, or that kick is returned, the outside world and all its worries and pressures quietly fade away—for we and the rest of our family are busy transcending greatness.

-- Jim Mosimann

A week from today 100 million Americans (give or take) will be watching the Super Bowl game. It's one of television's highest rated shows.

I will be a part of that audience. I have enjoyed sports of all kinds, whether participating, in the stands, or watching a television or laptop computer screen -- the skill of the athletes, the thrill of the last minutes of play that so often determine the outcome.

But I've always been a bit mystified by what I will call "extreme fandom" for the professional, commercial, TV performers (players) in the for-profit TV shows called, for example, "professional football." See Ken Belson, "Rapid Fans Put Dallas on Their Itinerary," New York Times, January 31, 2011.

A family friend, now deceased, was such a Denver Broncos fan that he would stand, watching their every game on television -- for the entire game. I guess it was a gesture of respect. There are fans who travel to all of "their team's" games, like the Deadheads who used to follow the Grateful Dead from concert to concert. Fans dress in their team's colors, like the "bumblebees" who dress in Iowa's black and gold for Hawkeyes' football games.

They are willing to follow directions on what "uniform" they should wear to the game (for the benefit of, among others, the television cameras). At Iowa's last Homecoming game, all the fans seemed to have followed the instructions on their tickets regarding whether they should dress all in black or in gold. It made for striking TV coverage.

At Penn State they are all sometimes told to wear white -- and obediently do so. Penn State seems to have a formula for whipping up the fans' enthusiasm before and during the games. Here is what they call their "Penn State Football Crowd Pump Up Video" from 2008:



What is it I find so mysterious about this?

I can understand how one would be a "fan" of their high school, or even college, teams. After all, at that stage of your life the school is a major part of your community, your circle of friends; and the players are people you at least see regularly off the field, and may even have as acquaintances or friends.

Even so, some might suggest we're even carrying high school, and junior high, sports to extremes, as the New York Times reports this morning about a little town not that far from what will be the Super Bowl stadium next Sunday.

"The $60 million football stadium at Allen [Texas; population 650 in the 1960s, 85,000 now] High School, where [Steve] Williams is the athletic director, was starting to take shape. . . . To the residents, who voted 63 percent in favor of a $119 million bond in May 2009, this project, which includes the stadium, an auditorium for fine arts and a service center for the district, is designed to scale. Their scale just happens to be larger than most. . . . Chris Tripucka [owner of the souvenir shop, Eagle Designs, says] 'I’ve been around sports all my life. You can’t explain it to people who don’t live here. You have to experience it.' . . . The new stadium . . . will hold 18,000 spectators in a sunken bowl designed to improve sightlines . . . [and] include a two-tier press box, an indoor golf practice area, a high-definition video scoreboard, a practice room for wrestling, and enough parking for every car in Dallas . . .. 'Look, football has always been a big deal here,' Williams said."

Greg Bishop, "A $60 Million Palace for Texas High School Football," New York Times, January 30, 2011, p. SP1.

A little over four years ago, Sports Illustrated's Frank Deford, who provides NPR's listeners a little sports insight every Wednesday morning, noticed this "big deal" seemed to be forcing its way into junior high schools as well.

"I've decided to rewrite my will. . . . [T]he bulk of my estate is going where it's really needed -- to . . . help renovate the weight room and build a 20,000-seat football stadium with a retractable roof for the disadvantaged little fourth and fifth grade student athletes at my alma mater. . . . [R]ather than correcting all the abuses of college athletics, we Americans are instead simply taking all that's wrong with college sports down to high school. . . . Just as colleges recruit high school players, now high schools scout middle schoolers. There are now newsletters which identify the best sixth grade prospects in the nation. . . . And given good old American know-how, I figure that by the time I'm pushing up daisies the same sins will have reached the elementary school level."

Frank Deford, "Sweetness And Light: College Sports Excesses Seep into High Schools," Morning Edition, NPR News, September 27, 2006.

I spent much of the 1950s in Texas, a state for which I still have a great deal of fascination and affection. So it didn't surprise me that Greg Bishop was able to pick up on the fact that Texas is a "state where only football supersedes faith and family." But I have to admit that it surprised even me when he quoted the Allen High "fine arts director" saying, “It’s controlled chaos. There’s an energy you can’t describe. When they say football is like religion in Texas, it’s true." Knowing a little something about "religion in Texas," as well, that's not comforting.

Maybe finding an analogy for fandom in religion is helpful. After all, Mosimann mentioned "transcending greatness." Does a part of the explanation for fandom have something to do with being a part of a crowd of like believers, what he calls "a sense of belonging"? Are Mosimann's "80,000 closest friends" in the stadium, or the 18,000 Allen High fans in its new stadium, attracted to joining fandom for reasons related to the reasons those 24,000 Texans had for joining Houston's megachurch, Second Baptist?

Second Baptist is the second-largest "megachurch" in the U.S., a modern cathedral complex the size of an airport terminal. Inside "E Gym," where the congregation's "small" Saturday evening service is being held, two basketball courts full of believers in jeans and flip-flops rock out, sing along or just watch as a huge contemporary band jams to the song "Did You Feel the Mountains Tremble?" [Photo credit: Jessica Kourkounis, AP.]

White and yellow stage lights hit the rising smoke before the performance cools down for the opening prayer. The sermon stops for applause as the audience watches an video projected overhead of a Christian-gone-wild beach retreat, where the church baptized nearly 700 teenagers.

Spread across five campuses, Second Baptist has about 24,000 people attending one or another of its programs each week. The church has fitness centers, bookstores, information desks, a café, a K-12 school and free automotive repair service for single mothers. The annual budget: $53 million.

Jesse Bogan, "America's Biggest Megachurches; Rock bands, jumbotron screens, buckets of tears and oodles of money. Meet the next wave of Christian worship," Forbes, June 26, 2009.

But it's not college -- or even junior high -- sports fans that I find so mysterious.

It's the fandom gone wild for the commercial pro teams.

I have a colleague who makes a practice of rooting for whichever team happens to be ahead at the time during the Super Bowl game, or other athletic contests. I am not quite that fickle. Green Bay has always fascinated me, primarily I suppose because of the community ownership of the team. ("The Packers are the only non-profit, community-owned franchise in American professional sports major leagues." Green Bay Packers, wikipedia.org.) Because Carroll Rosenbloom was a family friend, when he owned the Baltimore Colts, and I lived in Washington, I took a greater interest in that team.

But I've never become a rabid fan of any one professional team. Maybe it's because Iowa has none. If you live in Iowa and want to be a fan of a professional team, your only choices are at least a couple hundred miles away in another state.

Professional teams are not like school teams. College sports may be big business, but it's nothing like the multi-billion-dollar industry that is the TV show called "professional sports." When you're watching a pro football game you're watching 22 millionaires -- few, if any, of whom have any connection to your home town -- playing for two billionaires. (See this morning's AP column from Tim Dahlberg, "After This Super Bowl the Real Games Begin," Associated Press/Yahoo! Sports, January 29, 2011 ("The billionaires believe they gave the farm away five years ago when they caved in to an agreement with the millionaires in Paul Tagliabue's last big act as commissioner. They seem determined to get it back, no matter what the cost."). Moreover, they're playing in a multi-hundred-million-dollar stadium most likely built at taxpayer expense for the billionaire -- who then charges ticket prices that many of those taxpayers can't afford to pay.

To become emotionally involved, to the point of cheering yourself hoarse, over such a corporation, while dressed in its colors and logos, always seemed to me somewhat analogous to arguments regarding the comparative merits of Ford and Chevy pickup trucks, or Coke and Pepsi.

Teaching Sports Law this semester has (so far) been rewarding from a number of perspectives -- mostly having to do with the quality, and enthusiasm, of the students. One day I shared with them my near-lifelong perplexity regarding fandom for professional teams. It produced a lively discussion -- including the essay/poem of Jim Mosimann's with which I led today's blog.

It seems to explain about as much as can be explained about the phenomenon called fandom.
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* Why do I put this blog ID at the top of the entry, when you know full well what blog you're reading? Because there are a number of Internet sites that, for whatever reason, simply take the blog entries of others and reproduce them as their own without crediting the source. I don't mind the flattering attention, but would appreciate acknowledgment as the source -- even if I have to embed it myself.
-- Nicholas Johnson
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