NFL Owners and the Green Bay Packers

The Super Bowl is coming up and it looks like it is going to be a good one. I think the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Green Bay Packers are both great teams, but I'll be rooting for the Packers. First, I'm an NFC guy; I have always followed NFC teams. That is probably because I starting watching football before there was an AFC or an AFL for that matter.

So I choose to root for the Green Bay Packers, but today I found out another reason to root for the Packers. They are the only publicly owned major sports team and they have been that way since 1923. This to me was a remarkable revelation, and that is only the beginning. The profits are invested back into the team and do not line the pockets of some big shot. Here is another amazing fact. The bylaws state that if the team is ever sold the proceeds of the sale must go to a foundation for distribution to local charities. Instead of hearing stories of how professional sports teams rip off their city, the Packers actually support their city.

Now I live in the Maryland suburbs of Washington, DC, so I have been a Washington Redskins fan for forty years. I would never stop rooting for the Redskins, but I do wish they would change their name. Everyone knows that the Redskins are presently owned by the very rich and very self important Daniel Snyder. We have suffered with King Snyder for over a decade now. In that time everything from ticket prices, to parking, to hotdogs has gone through the roof. You see in Washington the regular fans have no leverage with King Snyder. He has a full stadium and tens of thousands on a waiting list to get tickets. In addition, many of the seats are owned by powerful companies in the Washington area and they use them to stroke customers.

The Redskins have the most devoted fans in the NFL and the most abused. I don't know a Redskins fan who didn't wish for the sale of the team to an owner with a little more heart. I have bitterly complained about how King Snyder got his weasel lawyers to shoot down the suit brought by Native Americans over the name of the team. The suit was thrown out on a technicality. It seems the Native Americans filed the suit too late.

King Synder's latest move is to try to get a reporter at the City Paper in Washington fired for writing an unflattering article about him. You see he doesn't see a lot of unflattering opinions from the sports personalities in Washington because some of the major personalities have a side job working for Snyder's Redskin Broadcast Network.

The fans are now facing a possible lock out and a labor dispute. The NFL owners, not counting the 112,158 owners of the Green Bay Packers, have decided that they got ripped off during the last negotiations. Now they intend to get some money back.. They are stating that they will lock up the team facilities starting in March if the players do not agree to a pay cut. I am not worried about the players ending up in the poorhouse, but the owners haven't exactly been suffering either. This is an unusual dispute because it is management that is demanding changes and not labor. These are all super rich people who buy and sell the players and anything else that gets in their way.

I could go on and on but I didn't write this hub for Dan Snyder or any of the fat cats; I wrote this for the Green Bay Packers. I can only dream of having a hometown team that is really connected to my hometown. A team that has a management that cares for the community and is part of the community. So I'll be rooting for the Packers on Sunday and maybe even into next year.