Weekly Morsels: A Few Things That Might Have Slipped Through the Cracks
By Ken Reed
NFL’s Tax-Exempt Status Threatened
Here’s a good deal if you can find one: The NFL takes in $9.5 billion a year and all of it is exempt from federal taxes. The NFL is the greatest sports-entertainment enterprise ever created but somehow qualifies for non-profit tax-exempt status.
The NFL is legally designated an “industry association,” like chambers of commerce and real estate boards. In a recent survey, only 13% of Americans knew the NFL qualified as a not-for-profit.
Senators Tom Coburn (R-Maine) and Angus King (I-Maine) recently introduced a bill to remove the league’s not-for-profit status.
“This is a directed tax cut to the league office, which means every other American pays a little bit more every year because we give the NFL league office a tax break and call them a non-profit,” says Coburn. “In fact, they’re not.”
Legislators Go After Redskins Name
The NFL is receiving pressure on another front from legislators. Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) and Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.) recently sent a letter to NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell calling for a name change for the NFL’s Washington D.C. franchise. Cantwell is chairman of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee, while Cole is a senior member of the appropriations committee — and a member of the Chickasaw Nation. In their letter, the lawmakers call the Redskins nickname “racially offensive.”
“The National Football League can no longer ignore this and perpetuate the use of this name as anything but what it is: a racial slur,” the letter stated.
The letter went on to state that Goodell and the NFL are “on the wrong side of history.”
NFL Feels Pressure to Stop Exploiting Volunteers
The NFL is also getting some heat in another area. For years, the NFL and MLB have used volunteers in local cities for their premier events: baseball’s All-Star Game and football’s Super Bowl.
Approximately 9,000 volunteers were used in the New Jersey/New York area for the most recent Super Bowl. That number was way down from what at one time was expected to be 40,000 volunteers.
The reason for the drop is that the NFL decided to hire some temporary paid workers in place of volunteers after MLB was sued for not paying volunteers at their All-Star Game FanFest last year.
According to Alfred Kelly, the chief executive of the New York-New Jersey Super Bowl Host Committee, litigation against Major League Baseball led the host committee to reduce the number of volunteers it sought.
“The fact of the matter is that after the All-Star Game and Major League Baseball being sued, the NFL decided for this Super Bowl to go in a different direction,” he said.
The NFL takes in nearly $10 billion a year but has annually relied on thousands of volunteers vs. paid workers at its marquee event. This year’s volunteers were required to sign a waiver stating that they wouldn’t become part of any potential class-action lawsuit.
— Ken Reed, Sports Policy Director, League of Fans
Sports Forum Podcast
Episode #28 – League of Fans’ Sports Forum podcast: A Chat With Mano Watsa, a Leading Basketball and Life Educator – Watsa is President of PGC Basketball, the largest education basketball camp in the world, with over 150 camps in 30+ U.S. states and Canada. We discuss problems in youth sports today, including single sport specialization, the growing gap between the “haves” and “have-nots,” the high drop-out rate in competitive sports, and the growing mental health challenges young athletes are dealing with today.
Listen on Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Anchor and others.
Follow on Facebook: @SportsForumPodcast
More Episodes on Apple Podcasts; Spotify; Google Podcasts; PocketCasts; & Anchor
Episode #27 – League of Fans’ Sports Forum podcast: Kids’ Sports: How We Can Take Back the Game and Restore Quality Family Time In the Process – Linda Flanagan is author of “Take Back the Game: How Money and Mania Are Ruining Kids’ Sports and Why It Matters.” We discuss how commercialized and professionalized youth sports are hurting kids and their families.
Episode #26 – League of Fans’ Sports Forum podcast: How Can We Fix Youth Sports? – John O’Sullivan is Founder and CEO of Changing the Game Project and author of “Changing the Game: The Parents Guide to Raising Happy, High Performing Athletes and Giving Youth Sports Back to Our Kids.”
Episode #25 – League of Fans’ Sports Forum podcast: Physical Education Should Be a Critical Component of K-12 School Design – Michael Horn is co-founder of the Clayton Christensen Institute for Disruptive Innovation.
Episode #24 – League of Fans’ Sports Forum podcast: Mental Health and Athletes: Ending the Stigma – Nathan Braaten and Taylor Ricci are the founders of Dam Worth It, a non-profit created to end the stigma around mental health at colleges and universities through sport, storytelling, and community creation.
Episode #23 – League of Fans’ Sports Forum podcast: Olympian Benita Fitzgerald Mosley Talks Title IX, Youth Sports and the Olympics.
Media
"How We Can Save Sports" author Ken Reed appears on Fox & Friends to explain how there's "too much adult in youth sports."
Ken Reed appears on Mornings with Gail from KFKA Radio in Colorado to discuss bad parenting in youth athletics.
“Should College Athletes Be Paid?” Ken Reed on The Morning Show from Wisconsin Public Radio
Ken Reed appears on KGNU Community Radio in Colorado (at 02:30) to discuss equality in sports and Title IX.
Ken Reed appears on the Ralph Nader Radio Hour (at 38:35) to discuss his book The Sports Reformers: Working to Make the World of Sports a Better Place, and to talk about some current sports issues.
- League of Fans Sports Policy Director Ken Reed quoted in Washington Post column titled "What happened to P.E.? It’s losing ground in our push for academic improvement," by Jay Mathews
League of Fans is a sports reform project founded by Ralph Nader to fight for the higher principles of justice, fair play, equal opportunity and civil rights in sports; and to encourage safety and civic responsibility in sports industry and culture.
Vanderbilt Sport & Society - On The Ball with Andrew Maraniss with guest Ken Reed, Sports Policy Director for League of Fans and author of How We Can Save Sports: A Game Plan
Sports & Torts – Ken Reed, Sports Policy Director, League of Fans – at the American Museum of Tort Law
Books