“This is the NFL which stands for ‘not for long’ …” – former NFL coach Jerry Glanville

Like many of you, I watched the Super Bowl on Sunday.

I think I am still allowed to call it the Super Bowl as long as I am not selling anything. If you are reading this NFL commissioner Roger Goodell, please substitute the phrase “The Big Game” whenever necessary.

Watching sports is one of my favorite pastimes, but this ended up being the only professional sporting event among the three major American team sports – football, basketball and baseball – I have watched on television this year.

Part of this is simply getting older. A job and a family allow me less time to devote to sports outside of catching most broadcasts of my beloved, though often frustrating, Auburn Tigers. But in an odd twist, my interest in government is ruining my interest in professional sports.

Yeah, I know many people have been turned off because of the salaries of the athletes and coaches, team owners who seem to be more interested in making another buck rather than ponying up for a superstar contract, and even social stances adopted by the leagues.

I am not crazy about some of these developments either, but none of these get to the root of what has driven me away.

My gripes are exemplified by the venue in which the Super Bowl was played this year, Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas. It was built at a cost of almost $2 billion. Of that price tag, about $1.2 billion was paid by the Raiders, the nomadic NFL team that since being established in 1960 has moved from Oakland, California, to Los Angeles back to Oakland and now to Las Vegas.

The remainder of the cost – roughly $750 million or nearly 40 percent of the total price – is being paid for with a bond issue by Clark County, Nevada, (the county in which Las Vegas sits) with the revenue being raised through additional hotel room taxes. The interest Clark County will pay on the bond will likely make the final cost significantly higher.

Forbes listed the Raiders as having one of the highest revenue totals in the NFL in 2022 amounting to approximately $729 million. Keep in mind that number is not the profit margin since it does not include the massive expenses that go along with running a sports franchise and debt payment on the new stadium.

But for a sports franchise that can generate that much income, it seems plain greedy for it to ask taxpayers to share in the construction costs. A Berkeley Economic Review article called this phenomenon “socializing the costs and privatizing the profit.”

Team ownership would likely argue football games and other large-scale events, like concerts, bring massive income into the city and provide jobs and tax revenue. This is true. However, the local government will be using much of that income to pay off bond debts for the foreseeable future.

Additionally, once the requirements of any lease or residency agreement have been achieved by the team, what often happens is team ownership again demands the local government assist in paying for either major renovations to the existing stadium or building another brand new stadium.

What happens if the local government does not want to help pay for this? Team ownership will find another city desperate to build its image through adding a professional sports team and will have that city pay a substantial portion of the costs.

I picked on the Raiders in this column, but this continues to happen in all three major professional sports leagues. The Atlanta Braves moved out of Turner Field in downtown Atlanta and over to Cobb County after the organization’s demands for significant renovations to the stadium were rebuffed. Turner Field was only 21 years old when the Braves moved out.

Cobb County issued around $376 million in bonds to help pay for what is now Truist Park. Atlanta was already subsidizing what would become the Falcons’ new football stadium, so the mayor at the time, Kasim Reed, said, “We are simply unwilling to match that with taxpayer dollars.” Therefore, the Braves now shag fly balls northwest of Atlanta.

My wife got free tickets to a Braves game a couple of years ago, and after swallowing my apparently shallow convictions, we decided to check out Truist Park for ourselves. It is a nice place to catch Ronnie Acuña sliding headfirst into third base on what barely looked like a double off the bat, but I think I might invest my $376 million elsewhere.