Hello again. Today we are one week and five days from the NFL’s Super Bowl. The Super Bowl brings images quickly to mind of tough football teams, finger foods, and exciting commercials. What it doesn’t bring to mind very quickly is politics, but let me tell you, there are certainly politics involved as well.
I’m not talking about your typical American partisan politics, but when you flip on ESPN and see New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin on the station, you know it’s a strange event.
What was Nagin doing there? Well, Mayor Nagin’s city’s football team, the New Orleans Saints, are one of the competitors in the upcoming super bowl. Everyone knows the story of Nagin, New Orleans, and Katrina, so I will not go into it here, but the fact is that more this season than any other, there are very strong politics involved in this Super Bowl.
The politics, in this case, is the politics of money.
The fact is that the team that wins the super bowl, and the city in turn, receive large amounts of money from merchandise, tickets, and concession sales. Over the next week and a half, you’ll hear a lot about how badly New Orleans as a city needs this victory. The team that was once the ‘Aints, they’ll say, has now become a beacon of hope for this destitute city.
Well I’ve been to New Orleans, and it’s not as bad as they’ll make it out to be, but quite frankly, New Orleans does need this win. And it’s not because they need a beacon of hope. It’s not because the Saints have never won it before. It’s because New Orleans could truly use the revenue they would receive from this win.
That said, let’s hope it’s a good game.