Why Green Bay?

The first reason you should be rooting for the Packers this Sunday is because I have loved them since I was 10.

But assuming that's not convincing enough, consider how the Packers are different from every other major professional sports franchise in America:

• The team is owned solely by the citizens of its home community.  Just think about that for a minute.
• To be more precise, there is no singular 'owner'.  There is a 45-person board of directors, of whom seven form the executive committee. Among these seven, only one is paid for his service.
• By charter, the team is non-profit.  Should it ever be sold for any reason, all profits would go to charity, not the shareholders.
• There are about 300,000 people in the Green Bay environs.  There are 112,000 shareholders.
• The Packers are the only franchise in U.S. professional sports to make its balance sheet public every year.
• The next smallest city with an NFL franchise is Buffalo--about four times Green Bay's size.
• The next smallest city with a major league baseball franchise, ironically enough, is Milwaukee--five times Green Bay's size.

To put it mildly, this seems implausible.  How in the world could a city so small support a franchise so important?  The answer, as provided by Bill Maher, is that the NFL is a socialist state.  I know that doesn't gibe with the likes of Jimmy Johnson, his football palace, or the enormous league TV rights.  But that last point--the TV rights--only begins to describe the collectivist nature of the NFL:

• Unlike baseball, there are no local TV rights--everything goes to the league.  And those funds are distributed equally among the league's 32 teams, no matter how big or important you think you are.  (This alone could explain the absence of Donald Trump). 
• By union contract, 60% of all revenues go to player compensation, again divided equally among the teams.  It's a lucrative salary cap from the standpoint of the players, but a cap nonetheless.  Roster sizes are also fixed; thus, there is no provision for overspending for players, or for that matter, even underspending your rivals.
• Consequently, 'profitability', for what that means in such circumstances, is largely fixed.
• Player development is free.  The colleges do the work; you just pay for the best of what they produce.  And what you have to pay is limited by that salary cap.
• The NFL is a monopoly; you can't just do a startup team in Fresno, no matter how much money you have.  Just ask Mark Cuban.

In keeping with all this, a community-owned, non-profit team, where local kids regularly loan their bicycles to players to ride at summer training camp seems a model not only for pro football, but for American sports.

But, not surprisingly, the NFL has enacted a statute that, while grandfathering in the Packers, prevents any other business model like it from ever endangering the American way of life again.