"Get Stuffed"

You may have heard about the NFL's plan to auction off the right to entertain at halftime at the Super Bowl. The latest edition of the game will be held this coming February in Phoenix.

It's Super Bowl XLIX, if you're scoring at home (or even if you're alone, as Dan Patrick used to say), slightly less unwieldy but more optically jarring than last year's XLVIII edition. Do we really care which Super Bowl it is? They don't number the World Series, or UEFA Champions' League finals. 

Yep, you got it. Roger Goodell, in all his wisdom, has decided to make artists pay to entertain.

While having avoided the embarrassment of either being forced to move XLIX or hold it in a host state with an overtly discriminatory law, the NFL still has a lot of other issues on its plate that would seem more pressing. Like the fact that one of its franchises has an overtly racist nickname that is coming under increasing derision. And concussion lawsuits. 

Nonetheless, Goodell has blithely pressed on with his main mission: to make NFL owners lots and lots of money.

The latest well of cash to be fracked is the Super Bowl halftime show. The NFL has reportedly asked the three "finalists" (Rihanna, Katy Perry, and Coldplay) in contention to perform to pay for the right to. While even seemingly sympathetic news sources have questioned the idea, it's the reaction of the music industry that interests me more.

They're not very fond of it. 

The halftime show is undeniably a marketing boom for the performer that gets the gig (Madonna and The Who both saw huge bumps in the purchase of their music after recent appearances). Some agents have acknowledged that there may be some benefit to up-and-coming artists to have the spotlight in front of 100,000,000 viewers, but that need hardly seems to be the case for the three finalists.

But there's just something, well, smarmy about the whole idea of making artists pay to play. Not to mention the fact that the kind of artists the NFL wants (those who will keep fans glued to their sets and halftime commercials) both have the least need for the exposure and likely the biggest egos to be offended by the demand to pay.  

One thing is fairly certain. Arcade Fire will not be headlining at the University of Phoenix stadium at XLIX next year, and probably not at any Roman numeral in the future. Their agent, David Viecelli delightfully summed up his response to the NFL's attempted extortion when he said that he hopes "that everyone tells them to get stuffed."

Not coming to a Super Bowl near you. (photo from Spin)

A lot of us feel that way.

FIFA's Hypocrisy Knows No Bounds - Part I

For years, FIFA Emir Sepp Blatter hounded MLS about changing its season to coincide with that of the European leagues. And, according to fairly recent reports, he may have been close to winning the argument. That should have changed, though, this past week with two separate developments regarding soccer and when it is played.

While the pretense of the advice was that the U.S. pro season should coincide with that of England, Spain, Germany, etc., it always struck me that Blatter's position on the issue was either incredibly naive (not caring that MLS can not now, and will not for years, if ever, be able to compete directly with the NFL) or, more likely, incredibly arrogant (Sepp thinks that if our pros play at the same time of year as Europe's they will be better players, so we should think that too).

Blatter didn't care that many MLS teams shared stadiums with NFL franchises or college football teams that made playing from August to May logistically impossible. Or that fans, forced to make the choice, would opt for football over soccer.  Or that the thought of playing soccer in Boston or New York City or Chicago or Denver or Toronto or Montreal in December and January and February is absurd (evidently, the NFL missed that memo too). Just his saying "play August to May" should have been all the reason we needed to make it so.

What soccer in March can look like in Denver.
(photo from USA Today)

Never mind that the Swedes aren't stupid enough to play in the Scandinavian winter, or that Brazilian clubs play May to December. Or that the Russians, who apparently caved in to Blatter's pressure, have experienced all sorts of issues in converting their season from March to December to August to May (hmm, maybe that's why they were awarded the 2018 World Cup? in a way, that would be a refreshing change from the usual monetary bribes).

The first development that should eliminate any consideration of kowtowing to the Blatter Rule on soccer seasons was a slip by FIFA Secretary General Jerome Valcke during an interview on a French radio station. Valcke admitted that it is likely that the 2022 World Cup (to be held in Qatar, remember?) will take place in December 2022 and January 2023.

Right smack dab in the middle of the domestic professional season Blatter has championed in most of Europe, forced on Russia, and has tried to foist off on the U.S. But in the Qatari winter, when temperatures will average a pleasant 25C rather than the brutal 50C weather in June and July, when the World Cup has been held in late May, June, and or July every time since its inception in 1930. Every time.

So much for tradition and concerns about domestic soccer. Not to mention the support of UEFA, which is thoroughly annoyed at the suggestion that the tournament will take place during both domestic competitions and its lucrative Champions and Europa League seasons, risking injury to its best players at the same time. Or of Fox and Telemundo which ponied up more than double the amount paid by ESPN to broadcast the South African and Brazilian World Cup to win the bid for the rights to the 2018 and 2022 Cups and now face the prospect of trying to convince advertisers that their money is better spent on soccer during the same months as the college football conference championship games, bowls, and playoffs and the NFL playoffs and Super Bowl.

While the ensuing denials, partial withdrawals, and outrage that followed Valcke's interview reveal FIFA at its Keystone Cops best, the real point is this: Blatter's demands that the U.S. change its domestic season were as baseless and dictatorial as most other decisions he has handed down during his reign.  

No matter how corrupt the selection of Qatar has proven to be (and it was astonishingly, brazenly corrupt, even for FIFA), no matter how stupid the idea of playing soccer in the Middle Eastern desert in June and July was, no matter how absurd the suggestion that the outdoor stadiums could be air conditioned for players' and fans' safety (yeah, that was b.s. too), the 2022 (well, and 2023) World Cup will be played there and then, the domestic season which he championed for years be damned. Which is pretty much what it will be.

Unless …