The Football Bubble

Did you feel it? Last Sunday (Super Bowl Sunday) may have been it. In the past 20 years we have experienced the tech bubble, the housing bubble, and we now be may be nearing the peak of the football bubble. If we just experienced it, with the game’s biggest stage coming to the most important city in the world (or a suburb thereof), it was a bit of letdown unless you live in Seattle.

I predict that in 20 years, football will still be an important part of American popular culture, but we’ll likely be looking back and seeing this as a time marked by what former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan once called “irrational exuberance.” Greenspan offered that synopsis a few years before the tech stock bubble burst, and we may well have several more years of football froth yet to go, but our current path is unsustainable and cracks are already showing in the armor. Concussions, moms, and the power of East Coast elites may signal the turning of this very high tide.

I was among the hundreds of millions who watched the Super Bowl. Despite the blowout, this was still the fifth most watched edition of the NFL championship. Between plays by the padded gladiators we were pounded with consumerism and celebrities, the bread and circuses of our day. More than 47 million people in America watched the first round playoff game between the Green Bay Packers and the San Francisco 49ers. That’s millions more than watched the President’s State of the Union address. (Count me among those.) That game was played before a sold out stadium on a day featuring below zero wind chills. The big game itself just dodged similar temperatures but an empty stadium was never a concern.

In an era marked by cultural fragmentation, football is one of the few unifying common denominators left. I am not immune and drove hundreds of miles to ring in the new year by watching Johnny Football (whose last name is still technically Manziel) and the rest of the Texas A&M Aggies win a thrilling bowl game that, truth be told, did not much more than cement their status as the 20th best college football team in the nation.

The money I spent is a drop in the bucket compared to what universities are paying to coaches. Seemingly feeling the competitive heat from my Aggies and others, the University of Texas will pay $5 million annually to a new coach, their second choice after Nick Saban decided to accept $7 million to stay in Alabama. In 27 of our 50 United States, the highest paid public employee is a football coach. (Thirteen other states give the honor to a basketball coach.) The professional clipboard holders are doing fine too. A quarter of NFL head coaches bring in over $6 million a year.

Coaching money pales in comparison to stadium money. My alma mater is pumping a staggering $450 million into Kyle Field renovations, and even a smallish Baptist school like Baylor is spending over $250 million for new digs in the hope that their recent run of pigskin success will continue. Not to be outdone by Baptists, the Catholics at Notre Dame are reading to spend $400 million to upgrade their historic stadium and focus more of the academic buildings near the House that Rockne built, so that football truly is at the center of the university experience. (One wonders if they will update Touchdown Jesus by adding some dollar bills to his hands.)

The pros are now scoffing at mere millions. The Dallas Cowboys play in a billion dollar gridiron palace funded largely by the city of Arlington who “won” the bidding/bribing war among DFW municipalities for the right to build what has been popularly known as Jerry World, a structure barely able to contain the ego and subsidized wallet of owner Jerry Jones. The Super Bowl was played at a billion dollar facility in New Jersey, and even the Minnesota Vikings are bringing down the 1980s Metrodome to join Club B with a new football cathedral. Also on the chopping block is the 1990s era Georgia Dome, which looked in fine shape when it hosted my new year’s eve festivities but must make way for a new $1.2 billion dollar edifice.

The Astrodome that helped to ignite an earlier wave of construction when it was unveiled in 1968 is now slated for implosion, after sitting idle for several years. The site of the one-time “Eighth Wonder of the World” will serve as a parking lot for the NFL stadium next door that now towers over it and was built in 2000 for under $500 million in today’s dollars. One wonders when the wrecking ball will be coming for it.

These are frothy times, but the times they are a changin’. A few months back The Atlantic arrived at my rural Texas mailbox with a cover story about how sports (and by "sports" they meant "mostly football") are ruining schools. I was a bit worried that merely receiving this magazine might ruin me in still football feverish Texas, but I have survived so far.

Football is still embraced by many around the nation, and to a near religious level in the Southeast (from which was birthed the NASCAR bubble that we now see receding to its geographical roots) and parts of the Midwest. Nevertheless, many rich coastal parents seem to be moving their kids away from football to sports like lacrosse, soccer, and swimming. The college football programs seem to reflect this realignment of athletes and interest. Fans will still turn out for the pros, but when was the last time once relevant northeast programs like Boston College and Syracuse were real factors in college football.

Concussions are a major reason that some channels feeding the football pipeline are drying up. Moms have always been leery of this most violent of team sports. Now, the moms have data. Recent lawsuits by battered old pros, the suicide of former All Pro Junior Seau, and New York legend Joe Namath sharing his own struggle with brain damage are just adding fuel to the fire. The media, including pack leaders like 60 Minutes, are starting to turn on the NFL and highlight the medical issues and the subsidization of billionaire owners.

Don’t expect things to change overnight. For some communities, whatever the risks, football is a valuable lottery ticket out to a better life. And winning is still fun and a key source of local pride. Sean Payton, head coach of the Saints, was suspended last year because of so-called Bounty-gate where his players were paid extra to try and knock-out those on the other side. He was welcomed back with open arms by the fans, the team, and ownership, all of whom still remember the sweet taste of Super Bowl success and hope for a return to glory. Payton is the highest paid coach in the league at $8 million a year.

One could also argue that our culture, like the Romans, will just turn even more brutal and fiscally irresponsible. The UFC has skyrocketed in popularity the past decade and this is just a shade below actual gladiators. Still, the number of athletes and fans associated with the rise of that “sport” (and there are certainly brutal skills involved) is a fraction of what football requires.

I am not saying that we are on the edge of a cliff. They will not be giving away NFL or Notre Dame tickets when you buy a pizza next year. Far from it, as I was reminded when a friend plaintively lamented the “end of football” and the long wait until it begins again. We may not even be at the absolute peak of the madness, but check back with me in a decade or so and I expect that Super Bowl ad rates will be slowly dropping along with salaries, and there won’t be nearly as many diamond encrusted stadiums on the drawing board. We shall see.