"Football", "soccer" as it's known in the U.S., has a fanatical fan base in Western Europe, South America, etc.
The U.S. scrapes by with a kind of football where the ball isn't even round (except in latitudinal cross-section).
Psychologists have suggested pro-sport fans ("fan" being an abbreviation for "fanatic") harmlessly diffuse passions that in simpler times might have gone to clan warfare, etc.
It's big bidness in the U.S., including the predictable unseemly underbelly so often present among enterprises awash in $dollars.
For example some NFL team owners avoid some or all of the cost of building a stadium for their team, by getting government with jurisdiction at the construction site to pay.
Government bears the cost.
The wealthy team owners make the profit.
It's not a particularly well kept secret. But the world looks the other way, perhaps because they enjoy the entertainment.
"It's another example of mismanagement in corporate America where we're now expected as tax payers to bail them out. They're capitalists when they make money. But they're socialists when they lose money."
Actor Tim Robins, commenting on a California commercial electric power crisis
The U.S. scrapes by with a kind of football where the ball isn't even round (except in latitudinal cross-section).
Psychologists have suggested pro-sport fans ("fan" being an abbreviation for "fanatic") harmlessly diffuse passions that in simpler times might have gone to clan warfare, etc.
It's big bidness in the U.S., including the predictable unseemly underbelly so often present among enterprises awash in $dollars.
For example some NFL team owners avoid some or all of the cost of building a stadium for their team, by getting government with jurisdiction at the construction site to pay.
Government bears the cost.
The wealthy team owners make the profit.
It's not a particularly well kept secret. But the world looks the other way, perhaps because they enjoy the entertainment.
"It's another example of mismanagement in corporate America where we're now expected as tax payers to bail them out. They're capitalists when they make money. But they're socialists when they lose money."
Actor Tim Robins, commenting on a California commercial electric power crisis
