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271Rihanna performed at halftime</a> in 272a much-anticipated return to the stage. And 30-second 273<a href="https://www.espn.co.uk/nfl/story/_/id/35587895/super-bowl-2023-commercials">advertising spots</a> sold 274for as much as $7 million apiece. </p> 275 276<p>One <a href="https://www.summitwealthgroup.com/blog/2023-super-bowl-by-the-numbers">investment management group estimated</a> the event will bring $700 million to the city of Phoenix, and an estimated $16 billion <a href="https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/super-bowl-2023-20-percent-of-american-adults-expected-to-bet-on-chiefs-vs-eagles-according-to-survey/">will be wagered on the game</a>.</p> 277 278<p>And, oh yeah, the Kansas City Chiefs beat the Philadelphia Eagles 38-35 in what turned out to be an entertaining game.</p> 279 280<h3><strong>Professional sport is primarily a business</strong></h3> 281 282<p>While the league may like to promote itself as simply men playing sport for the love of the game, their teammates, and the city they have been drafted or signed to play for, elite and professional sport is first and foremost a business. </p> 283 284<p>More specifically, it is a commodity spectacle where athletes put their bodies and brains on the line for our entertainment. They are both workers and product. Dollars and cents come to the league through ticket sales, TV licensing deals, merchandise, advertisement and anything else the league and its organizations can possibly sell. </p> 285 286<p>While we may know elite sport is business, rarely do we ask what the business and profit-making mean for everyone involved in the NFL business ecosystem, from the workers (players) to the capitalists (managers and owners) to the consumers (fans). </p> 287 288<p>This is by design. The NFL, like most businesses, does not want its consumers to see how their sausage is made, especially when it involves the amount of violence, exploitation and harm that exists in football.</p> 289 290 291 292<h3><strong>Threat of brain injury</strong></h3> 293 294<p>The most obvious of these harms is the long-term injury -- specifically brain injury -- to players. There is continued evidence of football's relationship with traumatic brain injury, dementia, memory loss, depression and premature death.</p> 295 296<p><a href="https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.2017.8334">A 2017 study</a> published by the <em>Journal of the American Medical Association</em>, said 177 of 202 former football players studied of all levels had <a href="https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/chronic-traumatic-encephalopathy">Chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE)</a>, including 110 of the 111 NFL players studied.</p> 297 298<p>In the latest <a href="https://www.bu.edu/articles/2023/bu-finds-cte-in-nearly-92-percent-of-former-nfl-players-studied/?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=link&utm_content=research_brain&utm_campaign=social_main">research out of Boston University,</a> 345 of the 376 former NFL players studied had (CTE). </p> 299 300<p>Because CTE can only be diagnosed post-mortem, these studies contain samples of brains that were donated by concerned families, and therefore are more likely to have CTE. Still, they show rates of 92 per cent for the NFL players studied. </p> 301 302<p>In contrast, a <a href="https://www.bu.edu/articles/2023/bu-finds-cte-in-nearly-92-percent-of-former-nfl-players-studied/?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=link&utm_content=research_brain&utm_campaign=social_main">2018 Boston University study</a> looked at 164 donated brains of men and women: only one had CTE, and he was a former college football player. </p> 303 304 305 306<p>It is harrowing to imagine how many players -- not just in the NFL, but in college and at the high school level -- are developing CTE, and suffering irreparable and lifetime damage to their brains and lives.</p> 307 308<p>Football is not the only sport where athletes are at risk of lifelong injury (rugby, ice hockey and combat sports are other big culprits), but many football players aren't even able to earn any money for their bodily sacrifice. </p> 309 310<h3><strong>Labor exploitation</strong></h3> 311 312<p>While the NFL and the college football industry sell the dream of scholarships and superstardom, only 6.5 per cent of high school students will even play college football. And they do not get paid for their Labor. And a miniscule 0.00075 per cent (800-900 out of 1.1 million) will <a href="https://www.sportskeeda.com/college-football/how-many-ncaa-football-players-make-nfl">play the game professionally</a>.</p> 313 314<p>If players do beat these lottery-level odds and make it to the NFL, <a href="https://www.nytimes.c
314om/2023/01/29/sports/football/nfl-contracts-injuries-young-players.html">football player careers average about three to four years</a>. Many contracts are not guaranteed, with teams able to cut players and not pay them the full amount of their salaries. </p> 315 316<p>Add to this the exploitation of a predominantly Black workforce of unpaid players who sacrifice their bodies and brains to <a href="https://link.springer.com/book/10.1057/9780230105539">fill the coffers of largely white coaches and team owners.</a></p> 317 318<p>As scholars <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2021/sep/07/race-money-and-exploitation-why-college-sport-is-still-the-new-plantation">Nathan Kalman-Lamb, Derek Silva and Johanna Mellis put it in <em>the Guardian</em>,</a> "big-time college sport is often about rich white people using Black people for profit."</p> 319 320<p>The treatment of athletes as mere commodities or investments, to be drafted and traded, used for value and profit extraction and then thrown away, permeates every layer of the NFL. </p> 321 322<h3><strong>Super Bowl traditions have a strong hold</strong></h3> 323 324<p>There are other issues too: this is not an exhaustive list of the harms associated with football and the NFL. These are just some of the behind-the-scenes facts and relationships that the NFL does not want fans thinking about, least of all during the Super Bowl.</p> 325 326<p>The Super Bowl -- as the culmination of the NFL's season long coverage -- is meant to make sure we continue to ignore these issues <a href="https://theconversation.com/protests-not-welcome-in-the-spectacle-of-sports-84817">by providing us with a spectacle to take our minds off the hard questions</a>. </p> 327 328<p>Karl Marx originally coined religion as the "opiate of the masses," and sport scholars have long adapted this passage to sport, and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/14775085.2017.1401383">specifically to mega-events</a> like the Super Bowl or the Olympic Games.</p> 329 330<p>Beyond distracting fans from their own personal problems and the unequal world they inhabit, the goal of football's spectacle (from the league's perspective) is also to distract fans from the very harms that the sport itself produces.</p> 331 332<p>Super Bowl traditions have a strong hold, and the game is often something that brings family and friends together. But at the very least, keep in mind the violence and harm that it takes to get to this game, and remember that there are human beings under those helmets.<!-- Below is The Conversation's page counter tag. Please DO NOT REMOVE. --><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/199658/count.gif?distributor=republish-lightbox-basic" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" style="border: none !important; box-shadow: none !important; margin: 0 !important; max-height: 1px !important; max-width: 1px !important; min-height: 1px !important; min-width: 1px !important; opacity: 0 !important; outline: none !important; padding: 0 !important" referrerpolicy="no-referrer-when-downgrade" /><!-- End of code. If you don't see any code above, please get new code from the Advanced tab after you click the republish button. The page counter does not collect any personal data. More info: https://theconversation.com/republishing-guidelines --></p> 333 334<p><span><a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/daniel-sailofsky-1373514">Daniel Sailofsky</a>, Lecturer, Department of Criminology, <em><a href="https://theconversation.com/institutions/middlesex-university-1246">Middlesex University</a></em></span></p> 335 336<p>This article is republished from <a href="https://theconversation.com">The Conversation</a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-super-bowl-what-we-love-but-mostly-hate-about-it-199658">original article</a>.</p> 337 338 339</div> 340</article> 341<article class="span8 holder indent1"> 342<div> 343 344 345<p> </p> 346<p align="center"><a style="color:#0000ff; text-decoration:underline" href="https://www.ihavenet.com/NFL/index.html" title="NFL Football News & Analysis Articles"> 347 <strong>More NFL Football ...</strong></a></p> 348<p align="center"> 349 <a style="color:#0000ff; text-decoration:underline" href="https://www.ihavenet.com/baseball.html" title="Baseball">BASEBALL</a> | 350 <a style="color:#0000ff; text-decoration:underline" href="https://www.ihavenet.com/basketball.html" title="Basketball">BASKETBALL</a> | 351 <a style="color:#0000ff; text-decoration:underline" href="https://www.ihavenet.com/college.html" title="NCAA College Sports">COLLEGES</a> | 352 <a style="color:#0000ff; text-decoration:underline" href="https://www.ihavenet.com/football.html" title="NFL Football">FOOTBALL</a> | 353 <a style="color:#0000ff; text-decoration:underline" href="https://www.ihavenet.com/golf.html" title="Golf">GOLF</a> | 354 <a style="color:#0000ff; text-decoration:underline" href="https://www.ihavenet.com/hockey.html" title="NHL Hockey">HOCKEY</a> | 355 <a style="color:#0000ff; text-decoration:underline" href="https://www.ihavenet.com/olympics.html" title="Olympics">OLYMPICS</a> | 356 <a style="color:#0000ff; text-decoration:underline" href="https://www.ihavenet.com/soccer.html" title="Soccer Futbol">SOCCER</a> | 357 <a style="color:#0000ff; text-decoration:underline" href="https://www.ihavenet.com/tennis.html" title="Tennis">TENNIS</a> 358</p> 359 360 361 362 363</div> 364</article> 365 366<article class="span8 holder indent1"> 367<div> 368 369 370 <p> </p> 371 <div style="border:1px solid #ccc;padding:3px;text-align:center;"> 372 <form action="http://www.feedburner.com/fb/a/emailverify" method="post" target="popupwindow" onsubmit="window.open('http://www.feedburner.com/fb/a/emailverifySubmit?feedId=1765978', 'popupwindow', 'scrollbars=yes,width=550,height=520');return true"> 373 <input type="hidden" value="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~e?ffid=1765978" name="url"/> 374 <input type="hidden" value="NFL Football Articles from iHaveNet.com" name="title"/> 375 <input type="hidden" name="loc" value="en_US"/> 376 <input class="btn btn-primary" type="submit" value="Click Here to Subscribe" /> 377 </form> 378 <p><strong>Receive our NFL News &
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