Minor League Baseball: The Last Bastion Of Acceptable Exploitation In…
For every top-flight prospect apprenticing in the minors after receiving a multi-million dollar signing bonus, hundreds of players are drafted every year and get $1,000, tops. Salaries start at $1,100 a month, and the checks only come for half a year. As Lily Rothman says over at Slate, most of these players are "stuck…
Last Night's Arena Football Season-Opener Was A Farce
Arena Football's 25th season kicked off last night, but it would be a stretch to call what was played in Orlando "football." A players' strike hours before kickoff meant both teams mostly used replacement players selected in a draft before the game, leaving NFL Network announcers without rosters and some players
Exclusive: Leaked Documents Show Operating Profits For NFL Ventures…
NFL Ventures, the league's billion-dollar, all-but-the-kitchen-sink wing that oversees sponsorships, marketing, media properties, sales, and satellite rights, saw its operating profit grow by 29 percent from 2009 to 2010. This was along about the time that owners began claiming the business of professional football had …
Exclusive: We've Obtained Audited Financials For The NFL League Office
These are audited financial statements for the NFL's league office, the nerve center of professional football, covering the years ended March 31, 2009, and March 31, 2010. The documents below deal with only one piece of NFL operations, and there aren't any obviously mind-melting revelations about the financial state of …
Roger Goodell Is Waving His Dick Around Only Because He Loves Us So…
Roger Goodell said some bullshit yesterday that, I swear, the Serious Football Media would've tsk-tsked as "counterproductive rhetoric" had anything so disingenuous come out of De Smith's mouth. Here's what the commisioner told Tampa Bay season ticketholders in a conference call:
The NFL Lockout Court Battle, Explained Via Pretty Word Clouds
Like bright colors? Hate the complexity of legal procedure? Well, not only are you the target audience for the NFL's lockout PR campaign, but you might also enjoy these visualizations we made out of the court documents from Brady et al v. National Football League. Above is a word cloud for all of the court documents so …
More Misplaced Rhetoric From Pro Football Talk
De Smith says the NFL is the "first league in the history of sports that has ever sued to not play their game," which, like a lot of slogans, isn't entirely accurate (the NFL hasn't sued), even if it accurately conveys the sense that the NFL is taking great pains to get its lockout. Mike Florio has some thoughts about…
