PrintFebruary 1, 2009
Top Ten Changes if Congress Bails Out the Super Bowl
According to accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers, this year's Super Bowl game generated about $150M for the Tampa Bay area, down $50M from Phoenix's 2008 revenue. Next year's game will be played at Dolphin Stadium in Miami Gardens, Florida. If the current rate of decline continues, Miami will get only a hundred million.
It's obvious to anyone that relies on NASA's climate computer models that the 2013 Super Bowl host city therefore will have to pay fans $50M to sleep in their hotels and dine in their restaurants. Even more alarming, at the current rate of decline, a host city will have to pay fans over four billion dollars to attend their Super Bowl at the end of this century.
Clearly, we have another economic crisis on our hands. And as with all other crises, only government can bail us out.
Since the Super Bowl is too big to fail, Congress must act immediately to head off this impending Armageddon. And as they did with other emergency bailouts, they must take over management of the Super Bowl, appoint a "czar" to officiate at the game, and insist on modifications that will make the event more just.
Here, then, are the top ten changes we might see in next year's bailed out Super Bowl:
10. Gatorade team consumption quotas and a guzzler tax on players over 300 pounds. Eventually, at the urging of Mayor Bloomberg, Gatorade will be banned completely, due to its "unhealthy" sugar content. Lentil soup will replace it on the sidelines. Only FDA-approved soup warmers will be allowed because unauthorized (non union-made) units might result in burns on the roof of a player's mouth. To ensure security, federal TSA employees will operate the warmers and x-ray every cup as the soup is dispensed. For some reason, each player will have to remove his shoes while drinking the soup
9. Affirmative action quotas for Asian, Hispanic, and female players. Points scored by women will be given a 20 percent premium to offset the historic legacy of sexism.
8. At the end of each quarter, the leading team ("dirty rotten successful bastards") will be required to surrender all of their windfall points. The czar somehow will manage to waste most of the confiscated points and then give the rest to the losing team ("football's innocent victims")
7. Stadium fans ("dirty rotten rich bastards") will be taxed at a rate of half their tickets, which will be seized at the time of purchase. In other words, if you need five tickets, you must buy ten. Lawmakers will distribute the confiscated tickets to "more deserving" fans.
6. The game will be delayed by four months, as not everyone will get around to buying a DTV converter by kickoff time. Fans will be sent home and told to return in June
5. Any fan that flew to the game in a private jet will have to sell his airplane and return via Amtrak or carpool home with a babbling celebutard in a Prius
4. All stadium lighting will be replaced with compact fluorescent lamps, powered by an estimated 354 wind turbines surrounding the stadium. Twelve thousand huge electric fans on union-assembled construction cranes will make the wind turbines rotate in the calm evening air. Infrared night vision cameras will be used to show each play, although the commentators will not be able to identify individual players or see the ball. And those power hungry flat-panel stadium displays will be replaced with gigantic white boards and jumbo dry erase markers purchased in West Virginia with a Department of Education grant earmarked by Senator Byrd
3. The halftime show will feature violent peace demonstrations by Code Pink.
2. No injured player will be permitted to receive medical treatment on the field. Instead, he or she will submit a Request for Medical Treatment Authorization (RFMTA) to Health and Human Services Secretary Daschle. If a tax-deductible "Dasch-PAC" contribution is attached, the player might be scheduled for treatment as early as 2011. Secretary Daschle will point out that the RFMTA also can be submitted conveniently over the Internet, along with a credit card number for the voluntary contribution. That could speed the processing to mid-2011, rather than late 2011
And finally, (drum roll please) the number one change we might see in next year's bailed out Super Bowl:
1. Players' union post-halftime strike to shorten the game to three quarters.
