“The first group-stage opponent for the United States men’s national team was Ghana. In order to televise the game for its 25 million citizens, Ghana had to ration electricity and import 50 megawatts of power from neighboring countries. (That nations like Ghana can compete with a country like the United States on a level playing field remains an underrated Cup perversity. In fact, going into the contest, Ghana was justifiably viewed as a slight favorite. No one in the U.S. seemed to accept how crazy that was. This would be like the residents of Woodstock, N.Y., challenging the entire Houston metropolitan area to a game of softball, and every hard-core softball fan immediately assuming Woodstock would probably win.) In the end, the country with the most electricity prevailed, 2-1.”
Tag Archives: sports
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In the last generation or so, the classic script of Babe Ruth, Harmon Killebrew and Rivera has largely deteriorated into a mess of squiggles and personal branding.
It is not just baseball, of course. The legible signature, once an indelible mark of personal identity, is increasingly rare in modern life. From President Obama, who sometimes uses an autopen, to patrons at a restaurant, few take the time to carefully sign their names.
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This graph summarizes the data, with “average Americans” in tan, football fans in maroon, and other fans in olive. Now since the survey methodology reports a survey of 1,011 adults—not just sports fans—I assume that the data below represent a subset of those Americans who follow sports. But, according to the data, that is 89% of all Americans (I’m one of the other 11%).
Yes, exactly half of the fans (and 55% of football fans) see supernatural influences in sports.
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Mr. Finkelman’s perhaps quixotic legal campaign hinges on the difference between the face value of his tickets, about $500 each, and what he had to pay to get them. The league’s own website explains the situation with an understatement: “The demand for tickets to the Super Bowl greatly exceeds the supply.” The vast majority of seats — and this year there are more than 80,000 — are never made directly available for purchase by the public. First, 75 percent are distributed among the N.F.L.’s 32 teams, with 17.5 percent given to each team playing in the game and about 6 percent given to the host team (or teams, in this instance, with the Giants and the Jets splitting that allotment). Another 25 percent are kept by the league itself and are given to officials, the media and important corporate sponsors.
That leaves just 1 percent or so for ordinary fans like Mr. Finkelman, whose only chance to buy a seat at face value was to enter the lottery that is held each year by mail starting in February and ending in June, well before many people are thinking about the game. Mr. Finkelman admitted that his interest in the contest was not fully piqued until late in the season, when the lottery was long over and the league’s face-value tickets, starting at $500, were already gone. The delay compelled him to conduct his search in the secondary market, where, according to the ticket service TiqIQ, the average seat last week in the relatively inexpensive mezzanine level was $2,900, and the costliest corporate suite was going for the mansion-like sum of $962,000.
Common wisdom holds that Super Bowl XLVIII is unique because it is the first championship game in N.F.L. history to be held outdoors in a cold-weather stadium. But there is an additional distinction, said Bruce Nagel, Mr. Finkelman’s lawyer: It is being played in New Jersey, a state that has an uncommonly expansive consumer protection law.
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“There is no greater unifier in American culture than professional football, which is followed by 68 percent of men and 42 percent of women — Republicans and Democrats in equal numbers. Game telecasts accounted for nine of the 10 most-watched programs in 2013, and the previous three Super Bowls were the most-viewed television programs of all time in the United States.”
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The haul of counterfeit swag sprawled across 15 feet of prime display table in a Midtown Manhattan hotel.
Stacks of football jerseys, with the names of stars like Peyton Manning and Russell Wilson. Heaps of knit watch caps, embroidered with the fierce-beaked bird logo of the Seattle Seahawks, or the strapping, bucking horse of the Denver Broncos. T-shirts and baseball caps, propped against boxes that were marked “Homeland Security EVIDENCE.”
That was just a taste of at least 202,000 items seized by federal agents in recent weeks because they had bogus National Football League trademarks. The rest will remain in warehouses until it is no longer needed as evidence, said John Sandweg, the acting director of the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement division.
And then?
“Then it is destroyed,” Mr. Sandweg said.
With much of the country in the steeliest grip of winter, Mr. Sandweg was asked if there weren’t better uses for the clothing than shipping it to industrial shredders or incinerators.
“It’s counterfeit — what else can we do with it?” Mr. Sandweg said.
He added: “We are required to destroy it by law.”
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“While EA Sports has an exclusive license to use names, plays and other elements of the league, the N.F.L. has editorial oversight. Mr. Langley and others vet thousands of pages of recorded scripts and delete inappropriate dialogue, like the harshest trash talk. Chop blocks, helmet-to-helmet hits and other illegal plays are not permitted in the video game — even with accompanying penalties — despite the other efforts at realism. This stems not only from the league’s fastidiousness about its image but also from Mr. Madden’s insistence that the game be exciting and educational.”
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“Jersey City welcomes Super Bowl XLVIII,” declares the mural in tall, silvery letters and Roman numerals between outsize images of the Vince Lombardi Trophy, which is given to the winning team. The mural also has two images that originally looked like the National Football League’s logo, a blue shield with a football and stars at the top and red letters in the center — an N, an F and an L.
But the center of the shield has been painted over, obscuring the letters. Abdul Gonsalves, perhaps better known as the graffiti artist Paws21, said he had painted the letters when he painted the mural. So why did they disappear?
“You would have to get in contact with City Hall,” Mr. Gonsalves said.
Jennifer Morrill, a spokeswoman for the city government, said the letters were painted over because of concerns about using the N.F.L. logo without the league’s permission.
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“Daniel L. Spuck of Mercer, Pa., has filed a motion against the NFL to the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania for “a temporary emergency injunction” on the basis that the Chargers should not have been in the postseason because of a missed call in the Week 17 game between San Diego and Kansas City. The filing came before the first round of the playoffs.”
shaun james bockert 