Raise your hand if you have a job. Keep it up if the person who hired you was part of a broader interview committee that included people who weren’t necessarily experts at the specific thing you were being hired to do. Good, now that everyone in the room has their hand up, let’s have a conversation about Condolezza Rice, corporate America, and exactly who gets to be in which room when the jobs and paychecks are being handed out.
Fans and commentators tend to look at the NFL—and pro sports broadly—as unique entities in which the moves made by athletes on the field are only rivaled by the power moves being made by the billionaires in the owner’s suites. It’s not an entirely misguided perspective: The NFL is literally a playground for the elite, with entry into the club as a player or owner only available to the members of a titular class with either singular athletic gifts or plutocratic wealth. If you focus on that long enough, it’s easy to miss the ways in which the NFL parallels life on earth for those of us among the mortal ranks of fans. Read more.
