With the world in full-blown crazy meltdown mode right now, at least we can share in our misery of watching our favorite football teams lose!
The American Professional Football Association was formed in Canton, Ohio, on September 17, 1920. Ralph Hay, a young entrepreneur car salesman, bought an established winning team, the Canton Bulldogs, in 1918. It was a simpler time back then. Teams traveled the state of Ohio to their games; players were paid meager wages and would then jump from team to team because who cares? There was no uniformity, and that needed to change.
Hay sought to form a league with other owners to prevent players from jumping from team to team, as if they were college players in the post-COVID era. So, he got together four other owners from Ohio, and then they, in turn, expanded the league to ten more teams by including clubs from New York to Michigan and Indiana. The 14-team league played games from September to December. Despite the Bulldogs' success when Hays purchased them, his squad finished eighth in the league that inaugural season.
In 1921, the APFA changed its name to the National Football League. In 1961, the NFL made Canton the home of its Hall of Fame. Interestingly, Hay is not a member of the Hall. How is that possible?
One hundred twenty-five years later, what had been a ragtag collection of teams in Ohio has grown into the juggernaut we experience today, and football season marks an important time in the American culture calendar. The last few weeks and days of summer are spent pulling together fantasy teams, and Saturdays and Sundays in September are spent watching football of all levels. You can watch a football game every day of the week until February. How’s that for fun!
The NFL has become an institution too big to fail. The thirty-two teams that make up the league have an average value of $7 billion. The Dallas Cowboys, the most drama-filled franchise ever created, have a value of $10 billion, the most of any sports franchise. Networks and streaming platforms have coughed up $110 billion to broadcast games that have increased by one more regular season. Games are played in Europe, Mexico, and I even saw one played in Brazil last week. Brazil. In South America.
We love betting on games. In 2025, legal betting on NFL games is expected to reach $30 billion, yet we cannot and must not have Medicare for All. Don’t worry; our state and federal governments are subsidizing all this by having us taxpayers pay billions in renovations and construction to their stadiums. At the same time, the minimum wage hasn’t increased since 2009, and it remains embarrassingly well under $10 an hour, officially making it a poverty wage in 2025.
If this essay appears to be a little sour on the NFL, forgive me. As a fan of the Cleveland Browns, “fun” is not something I ever associate with football. I stopped playing fantasy football many years ago because I was awful at it. I don’t gamble, which makes Annonymous very happy because I wouldn’t be good at that either.
But I do watch and appreciate the football season, just not as much as I used to. I did watch the second half of the Browns game yesterday, and yikes, man.
Okay, let's highlight what else happened this week. As a reminder, these events celebrate their anniversary, ending in 5 or 0. Here's what I got:
1. Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Act on September 18, 1850. In 1793, Congress passed our first Fugitive Slave Act, which required the return of escaped enslaved people. Thanks to the newly ratified Constitution, this law was created as an enforcement mechanism between the states and the federal government. By the early 1840s, more enslaved people kept escaping, and more northern states kept not giving them back. So to allow potential new states to enter the union, a compromise was made where not only was it permissible for people from the South to come to the North and take people, but it was also illegal for people in the North not to help them! Thanks, Millard Fillmore!
2. Rock star Jimi Hendrix died on September 18, 1970. James Hendrix was born in Seattle in 1942, took up the guitar at 15, joined the army in 1961, rather than go to jail, and eventually moved to England in 1966. His music career took off, and by 1969, he was the world’s highest-paid rock musician when he headlined the Woodstock Music Festival. He struggled with substance abuse and died at 27 after choking on his own vomit after ingesting a toxic combination of sleeping pills and barbiturates.
3. Goodfellas was released in the United States on September 19, 1990. The gangster film directed by Martin Scorsese is the film adaptation of the 1985 nonfiction book, Wiseguy, written by journalist Nicholas Pileggi. It tells the story of Mafia associate, turned informant, Henry Hill, (which I always thought was a funny name because it’s so close to Harold Hill from The Music Man, who was a con artist). Goodfellas would be a huge hit for actors Robert De Niro, Ray Liotta, Lorraine Bracco, and Joe Pesci, who would win an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.
Here’s an extra note that I found interesting.
William Blaxton was born in Horncastle, England, in 1595. Horncastle is in Lincolnshire County, in the eastern part of England. Blaxon would eventually hop on a boat named the Katherine and travel west to the New World, where he arrived in Weymouth, Massachusetts, which was settled a year before he got there. Blaxton would eventually travel northwest, where he landed in a place he recorded as “Shawmut,” a native American term that they think refers to salt water.
Disliking the name “Shawmut,” it was immediately decided on September 16, 1630, to change the name to Boston, after the town in Lincolnshire, just south of Horncastle. The name “Boston” comes from St. Botolph, an English saint who is the patron saint of boundaries, which I have to imagine means establishing personal boundaries with others. Right? It can’t mean literal boundaries, because who wants to be the patron saint of effectively drawn lines in the sand?
Anyway, think of this when watching the Shamut Red Sox and the Shawmut Celtics, moving forward.
There will be no essay this Friday. Sorry! This week will be crazy. Anonymous and I are celebrating our third wedding anniversary on Wednesday. But she’s going out of town for some spy work, and I think she may be back to celebrate? Then I think she told me she’s leaving again. I have no idea what’s going on. Perhaps Blue knows the deal?
I also need to spend more time catching up on work. I will be back a week from now. Thanks for understanding!
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Okay,
Chris
