Monday, September 22, 2014

A Fair Expectation

The National Football League is a tax-exempt, not-for-profit organization.  No kidding!  Not the teams themselves, but the league.  As it turns out, so too the PGA and the National Hockey League.  Not-for-profit, like a church or the American Cancer Society or your local food pantry.  The NFL!  Apparently the tax-exempt status grew out of the same conversations that granted it an exemption to various anti-trust laws when the former American Football League merged with it.  Not-for-profit.  It seems so very Orwellian to speak of an organization like the NFL as not-for-profit.

The league itself, according to USA Today, makes about $300 million a year, and the industry (including all the teams) turns over $9 billion a year. The teams are not tax-exempt, just the league.  Still, it is a money-making machine!  Television revenues alone . . . . well, you get the point.

Not-for-profits are established to better the community.  That is their purpose, and that is why they are allowed tax-exempt status.  Now it is true, the NFL does sponsor some charitable work.  And that is good.  But if the NFL really wants to live up to it's tax-exempt status, if it really wants to help better the community, then it has do a much more credible job of handling the domestic violence concerns that are being raised.  Thousands, no millions, of youngsters look up to players.  They are role models for youngsters across the country.  How the NFL deals with this crisis will send a strong message to those young people.  It has the potential to make our national community a better place.  And that is a fair expectation to have of a nationally recognized not-for profit organization.

No comments:

Post a Comment