Should we care who owns sports teams?  Does it matter if Rush Limbaugh becomes a team owner, after his long track record of racist and sexist statements, or is it a waste of time to get all crazy about it?  Should the players who have spoken out about it just shut and play, or should they stick to their statements and refuse to play for a Limbaugh-owned team?  It all depends on just how much football, and other sports, mean to us.  Are they just mindless entertainment or do they hold some greater meaning to our lives?  If the former is true, then we shouldn’t care at all.  After all, we don’t give a damn one way or the other who owns the movie studios or the record companies or the television networks, do we?  If Rush Limbaugh bought the record label of your favorite recording artist, would you no longer buy their music?  Would you stop watching your favorite TV shows if Rush bought the network they were on?

But what if the latter is true, that the games are more than games to us?  Then it should matter.  Professional sports have long served as a platform for social justice in our society, and the rise of someone like Limbaugh to the level of ownership would be symbolic of something sinister.  And it would be character revealing as well; we’d see who really is just about the money in the NFL, and how many of us are just concerned about being entertained on Sundays.  Any of you up to that challenge?

What I do find ironic, however, is that ultra right-wing Limbaugh is looking to get into a league that is the closest thing to true socialism out there.  Between all the revenue sharing, the salary cap, the salary floor, the draft, and the public financing of stadiums there’s a whole lot there for a supposed free market fundamentalist to get upset over.  But I’m betting that free market Rush will take his socialism just fine should he become an NFL owner while blasting it from the airwaves five days a week on his radio show. Which will make him a hypocrite as well as a racist.

I don’t know about you, but I welcome the opportunity to call him out for yet another inconsistency between what he says and what he does.