FIFA has nothing on the NFL.
Maybe you’ve heard the shocking news that a country, where it’s 108 degrees when the games are played, Qatar, appears to have seen the need to bribe the people in charge in order to get the World Cup there in 2022.
On Wednesday, the U.S. Justice department indicted 14 people on charges of bribery, racketeering, money-laundering and other charges. Two days later, FIFA reelected Sepp Blatter, the man in charge while all this corruption was going on, to his fifth term as president.
All over the world, there are tumbleweeds bouncing around and through stadiums that were built by corrupt governments to lure the World Cup and or the Olympics to their countries.
And most people didn’t need the U.S. Justice Department to confirm their suspicions that palms were being greased.
The national media, sports and otherwise, have been all over the soccer corruption story. It’s received almost as much coverage as Deflategate.
But you know what’s been getting very little coverage? San Diegogate.
Okay, nobody’s calling it San Diegogate because not enough people care to qualify it for a “gate.”
Inept, corrupt politicians have spent billions of government dollars on stadiums for more than 40 years, many times in direct opposition to the people who elected them.
And just as with FIFA, those same politicians keep winning elections. The difference, of course, is that ol’ Sepp is not a government official.
The San Diego Chargers are the latest NFL team that seems to have succeeded in extorting tax money for a $1.2 billon stadium by threatening a move to Los Angeles.
The Chargers play in a 40-year-old stadium and the NFL can’t have that, even if the people in San Diego aren’t interested in having their money confiscated and given to a billion-dollar corporation.
The national non-sports media was all over Deflategate. They were talking about Tom Brady’s deflated footballs on the network newscasts and even the Sunday talk shows.
But have you heard or seen anybody talking about the corruption in San Diego?
