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Pro sports have done a great job selling themselves as "necessary".

This particular form of corporate welfare is even more disgusting than others.

The disgusting stuff to me is the obvious federal pork where a lobbyist group gets some sort of direct ROI on campaign donations.

What the NFL does is inspire the will of the people, much like a modern day Otto Von Bismarck. If people don't want it they wouldn't pay for it.

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but study after study has shown that these teams don't have anywhere near the impact that most people think they do.

Maybe not economically no, except for someone like NO that can get a lot of Superbowls.

My point is these teams have a real impact psychologically. Some of it is small community's who use pro sports to seem and feel "big time." Some of it is how pro sports allow people in massive communities to find a sub community with shared values.

If feel if we didn't have pro sports, we would find other ways to have communities tokely compete with each other, maybe more violently. It is human nature to want to fight therefore prove yourself by attacking the next village over. We have moved passed that as a society but not biologically. The NFL is the psychological bridge between humanity's past and its future.