I was stunned, disgusted and ultimately saddened to learn today that the National Football League enjoys tax-exempt status. This was news to me, which isn’t surprising given that I’ve never watched a football game in its entirety and was gently chided by an alert editor, recently, when for what may have been the first time ever I used the words Super Bowl in an article, and had to be reminded that it is spelled as two words.
6 comments:
I think that art and football in the ways that I see it, are very different things. Yes there is an "art" to football, and there is something from football that we see in art. However, in my mind they are two very different worlds. I always find it interesting when they mix at the superbowl creating a half time show. Either way they are both forms of entertainment for a wider variety of people.
It is true that football, along with almost every other American sport, will always be more popular than art. While it makes me sad that newspapers are not as willing to send reporters to arts events as they are to sports events, it is simply human nature that people are going to congregate around events that are more competitive in nature. Humans crave competition, and art involves little to no competition. Also, I do think art is in general considered as less popular than other events. However, this is not necessarily the case. While thousands of people may attend a baseball game at Yankee stadium, thousands of people also will attend the Met, MoMA, and Broadway theaters daily.
As a fan of both the arts and football it is sad to see there has to be a competition between the two. I think my appreciation for both is not always the case, the avid football fan is not generally interested in going to the opera also. There are just two different types of people who generally attend these events and the way to appeal to both groups is also different. The intrigued artist will flip through the entire acts section in a paper but the football fan will go straight to the recap of sundays game and not much else. Its sad there is this distinction between the two maybe one day there will be a merge.
While I think this is an interesting point to bring up, the tone of the article comes across, to me at least, as an arts writer whining about the perks of being a sports writer. Some of the comments in the article point out the differences between the NFL, which is a 501(c)(6) organization, and a 501(c)(3) arts organization, namely the latter being able to solicit tax-deductible donations and the former is ineligible for foundation grant-type things.
Rather than a productive, "What are we as an industry going to DO about the ubiquitousness of football compared to the relative jargon-sounding arts world", the article feels to me as if it's saying, "Why does everyone like football instead of the arts! I want to write about a popular thing and have it also be arts related and look at these bone-headed editors who don't UNDERSTAND ART AND CULTURE!."
I understand how frustrating inequity can be, but perhaps we as an industry should look to football and other professional sports for ideas about self-promotion. Sports fans seem to dig a good underdog story, and there seems to be enough meat here to spin this as one.
This is an interesting article because in essence you could argue football is a giant performance and performance is art. I agree with Jason that these certainly are different styles of performances or art, but in my opinion football reminds me of some of the really old gladiator type performances people are so intrigued by. I wonder what some die hard anti art type football fan would have to say if you told them football was not to far away from Wicked or Kinky Boots.
I think that the writer of this article is wrong in trying to make this a competition between sports and art. I am both an avid football and theater fan and I am happy when I see either covered in the media. I do think that sports get more coverage because of their larger fan base, but to say that art some how is more deserving of the spotlight is kind of elitist. I think that there are just as many complex facets to football as there are to opera, but they are interesting to different types of people.
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