Football and Politics

What Matters Most

Commentary by Jim High

Football and Politics    

Football is a game, politics is not.  Most people I think would agree with that statement.  But maybe football is not just a game to Alabama’s Head Football Coach Nick Saban, college football’s highest paid coach, who makes an annual salary of $7,300,000.00.  Do you realize that every day, 365 days a year, Nick Saban is paid $20,000.00.  

But football is just a game, and sadly my team the Mississippi State Bulldogs lost to Nick Saban’s team last weekend by only 5 points.  Seems that fancy salary ought to buy more than that.  But it is still the best season of football in Mississippi State’s history and even a grossly overpaid coach cannot take that away from us.  We have two games left and will probably get another chance at beating Alabama before this season is over.

It is easier for me to understand that football is after all just a game because when I attended Mississippi State back in 1958 – 1962, we won only two SEC football games during my four years and were solidly in that streak when Ole Miss beat Mississippi State in football 17 years in a row. That streak did not end until 1964.  Now basketball, that’s another matter entirely as we won the SEC championship 3 of those 4 years.

State’s not so good football fortunes continued for some time and I got in the habit of going to Pickwick Lake with friends and going out to a rocky beach on the Tennessee River in my boat, building a bonfire and listening to the Saturday afternoon games.  When we lost, which usually happened, you could click off the radio, add a log to the fire, pop another beer and realize that football is only a game.

Now we all know that politics is not a game, as it affects all our lives.  But the problem is that for way too long now the Republicans and the Democrats have been playing politics as if it was just a game and the point was to see whether Democrats or Republicans would win.  Political parties winning and losing elections is not the point, and politics is not a game.  Right now, however, politics is being played as if it were a game and the whole nation is the loser.  

Most Americans couldn’t care less about who wins and who loses the elections because most Americans are smart enough to know that politics is not a game.  It is about our very lives and the success of our country as a nation.  With the Congressional approval ratings in the tank it is obvious that something is seriously wrong.

Take the Affordable Care Act, about half the states, all Republican, have refused to expand Medicaid leaving hundreds of thousands of their citizens without access to healthcare.  Do we want to live in a nation that does not provide healthcare to all its citizens? Why would we want that?  What advantage does it give us?  Now even though the cost to the states is zero for three years and then just a small percentage after that, you’ll hear Republicans screaming that their state can’t afford it.  What I want to scream is that we can’t afford to continue to spend 55% of our country’s annual federal budget on the military and on unnecessary wars.  Just think what the country could do if we spent just half that amount and the rest on services for our citizens.  The country is falling apart while we waste money abroad.  Does this make sense to anyone?

I think politicians have forgotten the point of government; it is not to serve themselves and their rich supporters, but to serve us, all the citizens, not just a selected few.  To do that properly they need to settle on the end result that they want for all Americans and then work toward making it happen. 

  

While I am on my soapbox, let me also state that we’re moving in the wrong direction and if we continue playing the game of politics it will ultimately destroy the country.  We cannot expect our country, or any country, to succeed when 5% of the wealthiest people own 80% of everything.  This can only bread revolution.

What Matters Most…………….Repeat after me – “Football is a game, politics is not.”  Let’s fix this while there is still time to do so.

© 2014 #24  Jim High can be reached at P. O. Box 467, Tupelo, MS 38802-0467