In the midst of questions about the ethics of college athletics, some UNC fans might have decided to divert their attentions to the world of professional sports in hopes of enjoying football with a clearer conscience.
Sadly, at least in the case of the Carolina Panthers, professional fanhood remains complicated. Those enjoying the team’s surprising late-season success also have to deal with the often unpleasant realities of professional sports, including the Panthers’ often exploitative relationship with its home city of Charlotte and its fans.
The team’s most recent round of renovations was financed by taxpayer funds that had been previously earmarked for the city’s convention center.
The Panthers also indicated that an extra $50 million from the city might help secure the team’s presence in the city for an extra four years beyond the 2018 season guaranteed by the current agreement.
Panthers owner Jerry Richardson delicately implied that the team’s continued presence in Charlotte would more or less be contingent upon the state’s willingness to help it pay for whatever it liked.
“(NFL teams) are so coveted, they don’t have to pay,” WRAL reported Richardson as saying back in 2013. “There are only 32 (teams).”
Professional football teams are unquestionably assets to the cities where they reside. But the Panthers, like so many teams before and since, have leveraged this fact and undermined the benevolent force they have the potential to be in their communities. Profit-making continues to clearly supercede the concerns of fans where their interests diverge.
Finally, the Panthers suffer from the health crises that afflict all football teams, from Pop Warner up through the NFL, a league which has marginalized reports concerning the lasting trauma its players suffer and failed to provide adequate care for that trauma once its players have left the game. It’s a league that does little to combat a hypermasculine culture of violence
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