You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy.
Perception Vs Reality when it comes to the economic state of this nation.
Turn on the news or open your local paper and you are immediately immersed in the financial woes of the day.
How much debt this nation owes China. Foreclosures on the rise. How many people are out of work.
I have no doubt that all these perceptions are accurate. But I also think that perception is just that, perception, and it depends where you look, when you look.
Here’s the good news: according to The Labor Department, there will only be 42,000 jobs lost instead of the forecast 152,000 jobs lost. And that’s the good news?
That’s not perception, that is reality. 110,000 people will lose their job, and that is suppose to be encouraging signs that the economy is rebounding, and perhaps it is.
But the perception is somewhat more skewed.
Though the news is dour, the perception can be otherwise, at least where I’ve been shining the light lately.
This month I have been to two college football games. The University of Texas vs Baylor in Austin and Ole Miss vs the University of Tennessee at Knoxville.
Both teams call themselves U.T. Both stadiums hold over 100,000 people. Both teams have southern accents and sport orange as their primary color.
My perception is both teams have a rabid fan base that is either not affected by this recession or not concerned about how they are going to pay the rent.
At both venues, I was immediately inundated by the sense of excess.
Parking lots were filled with expensive SUV’s and campers. Grills blazed with butcher cut meats. Alcohol from the finest breweries flowed in a non stop procession to the porta john.
I didn’t have time to partake in the excess of the Tennessee festivities, but I can say this about what I perceived.
There was money to burn.
The crowd was announced at 97,000 people. My ticket was close to 70 dollars and I purchased 2. I bought a tank of gas to get to the game. I spent 20 dollars to park the car in a lot 6 blocks from the stadium. I dropped over a hundred dollars on stadium pizza and coke and peanuts.
The entire day cost me a mere 250 dollars. I figured that was the low end of the financial spectrum. I thought about that as I gazed upon the sea of screaming, cheering orange Volunteers.
As I heard Rocky Top played for the 18th time, and watched Smokey run across the endzone to the point of exhaustion in a 52 to 14 beat down of Ole Miss, I wondered just how much money was being spent in that stadium, on this game.
If you take my expenditure and multiply it by the announced attendance, you get a mind boggling $24,500,000.
One stadium’s worth of people generating the kind of income in one afternoon that only a Bill Gates family reunion can appreciated.
Now extrapolate that across the country. There are roughly 100 NCAA division I teams. There are countless other division II and III schools.
Imagine the packed house at the Horseshoe in Ohio State and the Swamp in Florida and the Big House in Michigan, all with similar events and similar excess.
24 million dollars times100 stadiums equals $2,425,000,000
That’s 2.425 BILLION!
This is just a crazy estimate on one college football Saturday by a guy who doesn’t get paid to count decimal places. All I’m saying is maybe the answer to revitalizing the economy is college football.
Make every American buy a ticket and cook a burger and drink a beer and cheer on their team.
Take all that money and just put it in a big get-out-of-debt America bucket and in a week or two we can tell China to kiss our ass, go bother the French.
I know I’m being facetious, but I really wondered to myself, especially in Texas, How Bad Is It?
The answer I kept coming back with: Not So Damn Bad.
The stadium was packed. 101,000 crazy burnt orange fans all drinking huge 8 dollar sodas and eating 11dollar trays of Nacho Cheese.
If Tennessee was excessive, then Texas was over the top. I had the good fortune to go to one of the most lavish tailgate parties ever staked into a grass lot.
Dozens of coolers filled with adult beverages. Several smokers were running full tilt, breaking every imaginable EPA regulation for smoke as hundreds of pounds of steaks, brats and bar b Que pork grilled to perfection. Wine was flowing like a smooth southern accent and ornate festival tents were anchored to the Earth providing shade from a brilliant autumn sun. Inside these carnival sized tents, satellite TV was available, broadcasting college game day on a 52 inch flat panel TV.
The ambiance was good times accentuated by the unmistakable scent of Long Horn Football.
Everywhere you looked was the flavor of affluence and insouciance. If there are 110,000 jobs being lost, it sure as hell ain’t happening here.
Maybe it’s in Detroit? Maybe in Akron.
Austin is still weird and apparently able to reach into its wallet and put on a good time.
The amount of money being generated through this Saturday ritual was mind boggling.
Where I spent 250 dollars to go to the UT game. I guarantee you, the cost of the Texas football extravaganza was ten times that.
Food and drinks was only part of the equation. The women at this tailgate were impeccably dressed.Everyone wore new cowboy boots.
Men were were less aggressive in their apparel, but the flavor of success and economic upward mobility was certainly apparent.
The only time I really thought about the financial crisis being waged in this nation is when perception and reality met at the horeshoe pit for a beer.
That’s when a homeless man collecting cans came by. The festive group of Texas fans couldn’t have been nicer to this street urchin, offering him a Coors Light and a bunch of aluminium to fill his bag. They talked about whatever the very rich and the very poor talk about at a gathering such as this.
That was the only time, in 8 hours, that I remembered that this economy is reportedly spinning off its access.
As I sat in the lavish Texas Longhorn stadium, and the crowd of 101,000 was announced, I couldn’t help but think that somehow, if all these people can economically man-up, then so can this nation.
If all these people can pump millions into the local economy, then there must be millions that can be pumped into the local economy where you live too.
Somehow the leaders of this great nation, with their economic degrees from Harvard need to go to a UT football game.
Whether it be in Texas or Tennessee, the people who wear orange, seem to understand green, better than the paper pushers who clog the halls of our congressional buildings.
Maybe the guy turning the spit in Austin should get a crack at revitalizing this nation.
I’ll tell you one thing, they might not generate any jobs, but the bar b Que will sure taste a lot better.
And that is crazy.