I’m Not Supposed to be Here

I won’t watch the Super Bowl this Sunday.

Is it because I intensely hate both teams? Yes.

Is it because I don’t know who the halftime performer(s) is (are)? Also, yes.

Is it because I think all the commercials will be unfunny and because they have been viewed millions of times on YouTube before the game even starts? Yes, very much.

Let’s talk (nicely) about both team owners:

As Forbes says, “In 1994, [Jeff] Lurie took out a loan to buy the Philadelphia Eagles for $185 million. The team is now worth more than $6 billion.”

Lurie made his money in the entertainment industry, as Wikipedia explains:

In 1983, he left academia to join General Cinema Corporation, a major film company founded by his grandfather, Philip Smith, and headed by his uncle, Richard A. Smith. He worked as an executive in the company as a liaison between General Cinema Corporation and the production community in Hollywood. He was also an advisor in The General Cinema national film buying office.

He then founded Chestnut Hill Productions in 1985, which produced a string of Hollywood movies and TV shows. The company initially started off with a multi-feature joint venture with Tri-Star Pictures to develop projects, then in 1987, three of the Chestnut Hill projects were picked up by MGM/UA Communications Co., two with Paramount Pictures and Warner Bros. Pictures each, and a single picture Chestnut Hill is producing for Universal Pictures, and a majority of the eight Chestnut Hill productions would be received by Tri-Star Pictures which then become an independent production company. Tri-Star Pictures received first look at all projects that were handled by Chestnut Hill Productions, with Tri-Star and Chestnut Hill to co-finance development and Tri-Star could pick up the entire tab on production.

Maybe most surprising from his work this century is that he executive produced the documentary “Inside Job” (2010), which won the Oscar. And I liked it a lot:

Andrew Sheng: Why should a financial engineer be paid four times to 100 times more than a real engineer? A real engineer build bridges. A financial engineer build dreams. And, you know, when those dreams turn out to be nightmares, other people pay for it.

Charles Morris: I had a friend who was a bond trader at Merrill Lynch in the 1970s. He had a job as a train conductor at night, ’cause he had three kids and couldn’t support them on what a bond trader made. By 1986, he was making millions of dollars, and thought it was because he was smart.

Andrew Lo: Recently, neuroscientists have done experiments where they’ve taken individuals and put them into an MRI machine. And they have them play a game where the prize is money. And they noticed that when these subjects earn money, the part of the brain that gets stimulated is the same part that cocaine stimulates.

Christine Lagarde: The financial industry is a service industry. It should serve others before it serves itself.

Now, to Clark Hunt, the chairman and CEO of the Kansas City Chiefs, and maybe more importantly, the son of Chiefs founder Lamar Hunt and Lamar’s second wife Norma Hunt, and the grandson of oil tycoon H. L. Hunt.

A quick summary of H.L. Hunt from Britannica:

Hunt speculated in cotton properties until 1920. With a borrowed $50, he went to Arkansas and began trading in oil leases, buying and selling almost simultaneously so that he made money without spending any. In 1930, when an oil lease speculator called Dad Joiner struck oil in east Texas, Hunt quickly paid a $30,000 down payment on Joiner’s 4,000 acres and promised him more than $1,000,000 in oil later. The tract of land proved to be one of the richest oilfields in the United States.

Hunt continued to make shrewd investments in oil properties through his Hunt Oil Company, founded in 1936. One of his most successful ventures was his discovery and exploitation of vast oil deposits in Libya in the 1960s. With the immense wealth from sales of oil and natural gas, Hunt invested in publishing, cosmetics, pecan farming, and health food producers. By the time of his death, his fortune was variously estimated at between $2,000,000,000 and $3,000,000,000, with an income of more than $1,000,000 a week.

Maybe no one in the history of soccer in the United States contributed more than Clark’s father, Lamar Hunt:

Hunt was one of a number of wealthy men who help to found the North American Soccer League in 1968, but he did not join most of the others in the scramble for the exit after the NASL was swamped with red ink in its first season. In 1969, the NASL collapsed from 17 teams to just five, but Hunt was one of those who stayed committed to the fledgling venture. He was owner of the Dallas Tornado from 1968 until the team folded in 1981. He remained in soccer activities after the end of the NASL, and was among the initial investors when Major League Soccer began in the mid-1990s. His presence was so important to MLS that he was permitted to purchase two franchises, the Kansas City Wiz, later renamed the Wizards, and the Columbus Crew. In 2003, Hunt also purchased the Dallas Burn franchise, and later sold both the Kansas City and Columbus teams.

Hunt made an additional contribution to American soccer in 1999 when he financed the building of the 22,500-seat Columbus Crew Stadium, which was then the largest stadium ever built in the United States specifically for soccer. That was the start of a trend that saw 10 other MLS teams build their own stadiums within the next 15 years. In honor of Hunt’s various efforts, the U.S. Open Cup was renamed the Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup by the U.S. Soccer Federation in 1999.

And maybe my favorite family fact is that Clark’s mother, Norma Hunt, was “The First Lady of Football”:

When the Chiefs in 2020 reached their first Super Bowl since he was a 4-year-old, Chiefs chairman and CEO Clark Hunt recalled a nudge a few years before from his mother, Norma.

While she was being celebrated for having attended the first 50 Super Bowls, she told him, “Clark, it sure would be nice if we could play in this game while I’m still able to go.”

So they did for Super Bowl LIV…

Both Lamar and Norma Hunt have passed away.

Coincidentally, the Chicago Bears owner Virginia Halas McCaskey died this week at the age of 102:

McCaskey celebrated her 102nd birthday earlier this month, on January 5, and passed just three days before Super Bowl LIX.

“While we are sad, we are comforted knowing Virginia Halas McCaskey lived a long, full, faith-filled life and is now with the love of her life on earth,” the family said in a statement. “She guided the Bears for four decades and based every business decision on what was best for Bears players, coaches, staff, and fans.”

In a statement, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell praised McCaskey and her work as an owner, noting that she “leaves a legacy of class, dignity and humanity.”

“Faith, family, and football — in that order — were her north stars and she lived by the simple adage to always ‘do the right thing.’ The Bears that her father started meant the world to her and he would be proud of the way she continued the family business with such dedication and passion,” Goodell wrote.

Good luck to both teams. Well, sort of.

Enjoy the game and your weekend.

Watch “Heaven Can Wait” (1978):

Joe Pendleton: Let’s be the team that makes the rules! Let us be the team that plays fair, gets the best contract. Let’s be the popular players. We’re just going to have to forget about all these nuclear power plants until we find out if they’re safe. And that refinery in Pagglesham, we’re just going to have to relocate it. Sure, it’ll cost us $35 million, but we don’t care, because we’re going to come out ahead in the long run. And whatever it is that stuff we’re making containers of, that plastic, we’ll have to stop until we find out what it is. We’re not in here for just one game, are we fellas? We’re in here to go all the way. Now, let’s get to the Super Bowl guys! And when we get there, let’s already have won! Okay?