Super Bowl isn’t about ‘fat cats’
I made a rare visit to downtown San Diego this week to enjoy the $15 parking and $8 cocktails, to celebrate the Super Bowl being in town.
I was sitting in an outdoor cafe next to a group of folks who looked like they might have attended last week’s “peace rally” in San Francisco or might participate in the next “anti-globalization” protest in Seattle or Washington, D.C., or wherever.
They were not especially pleased to have the Super Bowl in San Diego, notwithstanding the estimated $200 million that the world’s largest single-day sporting event will contribute to the region’s economy.
They were downright resentful of all the “fat cats” who had jet-setted into town in their Gulfstreams; who were taking limousines around San Diego from Super Bowl-related cocktail parties to fashion shows to celebrity auctions to golf outings.
It was all so orgiastic, they condemned. So downright immoral that so many would spend so much in so short a time on food, drink and entertainment when there are so many needy people in San Diego, in cities throughout the land, who have so little.
It was the all-too-familiar class warfare argument. And it was predicated on the fallacy that those who are wealthy — who have the means to drop so many thousands of dollars on Super Bowl fun and games — have somehow obtained their affluence at the expense of the poor. But that is an unfair caricature. Much as Marie Antoinette has been unfairly, and inaccurately, maligned through history for supposedly saying, “Let them eat cake,” after peasants complained of not having enough bread to go around.
I took a peek at the Super Bowl’s official Web site. I perused the list of the events sanctioned by either the NFL or the San Diego host committee. And, indeed, there are all sorts of parties and concerts and galas and other attractions, but there are also plenty of Super Bowl-related events that benefit charities and help the poor and the needful.
For instance, the kick-off gala, which cost $500 to $1,000 per person, and featured “Tonight Show” host Jay Leno, raised money for the Multiple Sclerosis Society.
There is a fashion show and luncheon, costing $2,500 to $7,500 a table, hosted by Hall of Fame running back and San Diego native Marcus Allen, whose proceeds are to go to the Salk Institute for Biological Studies and Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center.
But the most noteworthy of all the Super Bowl’s charity-related events, in my estimation, is its annual food and wine-tasting party, “Taste of the NFL.” But it’s not about nibbling on hors d’oeuvres and sipping California Chardonnays. “It’s the party with the purpose,” said Kostroski. It’s to raise funds to feed the hungry.
It’s to support hunger relief organizations like Second Harvest, which boasts a network of more than 200 food banks and food rescue programs throughout the country, including the San Diego Food Bank, a program of the Neighborhood House Association, which will be the single biggest beneficiary of the $500,000 or so that Kostroski’s event will raise during Super Bowl week.
Of course, if the Super Bowl had not come to San Diego, if all those so-called “fat cats” had not flown to town, did not limousine themselves to all those charity-related Super Bowl activities, then Kostroski and other philanthropic-minded party givers would not have been able to raise so much money.
It’s hard to see how the poor and the needful would have benefited from that.
(Joseph Perkins is a columnist for The San Diego Union-Tribune and can be reached at [email protected].)