Remarks by the President at Presentation of the Commander-in-Chief's Trophy to the U.S. Naval Academy Football Team

The White House

Office of the Press Secretary

East Room

2:12 P.M. EDT

THE PRESIDENT:  Hello, everybody.  (Applause.)  Hello.  Please, everybody have a seat.  Well, good afternoon.  Welcome to the White House. 

I want to start by recognizing Coach Ken Niumatalolo, my fellow Hawaiian, for being here once again -- where is he?  There he is right here.  (Laughter.)  Hard to miss him.  Give him a big round of applause.  (Applause.)  I also want to recognize Vice Admiral Mike Miller, the Superintendent of the Naval Academy, for his outstanding service to our country and for keeping all of you guys in line.  (Laughter and applause.)   

It is my pleasure to welcome the Navy Midshipmen back to the White House to receive the Commander-in-Chief’s Trophy -- again.  They have now won 19 of their last 21 games against the other service academies, making this their 8th trip here in 10 years.  (Applause.)  Michelle and I were thinking about just leaving the key under the rug.  (Laughter.)  

This season, you finished 8-5, earned your 9th bowl appearance in the last 10 years.  But perhaps most importantly, after a two-year break, you achieved that very first goal you set at the start of every season:  You beat Air Force, you beat Army, and lugged this 170-pound trophy back to Annapolis. 

Against Air Force, you lost your quarterback to an injury in the middle of the game.  You trailed by eight points in the fourth quarter.  But freshman quarterback Keenan Reynolds took over and led you back in overtime.  That’s when an unlikely hero -- offensive lineman Jake Zuzek -- gave you a --

TEAM MEMBERS:  Zu!

THE PRESIDENT:  Zu! -- gave you a 28-21 win when he recovered a fumbled snap in the end zone for his first-ever touchdown.  (Laughter.)  I’m not sure Coach called the fumblerooski, but I bet that Jake will take it anyway.

That set up a winner-take-all game with Army to end the season.  Down three entering the fourth quarter, Keenan again led the comeback, driving the team down the field for 80 yards and the winning score, and showing why he was only the third Navy freshman ever to start at quarterback.  The win gave the Midshipmen their 11th straight victory over Army, which is a series record. 

But at Navy, obviously it’s not just about the wins.  It’s about how you win.  This year, your team motto was INAM, which is short for “It’s Not About Me.”  And that ethic of teamwork and discipline and unselfishness was led by your captains, Bo Snelson and Brye French, and it ran through your entire season.  

All season long you kept your priorities in line, your mission in focus.  Your work in the classroom helped keep the Naval Academy’s graduation rate in the top 10 of the NCAA for the eighth straight year, including linebacker Keegan Wetzel –- a first-team Academic All-American with a 3.89 GPA in systems engineering.  So give Keegan a big round of applause.  I like that.  (Applause.)

And when you faced adversity, you pulled together.  Over Thanksgiving break, freshman Rafi Montalvo was in a serious car accident and doctors pulled him into a coma.  And even though the Army game was next on the schedule, Coach was one of his first visitors at the hospital down in Florida.  And then pretty soon, his teammates started showing up.  When it came time to take the field against your biggest rival, you all put “Rafi” stickers on your helmets and gave him the game ball after your victory.

So, gentlemen, that’s why I have no greater honor than serving as your Commander-in-Chief.  You’re there for each other and you are there for our country.  In just a few weeks when I visit you all for commencement -- and I always have to get ready because Midshipmen, they got strong handshakes, some of them give me chest bumps, I’ve got to just make sure I don’t tip over -- 18 of you will be commissioned as ensigns in the Navy, and 10 more as second lieutenants in the Marine Corps. 

And in the years to come, you will all follow their footsteps.  You’ll be leading your peers in some of the most complex, dangerous missions on the planet.  You’ll be teaching them to pull together, to keep their mission in focus, to always remember that “it’s not about me.”  And together, your victories will not simply be about football trophies -- as impressive as that trophy is -- but it will be about our security and our values and protecting our freedom. 

So I want you to know that I could not be prouder to have each of you representing this great country of ours.  Americans all across the country feel the very same way.  And every single day, we will stand behind you and support you, and do the very best that we can in our own lives to reflect the courage and the honor and the character of the men and women of the United States Naval Academy.  So God bless you.

And with that, let’s -- I understand I’ve got a little something waiting for me.  All right, that’s the official Navy helmet, fitted for me.  (Laughter.)  Pretty sharp.  (Laughter.)  Here’s the general rule:  You don’t put stuff on your head if you’re President.  (Laughter.)  That’s politics 101.  (Laughter.)  You never look good wearing something on your head.  Are we going to -- we’re going to have the coach up here. 

Coach, great to see you again.  (Applause.)

END
2:19 P.M. EDT

This week’s address is delivered by Francine Wheeler, whose six year old son, Ben, was murdered alongside nineteen other children and six educators in Newtown, Connecticut, four months ago. Now, Francine – joined by her husband David – is asking the American people to help prevent this type of tragedy from happening to more families like hers.

Understand how and where your tax dollars are being spent.

President Obama sends a message to the White House email list to explain why he asked Francine Wheeler to deliver the Weekly Address.

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Minnesota State Rep. Introduces Bill To Halt Public Financing Of Football Stadium Until Revenue Is Secure

Artist's rendering of new Vikings stadium

The Minnesota state legislature last year approved a financing plan for a new stadium for the National Football League’s Minnesota Vikings. In doing so, it exploited a legal loophole to provide $348 million in taxpayer money for the project.

The revenues were supposed to come from revenues from new electronic pull-tab machines, but by January, it was already clear that those revenues weren’t keeping up with projections, meaning the new stadium was already turning into a financial nightmare before construction even began. Now, a Minnesota state representative is preparing to introduce legislation that would halt construction — and the bond sale meant to pay for it — until the state can guarantee that the pull-tabs will generate enough revenue to pay for it, the St. Paul Pioneer Press reports:

Republican state Sen. Sean Nienow of Cambridge says he’ll introduce a bill that would delay the sale of bonds for a new Vikings stadium until a revenue stream to pay them off is secured.

Additional tax revenue from newly authorized electronic forms of charitable gaming, which was supposed to pay the state’s share of the stadium, is coming in much slower than anticipated, and the backup sources aren’t expected to be able to produce more than a few million dollars per year.

Nienow says he and Rep. Mary Franson, R-Alexandria, plan to introduce the bill next week.

As we have documented here, stadiums consistently turn out as bad deals for taxpayers, as the promised revenue streams almost always come up short of projections and leave cities and states footing the bill, whether through increased debt, higher taxes, or cuts to public programs.

What makes Minnesota’s stadium different is that it became clear even before construction began that revenues meant to pay for the stadium aren’t going to come close to covering the cost. While Nienow’s legislation wouldn’t abandon the stadium plan altogether, it would still force the state to find actual revenue to pay for the stadium, though that will still leave taxpayers footing the bill so the Vikings’ wealthy owner can make more money from a stadium than he could have made from the old one. (HT Field of Schemes)

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Another Football Player Accused Of Rape, Another Community Blaming The Victim

Two football player high school students in Connecticut are charged with the second-degree sexual assault of a 13-year-old girl. The allegations come amid other complaints of hazing at the school, but Torrington High School officials insist that these are individual instances and not a part of a larger cultural problem.

But whether or not the alleged rapists Edgar Gonzalez and Joan Toribio, both 18, are maverick sexual assailants isn’t really the cultural question. Rather, the fact that students in the neighborhood and the school have taken to Twitter blame the young girl and not the alleged rapists highlights a broader rape culture that assumes men are only haphazardly involved in sexual assault, but it is usually the victim’s fault:

“If you look at crime statistics these things happen everywhere and we’re not any different than any other community,” said [Athletic Director Mike McKenna].

But on social media in recent weeks, dozens of athletes and Torrington High School students, male and female, have taunted the 13-year-old victim, calling her a “whore,” criticizing her for “snitching” and “ruining the lives” of the 18-year-old football players, and bullying students who defend her.

The Connecticut Register-Citizen highlights some of the offensive tweets about the girl:

“I wanna know why there’s no punishment for young hoes,” asked “@asmedick.” That comment was reposted three times.

Twelve days after the alleged incident, “@AyooWilliam” tweeted, “You destroyed two people’s life.” Another responded, “I hope you got what you wanted.”

“Sticking up for a girl who wanted the D and then snitched? have a seat pleaseeee,” wrote “@ShelbyyKalinski.”

As the case in Steubenville proved, social media has brought a whole new slew of evidence to sexual assault allegations, particularly among young people. Unfortunately, the lesson some news outlets take from this is that Steubenville was “a cautionary tale for teenagers living in today’s digital world.” In reality, social media helps to underline a very real problem: A victim-blaming rape culture that is inclined to take the side of the assailant instead of the victim.

(HT: Raw Story)

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Philly Youth Football League Upholds Ban On Girls Just As First Woman Will Participate In NFL Scouting Combine

Caroline Pla (10) with teammates

The Archdiocese of Philadelphia’s Catholic Youth Organization banned 11-year-old Caroline Pla from playing in a boy’s football league earlier this year, even though she had played in the same league for more than two years and had been voted onto the league’s all-star team after the 2012 season. Last week, the CYO reaffirmed that decision, upholding its ban on female participants in grades 5 through 8.

The original ban was about safety, the CYO explained then, even if there were no indications that Pla was in any more danger than any of the 11-year-old boys playing football. When they upheld the ban, the reasoning shifted to fears of “inappropriate contact” between male and female players, even though neither Pla nor her family had ever given thought to such an issue before.

At nearly the same time, a football league far larger than the Catholic Youth Organization took a step in the opposite direction. In 2012, the National Football League formally instituted a rule allowing women to participate in its league, and next week, the annual regional scouting combines for amateur players will feature its first female participant.

Lauren Silberman, a 28-year-old former college club soccer player, is attending a regional combine with the hope of becoming the first woman to play in the NFL. The odds that Silberman, a kicker, will make a team are longer-than-long, but that doesn’t matter: the NFL provided a path for women to participate, and for the first time, one will. There are more than 1,600 girls playing on boys’ high school football teams, and multiple women have played college football, so Silberman almost surely won’t be the last woman to go out for the team.

But these stories aren’t as much about football and making the team as they are about just having the chance to play. Women now enjoy far more access to sports than they did 40 years ago, when Title IX became law, but female participation still doesn’t match that of men. Neither does funding, even though sports participation has substantial health, education, and economic benefits for the women and girls who participate. It’s wonderful that the NFL is expanding access to women, but those efforts are undermined when youth leagues like the CYO, where there are more girls who want to play and fewer who have access, refuse to let the Caroline Plas of the world play the games they love.

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Government’s Legitimate Role: A Football Analogy

Referee Jeff Triplette checks on Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers.

By Stephen Hiltner

One seemingly bottomless source of national pessimism today is the notion that government can’t do anything right and that regulators are by nature the enemy of freedom and commerce. This pessimism, deeply rooted in the ideology that took hold in the 1980s, is a core impediment to action on climate change.

President Obama took a different view in his inauguration speech, saying we’ve learned from the nation’s history that “a free market only thrives when there are rules to ensure competition and fair play.” Today’s Super Bowl will confirm this view, as players in a thriving NFL demonstrate that immersion in a closely regulated playfield environment is no impediment to high performance, spirit and invention.

Sports in general provides a fine analogy for what government’s role should ideally be. The athletes and their teams, motivated to beat the competition, bring to their game the same energy and creativity that entrepreneurs and businesses bring to the marketplace. But though the players and coaches may dispute a call now and then, they don’t make the mistake of perceiving regulation as the enemy. Rather, a good game requires clear rules and regulations that are fairly applied.

Boundaries in sports do not constrict action so much as channel it, challenging the players to refine their skills to make the most of the freedom and opportunities the game’s framework provides. Without a net and clear boundaries, tennis would never have produced the likes of a Federer or Djokovic. Similarly, manufacturers have responded to the combination of a competitive marketplace and rigorous government standards by greatly increasing the efficiency of appliances like refrigerators, while also lowering costs. Environmental regulations, then, are falsely maligned when in fact they can motivate manufacturers to dramatically improve their products and save consumers money.

There must be many football fans who believe that the nation’s economy would thrive if only government regulations were slashed, and yet the game itself is a celebration of rules and regulations. While underregulated financial institutions were precipitating a financial meltdown in the fall of 2007, football fans were scrutinizing instant replays for the slightest infraction.

This past fall, professional football provided a definitive demonstration of what happens when governance is given short shrift. When the NFL replaced its union referees with high school and college refs used to slower-paced play, their incompetence damaged the game. The NFL essentially replicated an experiment conducted by George W. Bush. By putting incompetent appointees in charge of FEMA, President Bush set the stage for the botched government response to the devastation in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina. Green Bay Packer quarterback Aaron Rogers got it right when he said that top notch play and officiating are complementary, not antagonistic. A high standard of play on the field must be “complemented by an appropriate set of officials.”

Sports, too, clearly demonstrates the flaw in the assertion that regulations would better be determined by states rather than by the federal government. Imagine if teams in different states could make up their own rules and field dimensions. The result would be chaos, which is why industry so often lobbies for uniform standards at the federal level.

Ideologies that equate regulation with tyranny, common in political discourse, sound bizarre when applied to the realm of sports. You don’t hear athletes quoting Ayn Rand and calling for the elimination of referees and boundaries in the name of freedom. Nor is there any illusion that professional athletes will nobly police their own behavior. As football has increased in speed and complexity, the NFL has increased the number of referees from 3 to 7. Contrast this with calls by many politicians to get government out of the way of financial markets, even as the financial sector has exploded in size, complexity and speed.

But the importance of regulation and its consistent enforcement goes beyond insuring an exciting, fair, well-paced competition, whether in sports or the marketplace. Particularly in football, good regulation also protects players from mutual destruction. It is understood that each player is potentially a lethal weapon, capable of harming self and others.

In some ways, chronic traumatic encephalopathy–the longterm consequence of repeated concussion–is to football what climate change is to a fossil fuel-based economy. Both maladies are slow to manifest, eventually making normal life impossible. How does one save football, when the violence it is based on puts players’ brains at risk? And how to save our economy, when the fuels it is based on put the nation at ever-increasing risk of catastrophic changes in weather patterns? Here, again, the sports world has proven more mature and reality-based than the political realm. As scientific evidence of the long-term impact of concussions has accumulated, denial has given way to regulatory efforts to grapple with the problem.

As in the marketplace, the goal in football is not to rid the game of regulations, but to find the right balance. Too much regulation stifles creativity and slows the action. Too little breeds chaos and puts the players and the game itself at risk. When well-targeted regulations are consistently applied, governance disappears into the background and all attention can be focused on the game.

It is this aspect of the anti-government movement in our national political discourse that is most corrosive of the nation’s functioning and spirit. The constant questioning of government’s legitimate role in regulating society has the paradoxical effect of keeping government in the foreground, a bleeding sore that will not heal. We need to get past this constant berating of government, acknowledge its vital role, and work to refine its implementation so that it can hum along smoothly in the background.

Referees and regulators will never be loved. But there can be no doubt they are vital to the game. It’s time such an understanding spreads to our political discourse.

Stephen Hiltner is a writer, naturalist and musician based in Princeton, NJ. Trained in sciences at University of Michigan, he founded the Ellerbe Creek Watershed Association (ellerbecreek.org) in Durham, NC, and later spearheaded habitat restoration efforts in Princeton’s many nature preserves. He currently writes, lives and teaches nature appreciation and sustainable living through courses, interpretive walks, and his various blogs, which can be accessed via NewsCompanion.com.

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Why Television Can’t Let The National Football League Die

Yesterday, Travis reported on Baltimore Ravens safety Bernard Pollard’s prediction that in 30 years, the National Football League will die because making necessary changes to improve the safety of the game will produce a sport that no one wants to watch. I think both that scenario and the one that Travis himself lays out are not unrealistic. But it’s also worth remembering that the NFL’s life or death won’t happen in a closed surgical theater. There are people other than the players and owners, and in college, the athletics programs and fundraising departments, with a vested interest in keeping football alive and immensely popular.

Significant among those interests? Broadcast television and ESPN. In the week leading up to the Super Bowl, the League is touting the performance of football on television. 55 percent of the television broadcasts since September 1, 2010, that averaged at least 20 million viewers were of NFL football games, or 135 out of 247 broadcasts. The next-closest program? American Idol, with 39 broadcasts, followed by the London Olympics, with 18. The first scripted program on the list is NCIS, with 11 broadcasts that hit 20 million. There’s no wonder broadcast nets pay big for the games they air: Sunday Night Football is part of what’s helped NBC rebound from fourth place to first in the ratings.

Some of that’s an indication of the increasing weakness of broadcast television, which has had a tremendously difficult time launching scripted programming that finds an audience anywhere near that large, and which has seen the numbers on big reality programs, like Idol and Dancing With The Stars decline. But that weakness means the value of football is two-fold. Football broadcasts prop up television’s advertising revenue model. And they provide a potential launching platform for new programming. That’s one of the reasons the Super Bowl rotates from network to network every year: it’s such a critically important platform for showcasing existing programming to one of the largest audiences that assembles in front of the television anymore.

And that’s just on broadcast: football’s even more important to both cable networks and the cable business model. People who oppose cable bundling frequently complain about the price of sports channels, but access to lots and lots of football is one of the reasons sports make cable seem like a good deal for the more than 100 million American households who subscribe to it. The death of football through formal dismantlement or a rising disinterest and distaste would make bundled cable television seem less valuable.

Television, in other words, badly needs the NFL to stay healthy. What that means the industry can, and will, do remains an open question. But football and television’s futures are deeply intertwined, and at a time when the content television is creating for itself is having trouble finding an audience, those ties are tighter than ever.

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