Posted in NBC Sports By Joe Prince-Wright Dec 22, 2015, 9:59 AM EST
Youth soccer players in Santa Clara, California won’t be able to play for a couple of months in 2016 due to the Super Bowl “media village” being set up on their fields.
With Levi’s Stadium the host for Super Bowl 50, the NFL will shut down the soccer facility for almost two months as they create a “media village” on the soccer pitches for the showpiece event.
What is all the fuss about here? Well, the NFL had previously stated it would only be using the soccer pitches as a staging area for the halftime show but a last-minute switch has seen what one parents calls a “world-class soccer facility” reduced to a media patch of land organizers can now do whatever they want with.
Cue outrage from the local soccer community as over 250 games will have to be moved or rescheduled during the time period the pitches are out of action.
whatever the NFL wants — for a chance to land a Super Bowl.
And some Santa Clara soccer players are learning a real-life lesson in the business of the NFL, as their club’s complex is about to be taken over for two months by the NFL to create a “media village” near Levi’s Stadium for Super Bowl 50.
“The 49ers and NFL care more about the property than the kids,” 16-year-old Andrew Robertson said, via Ramona Giwargis of the San Jose Mercury News. “I think it’s pretty unfair because that park has been there even before the plans for the stadium. I just think we deserve to be there.”
(Suddenly, I feel like the Grinch patting Cindy Lou Who on top of her precious little head, and telling her one of the lights on her tree is out, and I’m taking it to my shop on Mount Crumpit to fix.)
Sorry Andrew, but of course the NFL cares more about property than the kids. Because property is worth money, and kids and soccer games (250 or so which will have to be moved and rescheduled) are collateral damage in their war to conquer the hearts and minds and wallets of America.
