January 2012

Brought to you by 80Fresh, a local company that delivers balanced, home cooked meals to your door. Use this link and enter the code “ITB” to save 30% on your first order.

Congratulations to Jeremy Shelley and Alabama for winning the 2012 BCS National Championship game and improving the Broughton Wikipedia page! As you all know, any time that a Raleigh resident or Broughton graduate does something successful on a national level, that achievement automatically becomes something ITB can claim as a success.

If you didn’t watch, here’s a play-by-play of the entire game between Alabama and LSU.
1st Half
ITB 3, LSU 0 – 23-yard Shelley field goal
ITB 6, LSU 0 – 34-yard Shelley field goal
ITB 9, LSU 0 – 41-yard Shelley field goal
Halftime – A fan got to kick field goals to win a house or something. He didn’t even kick against a defense or have a holder and he still missed every single kick. That just shows how hard it is to kick field goals, especially if you didn’t go to Broughton. Also at halftime, ESPN proved that they’re run by a bunch of mouth breathers who didn’t want Broughton to get the credit it deserves.

2nd Half
ITB 12, LSU 0 – 35-yard Shelley field goal
ITB 15, LSU 0 – 44-yard Shelley field goal
ITB and Alabama 21 – LSU 0 – Trent Richardson TD
Final: ITB and Alabama 21 – LSU 0

At the end of the game I was ready to watch Shelley bring the MVP award back to ITB and Broughton. To my shock and horror, quarterback AJ McCarron won the MVP. If AJ McCarron were worthy of the MVP why didn’t he throw any touchdown passes? Shelley kicked 177 yards worth of field goals! If it weren’t for a garbage time Trent Richardson touchdown, Shelley would have scored ALL of the points in the entire game. I’m overriding this ridiculous decision and officially naming Jeremy Shelley the ITB MVP of the BCS National Championship game.

Even though ITB and Broughton now have a share of the college football national title, the BCS is still the biggest scam in sports. After reading Death to the BCS, I’ve learned that anyone can start a bowl and make tons of money from it. You can also make people think you’re giving money to charity since your bowl game is set up as a 501 (c)(3) and you don’t have to pay federal, state, and local taxes. But wait, there’s more. You’ll even get funding from the government to play your bowl game!

For example, in 2007 the Sugar Bowl (held in New Orleans) received $3 million in direct funding from the Louisiana state government. The bowl brought in $34.1 million in revenue and had $22.5 million of expenses. This resulted in an $11.6 million tax-free profit, including the $3 million it received from taxpayers. With all that profit there’s got to be a long list of charities that they gave to, right?

The Sugar Bowl gave $100,000 to help rebuild a park damaged by Katrina. They gave nothing else to charity. Nothing to the Katrina reconstruction efforts. Nothing to the New Orleans after school program. Nothing to Habitat for Humanity. They basically gave back $100,000 of the $3 million they took from Louisiana. (The following year, the state of Louisiana had a $341 million deficit.) It’s also worth noting that the amount of charitable contributions made by the Sugar Bowl as a percentage of revenue came to a staggering 0.29 percent.

Spending tons of money and creating “committees” to spend that money are key to having a successful bowl. The Sugar Bowl has a “committee on golf” and a “special subcommittee on ladies’ entertainment”. The Sugar Bowl spent:
$645,386 on compensation for the Executive Director (2009)
$494,177 on entertainment (2005)
$201,226 on gifts and bonuses (2007)
$114,666 on committee meetings (2006)
$46,017 on conference meetings (2006)

And it’s not just the Sugar Bowl. In 2003, bowl officials at the Music City Bowl spent $7,203 on an office miniature golf tournament. In 2012, an internal investigation into the Fiesta Bowl found expense reports filed for strip-club visits and extravagant birthday parties, which resulted in the dismissal of the chief executive and a nine count criminal indictment.

These facts eventually caused a bit of an uproar. So Derrick Fox, the CEO of the Alamo Bowl, appeared with ACC commissioner John Swofford in front of a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee in May of 2009. Records from the time of this testimony show that the approximate total payout to charities from bowl games was a combined $3.3 million. The tax-exempt bowls produced $186 million in revenue that year. Those bowls also ended their fiscal years with $141 million in net assets and $80 million in cash reserves. It’s worth noting that more than half of the $3.3 million given to charity came from two bowls, the Orange Bowl and the Chick-fil-A Bowl.

All of this is legal. We could be outraged at this, or we could take advantage of the system. That’s why I’m starting the ITB Bowl. The game will be held at Broughton’s football stadium. ITB Moms, who are great at spending other people’s money, will run the committees. We’ll need a committee for player and fan gift bags, a committee for halftime entertainment, and a committee for the parade through Cameron Village. The parade will be led by the Broughton band, which has had plenty of practice in the Rose Bowl parade. Entry to the game will require a limited edition Caps pass that costs $10,000. We’ll obviously need to name Broughton’s football field after Jeremy Shelley before we hold the ITB Bowl.

At first, I wanted Broughton to play a school like Leesville or Millbrook in the ITB Bowl. The only risk there is that we might lose the game. To prevent this from happening, I’ve decided that Broughton will play against itself. This is very similar to the ITB Olympics, where the swim team at the Club competes against itself so they don’t have to let any outsider kids into the pool. Plus, since Broughton is playing itself, all the players who normally ride the bench will get some playing time, impressing those parents who only love their kids based on their athletic achievements. It’s a win-win.

The ITB Bowl will surely generate millions in profit. And we’ll be sure to donate to many worthwhile local charities, such as:

The Raleigh/Wake Partnership to End and Prevent Homelessness
Team Chris Combs to Strikeout ALS
InterAct of Wake County
Me Fine Foundation
YMCA of the Triangle
Inter-Faith Food Shuttle

Stay tuned for more details on the ITB Bowl.