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Eroe777 t1_ix144li wrote

Reply to comment by Thrustcroissant in 'Crass' and an 'insult'. FIFA president criticized for speech on Qatar's human rights ahead of World Cup by ladyem8

I wasn’t aware of this. But I’m not surprised. It also probably wasn’t the government directly. Indirectly, however…

US law forbids federal funds going toward athletics. Which includes FIFA and the Olympics. The USOC is one of the few in the world that has no government funding.

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AlexG55 t1_ix3wvu0 wrote

Is there an exception for the Service academy sports teams? They seem to have a big budget, but I wouldn't be surprised if they were self-funding from ticket sales and TV rights.

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Eroe777 t1_ix4uqn6 wrote

I’m sure there is, because they are not professional athletes while enrolled.

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AlexG55 t1_ix529ev wrote

The coaches are professional, though. At some state universities the head coach of the football team is the state's highest paid employee.

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Eroe777 t1_ix5764i wrote

Athletics at the service academies doesn’t fall under the same umbrella as a federally funded Olympic Committee or football/soccer Organization. The purpose of the service academies is to train military officers. The academies have athletics, but the athletes are. It recruited because of their skill on the field. It’s really hard to get into a military academy, they each accept around 1,000 new cadets/midshipmen every year, virtually all of whom have the academic chops to get into top schools like Northwestern, Stanford, Duke, UCLA, Michigan, etc.

Is the head coach at Army paid in federal dollars? Yes. But his job is to coach football, not convince a corrupt multinational sporting organization to stage an astonishingly expensive event in his country by giving them millions of taxpayer dollars under the table. Or over the table. Or on camera.

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