WASHINGTON, D.C. - The Commerce Department today released figures indicating that 1999 was a record year for the amount of crap given away at sporting events. Total crap giveaways for 1999 increased an astonishing 7.3% over 1998, the previous record year.
"It is the crappiest year we have ever had," noted Commerce Undersecretary for Sporting Promotions Brendan Lawry
The fastest growing sub-category of crap was worthless, followed closely by useless. Worthless crap giveaways, defined by the Bureau of Economic Analysis as "any object given away at a sporting event that, although functional, almost immediately finds it's way into a junk drawer and is completely forgotten", alone was up 9.1%. The report mentioned specifically such worthless crap as keychains, luggage tags, refrigerator schedule magnets and koozies, which apparently is something for keeping hot drinks hot and cold drinks cold.
The useless crap segment of crap giveaways was up an impressive 6.5% from 1998. This represents a slight decline in year-to-year growth for the segment that was the leader in crap giveaways two years in row. Some examples of useless crap include Beanie Babies, trading cards, posters, and any other object that fits the BEA criteria of anything having perceived value far in excess of it's negligible intrinsic value.
Sporting teams have found that fans are more likely to attend a game if they get some crap with the teams logo and/or possibly some representation of a team's favorite player. It seems to work no matter how worthless, useless, or even pointless the crap is. And teams frequently get sponsors to offset any costs in exchange for allowing the sponsoring entity to advertise on the crap.
Contrarians, however, claim that the numbers are overblown due to continuing league expansions and that the crappy inflation may lead Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan to raise interest rates to try and end the explosive growth in crap given away at sporting events.
Lawry offered no predictions, but said that nothing at this time indicated an end to all this crap.
©2000 Copyright David Oliver
DISCLAIMER: These stories are not true. No really. It's all just a joke, you know for fun.
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