Saudi Arabia hasn’t just bought its way into our sports; it also has done so in our businesses and schools
I would like to remind all who might have forgotten — or never learned — that money and power rule the world.
We try for decency, morality, goodness, humility, charity and other fine and selfless things. And then money comes in, sometimes all at once but more often on little cat feet, and tramples all. Money, of course, buys power.
That’s how we roll.
Pondering this, you’ll recall LIV Golf, the loud counterpoint to the staid and historic PGA Tour. LIV is rowdy, full of music and fan involvement. It plays weird team contests with funny-named squads such as Iron Heads and Range Goats, and the players can wear shorts.
Oh, and it’s loaded with money. Tons of it. Or, more accurately, barrels of it.
Because here’s the main thing: LIV was created and is wholly owned and funded by Saudi Arabia. That is the same country that is infamous for human-rights abuses, including allegedly chopping up U.S.-based journalist Jamal Khashoggi and carrying his body out of the Turkish consulate in suitcases.
But Saudi Arabia also has massive amounts of oil under its sand — hence, massive amounts of money. This means it can do almost anything it wants. That includes paying the golfers who defected from the PGA Tour gargantuan sums of money for their defection.
Consider that former PGA Tour pro Bubba Watson signed a multiyear contract with LIV in 2022 worth more than $566 million. Bubba’s response to why he joined? ‘‘We love the game of golf. We’re trying to have fun with it.’’
Many sportswriters were outraged by the reputational ‘‘sanitizing’’ being done by the Saudis as they tried to soften perceptions of their devious ethical track record, including their association with the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the Twin Towers in New York.
The stress of figuring out what to do with what PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan called ‘‘an existential crisis’’ eventually caused him to take a leave of absence because of anxiety. He first roared against the upstart league, then did a 180-degree turn and declared a merger was forthcoming. USA Today’s Christine Brennan wrote that the PGA Tour ‘‘caved to Saudi blood money’’ and was ‘‘now in the sports-washing business.’’
LIV made a lovely target for all this anger and disgust. Arab money was highly toxic, profane. And then — kinda, sorta — it wasn’t.
In 2019, then-presidential candidate Joe Biden said he would treat Saudi Arabia as a ‘‘pariah state.’’ By 2022, however, he was fist-bumping Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman during a visit to Saudi Arabia.
Oil money at work, you see.
People forgot about beheadings and the like as the money flowed and benefitted entities far beyond pro golf. The Saudis have spent billions on soccer teams and Formula 1 racing but also on U.S. law firms, corporations, consulting firms and other bastions of American thought and power.
Former President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner left the White House, started a private equity firm called Affinity Partners and reportedly received $2 billion from the Saudi Public Investment Fund. Kushner defended the deal, saying of the Saudi Crown Prince, ‘‘I think he’s a visionary leader.’’
But perhaps the most disturbing and overlooked money-gifting is what the Saudis contribute to U.S. universities year after year. It might seem like simple charity, but no money ever comes without strings attached. According to the U.S. Department of Education, American colleges have received $13.1 billion from Arab sources since 1981. Almost all came from three countries: Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.
Who got the cash? Damn near everybody. That includes Georgetown, Colorado, Texas A&M, Penn State, Missouri, MIT, Carnegie Mellon, Georgia State and Northwestern. Almost all the Ivy League schools got some Arab money, with Cornell topping the trough at $2.1 billion.
But are we outraged by this? Apparently not.
‘‘Why is it just golf?’’ Mitchell Bard, Ph.D., asked me rhetorically when I called him about this issue.
Bard is the executive editor of the Washington-based nonprofit American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise and the director of the Jewish Virtual Library. He says the Arab oil money is everywhere, always promoting Arab interests and, subtly, antisemitism.
‘‘The most trivial thing is the U.S. playing golf with Saudis,’’ he says. ‘‘They are trying to whitewash radical Islam, make us think it doesn’t exist. It’s just very hypocritical to focus on sports.’’’
So that’s today’s lesson on games, economics, psychology and governing, folks.
As they say from the tee box, ‘‘Fore!’’