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It’s a Super Bowl tradition for the host city. The significant concessions made to the league’s owners in an effort to secure the game are balanced out by an effort to persuade thousands of ordinary citizens to provide unpaid labor.

Houston is getting in on the act, seeking 10,000 volunteers to participate in the presentation of Super Bowl LI. The website devoted to the recruitment of volunteers presses all the right buttons, touting civic pride and the chance to be part of local history.

If folks want to provide free services to the centerpiece event organized and presented by a business that generated $13 billion in revenue last year, that’s their right. But there arguably are far more worthy causes for unpaid work — starting with, you know, groups that generate only $12 billion per year in revenue.

Super Bowl host committees wisely continue to seek out free labor because local citizens continue to provide free labor. If, however, the same citizen mindset that has largely choked off the supply of taxpayer money for stadiums would ever make its way to the Super Bowl process, the volunteers wouldn’t be volunteers but employees properly compensated for their time and effort.

There’s a chance that will never happen. As the NFL gets bigger and bigger, the desire to be part of the process will continue to outweigh the reality that the NFL easily can afford to pay folks at least minimum wage to do all the non-glamorous things that volunteers do in connection with the NFL’s most glamorous event.

Until then, some will regard the folks who answer the call as proud residents with a love of football. Others will regard them as suckers.

When it comes to the NFL, there’s a sucker born every second. And thanks to the NFL’s new newborn fan initiative, those suckers are being properly groomed into future unpaid employees.