In this week’s “Make Me Smart” newsletter, we explore the NFL’s decision to allow select private equity firms to invest in America’s professional football teams, how safe big, heavy cars actually are, and the costs of an extremely hot summer.

The News Fix

Corporate raiders meet the Las Vegas Raiders. The National Football League kicked off its new season this week with big news off the field: A select group of private equity funds can now buy a portion of professional American football teams. Once thought of as “barbarians at the gate,” private equity firms are now welcome allies of professional sports leagues and teams. The NFL was one of the last leagues keeping “the vulture class” from buying in.

Private equity won’t be able to execute its typical playbook, which involves taking control of a business, restructuring it and reselling for a profit. Under the new NFL rules, private equity can only buy small stakes, capped at 10% of a team’s total value. These investors will have few rights and little say over how the teams operate. They’ll also have to stay invested for at least six years. 

That would all seem like an unappealing proposition for private equity — except it comes with the promise of outsized and seemingly guaranteed returns. American sports leagues have historically generated a higher rate of return than the S&P 500 in recent years, according to Deloitte. The average NFL team is now worth $5.7 billion.

Show me the money. As franchises’ values go up, there are fewer and fewer billionaires who have both the desire and funds to own an NFL team. Selling to private equity gives NFL owners a way to cash in on their teams’ value without having to relinquish control. But introducing private equity into the mix could also increase pressure to extract more value by raising prices. 

Can the average Joe invest too? Except for the Green Bay Packers, most NFL teams don’t let their fans sink money into their favorite franchise.

Smart in a shot

Many Americans opt for bigger cars because they assume that they’ll be safer in an SUV than a lighter, smaller sedan. To a certain extent, that’s true; heavier cars are typically safer for those who drive them.  

But when The Economist crunched the numbers on 10 million two-car crashes from 14 states over the last 10 years in the U.S., it found that the heaviest cars on the roads aren’t the safest. Vehicles weighing more than 5,000 pounds were responsible for about 26 deaths per 10,000 crashes, making them more lethal than vehicles weighing 4,500 pounds to 5,000 pounds.

For every life that the heaviest 1% of SUVs and trucks save, there are more than a dozen lives lost, according to The Economist’s calculations. Heavy SUVs, trucks and vans are also more deadly for everyone else, including cyclists and pedestrians. But absent new regulations that limit vehicle weight, the new car market is stuck in a sort-of “arms race.” American consumers who want to prioritize safety buy bigger, heavier vehicles, manufacturers design bigger vehicles to satiate demand and the cycle repeats.

The top selling vehicle in the U.S. last year was the Ford F-Series truck, which can weigh as much as 5,740 pounds, almost double the weight of a Toyota Corolla.

The Numbers

Another record-breaking summer is winding down. This July was the hottest ever recorded, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s data. Let’s do the numbers.

2.7 degrees 

The nonprofit Climate Central reported nighttime summer temperatures have risen an average of 2.7 degrees across the contiguous United States between 1970 and 2022. Overnight heat can disrupt sleep and compound the danger of scorching daytime temps because the body can’t recover as well. 

$3.6 billion 

The federal government allocated $3.6 billion to national utility assistance for low-income households this year. However, the majority of these funds currently go to heating homes in the winter, leaving little for families in the Sun Belt to cool their homes.

$1 billion

The Center for American Progress estimates hot days cost Americans $1 billion in hospital visits and ambulance rides every summer.

2.8 billion hours 

Heat makes us less productive. Research group the Lancet Countdown calculated the U.S. lost 2.8 billion work hours to heat In 2022, a billion more than was lost in the decade between 1990 and 2000.

None of us is as smart as the rest of us

Tell us what’s making you smarter at smarter@marketplace.org. We’d love to include your recommendation in a future newsletter.

Keeping the roof from collapsing

The Sammies Awards honor those who rarely toot their own horn: federal employees making a difference behind the scenes. Host Kimberly Adams is reading a Michael Lewis op-ed about one such worker, a former coal miner who spearheaded regulations to prevent roof falls in underground mines (gift link).

Stand up for yourself

Do you want a dead butt? If you sit several hours a day for work, you may already have one. Writer Ellen Rolfes is reading a New York Times article about dead butt syndrome, which includes tips on how to retrain your weak glutes (gift link).

An argument for dumb things

For years, companies have been trying to market “smart” objects like Gretchen Wieners tried to make “fetch” happen. Reporter Henry Epp recommends this Bloomberg column (gift link), which makes the case that you don’t need a remote-control oven or live-streaming toothbrush or GPS-enabled umbrella, and Big Tech should cut the gimmicks.