Mark Spector

Mark Spector is a columnist for sportsnet.ca

U.S. law enforcement is in town to protect fans from affordable merchandise.

Ft. Lauderdale — Super Bowl week is a metaphor for America, and these days America is pretty paranoid.

Been in a U.S. airport recently? The Department of Homeland Security threat level has been orange for about two years now. They just keep reminding you every six minutes or so on the airport public address system, in case you’ve stopped obsessing about Al-Qaeda.

The Super Bowl, however, has already given reason to be cautious. It is a place to watch your wallet. To look out for the rip-off artists, pick-pockets and scammers that flock here, with truck loads of fake memorabilia to be sold at cut-rate prices.

Here, the same (supposedly) official NFL ball differed in price by $40 dollars, within five blocks of Ocean Dr. in South Beach — from $150 to $110. There are the homeless looking guys with placards informing you that you’re heading for hell, or that the world will end before Sunday’s ballgame does. Honestly, you wonder how they can afford the trip.

There are the ticket scalpers and brazenly opportunistic bar owners, who maniacally twist the parameters of capitalism to include $10 Budweisers.

But here you also see the excess. The rich. The famous. The where-can-I-find-a-camera-to-get-in-front-of, Ochocinco set. The more money they have, the better the chance they’ll get a free room.

It’s the same perverted system that built Las Vegas. So we know it works.

And then, somewhere in the middle, you have the average stiff. You can spot him here. He’s the guy with a Saints cap on, and someone else’s hand jammed in his pocket every single step of the way.

Our boy will fly down with his mates from Indy for a few days away from the wives, but he will feel the pinch of three days in Miami for a long time. He’ll drop three G’s on the trip, tell his girl it only cost two, and he’ll have the time of his life trying to live up to The Hangover.

Like Vegas, it is the everyday working bloke who supports the entirety of this thing. As such, that was the guy who those generous souls from the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents showed up on Thursday to "protect."

The boys from ICE threw a poorly attended press conference here on Thursday, pumping their "Operation Faux Bowl" — Get it? Rhymes with Pro Bowl, the aim of which is to catch people selling counterfeit Super Bowl stuff. You know, the kind a regular guy can afford.

It reeked of an NFL plant.

Here is a league that sells you a $12 beer inside its stadiums, that nicks you for $150 for a Super Bowl football, and the federally funded cops are here "protecting" its fans from spending $125 on a lower quality jersey made in the Philippines, instead of $250 on their certified product, usually made in Indonesia, Honduras or Vietnam.

Joined by two "special agents," assistant ICE secretary and CIS wannabe TV star John Morton warned football fans about buying "piracy" and paying less. "Cheap, shoddy imitation and substandard goods," he said. "All of them pose a threat to national safety."

He actually said that: "A threat to national safety."

Knock-off t-shirts and caps, said Morton, "Cost your neighbor his job. It is hurting the U.S. economy." Sure, if your neighbor lives in Southeast Asia.

What he means is, NFL sanctioned goods come from factories that are monitored for quality and working conditions. Counterfeit stuff is not. We get that.

The big American sports equipment makers don’t use sweatshops anymore, we are to believe. We should buy their stuff.

This, however, was way over the top. So far they claim to have netted more than $155,000 worth of counterfeit goods. By law enforcement press release standards, that means they’ve really confiscated about 70 percent as much.

And what is operation Faux Bowl costing the tax payer? How much is Uncle Sam paying to protect the league’s merchandising interests? We asked. Morton said it was normal business. The Miami office is handling it. "It’s not as if we move 100 agents in from Washington to Miami to do this."

No, but if you’re into smuggling Cubans into Miami, this might be a good week to do it.

"The people who you are going to deal with in that parking lot, working out of the back of their car. They are criminals," Morton warned.

And the National Football League owners who perfected the Personal Seat License scheme, aren’t?

You want counterfeit? How about a league that addresses steroid use as poorly as the NFL does?

You want fake? Seen a cheerleader lately?

Sorry boys, this dog doesn’t hunt.

You want capitalism? You’ve got capitalism.