Posted on 11/27/2017 9:40:31 AM PST by Kaslin
As Roger Goodell attempts these next few days to not only save his job but ask for a raise and luxurious perks amid NFL ratings that are plummeting even further into the abyss, undoubtedly many football fans across the country are wondering if our recent national trend towards the hyper-politicization of everything is here to stay.
When Colin Kaepernick began kneeling last summer during the national anthem during football games, claiming that he was doing it to protest what he believed was the oppression of people of color, it caused a sharply divisive uproar across the country that has now snowballed into the persistent anthem controversies we’ve been seeing this season.
Though it may initially seem this was the first step towards the NFL going the way of ESPN’s transformation from a sports network to a quasi-political talk show, in fact the NFL has slowly been edging towards this state of affairs for years.
From Tim TeBow being reprimanded for praying on the field before games to the NFL preventing the Dallas Cowboys from wearing decals to show support for the fallen police officers in Dallas last year, the NFL has seen a variety of polarizing cultural issues begin to spoil what is a defining and unifying American pastime.
After weeks of extraordinarily disruptive protests earlier this fall, Goodell finally decided to attempt to put an end to the controversy by subtly encouraging players to stand for the anthem. Not only did that fail as the kneeling and protests by players continue even now amid the ratings decline, but it seems that this may be the new normal for both professional football and many other aspects of our culture.
Football holds a special place in the American civic spirit. Within itself, it is an exciting sport where athletic prowess and teamwork combine to create a formidable game of skill. However with our culture, it has consistently remained by far the most watched sport in the US and, as a distinctly American sport, remains a symbol of our country’s distinction and pride.
It is now deeply tragic that it has become another political “football,” so to speak, in the increasingly divisive culture wars we’ve been seeing as of late in our country.
The fact remains that both sides of the dispute have a case on the merits.
It is, after all, disrespectful to kneel to a flag that represents the noble American ideals of liberty, equality, and justice for all, and that has been preserved through the sacrifices of so many hundreds of thousands of Americans over the course of our history.
Football holds a special place in the American civic spirit. Within itself, it is an exciting sport where athletic prowess and teamwork combine to create a formidable game of skill. However with our culture, it has consistently remained by far the most watched sport in the US and, as a distinctly American sport, remains a symbol of our country’s distinction and pride.
It is now deeply tragic that it has become another political “football,” so to speak, in the increasingly divisive culture wars we’ve been seeing as of late in our country.
The fact remains that both sides of the dispute have a case on the merits.
It is, after all, disrespectful to kneel to a flag that represents the noble American ideals of liberty, equality, and justice for all, and that has been preserved through the sacrifices of so many hundreds of thousands of Americans over the course of our history.
Furthermore, it is true that there remain great inequities in criminal justice, law enforcement, and economic opportunity for various groups of Americans that need to be addressed.
However, the NFL is not the place to address these deeply complex and serious policy issues – it is a place to play and watch football.
Furthermore, by bringing these issues into a forum as unsuited for their resolution as NFL games, with little substantive discussion as compared to preaching-to-the-choir performances, these questions become far more difficult to properly address.
It seems at the moment that Roger Goodell is likely to continue his term as NFL Commissioner. While undoubtedly there was perhaps only so much he could do given the titanic cultural forces driving these political controversies into our popular culture, hopefully his next few years as commissioner will see better resolution of these issues than the past few.
The NFL disturbances also seem less a cause of our current cultural divide but rather a symptom and accelerator of it. When our divisive political climate simmers down, undoubtedly it will too.
Perhaps in the future us and our descendants will look back at this time as a disappointing era where we let our minor differences and what could be polite disagreements spiral into vitriol and cultural antagonism.
In the meantime, it seems that the politicization of even previously mundane aspects of our daily lives continues. The current NFL kneeling protests show no signs of abating, as the social ripples spread and accelerate beyond any person’s control. Whether the NFL can truly prosper let alone survive amid this remains to be seen.
“But then, the moderation of FR is the most opaque, capricious, and inconsistent thing I’ve ever seen.”
How dare he!
You forgot Buffalo. 17 years out of the playoffs and we still fill the stadium. We here in Buff live on hope (and new coaches). It's a cultural thing here I guess.
I found it. The writer is with Breitbart, and his name is Warner Todd Huston. Google him if you like. Banning anything he writes is incomprehensible.
Black ball has killed football
Amen! Let's do it! Maybe Buffalo will finally win another Championship. :-)
Why would any sane and responsible football owner with business sense, want to continue with Roger Goodell?
I would think that there are many other highly qualified and more sensible candidates for that job.
Regrettably, the writer abandons his thesis early in this piece.
The ESPN-ization of the NFL is most definitely a problem but not just because Jemele Hill mouths off and tweets.
ESPN’s most effective vehicle in the last few years has been their 30 For 30 film series in which incidents, games, seasons, teams, etc. are examined in detail by the participants, many of whom have never spoken on the subject before.
Ironically, athletes who refuse to sit still through a math or English class are transfixed by these documentaries, most of which are well-done but most of which also most definitely carry a political agenda. Leftist writers, critics and 60s relic race grievance mongers posing as academics (Harry Edwards, Cornel West) are given frequent opportunities to spout their thinly-disguised Marxism under the rubric of racial equality etc.
A jumped-up lesbian slagging off the president is nothing new - hell, we had that in the 80s. But ESPN and its filmmakers can’t resist the temptation to once again ‘set the narrative’ and present their version of history as fact.
The owners are terrified of a player’s strike & the possibility of a “strike/slowdown” of its black employees.
They’re convinced the “visuals” of a “black employee protest” and the subsequent labeling of “racist” by the media will wreck them. White fans who don’t understand the owners “patience” can either go pound sand, we (the owners) will do fine without you (You’re racists anyway!) our business will rely on a core group who have to get their “pro football fix”, minority fans, and to a increasing extent foreign fans. (And you thought the games in London, Munich & Mexico were just for good will!). So they’ll make their billions by rely on money spent by football addicts, minorities, & foreigners. The rest of you all in rural/semirural American can go take opioids for entertainment!
Thanks!
Where are the ‘he hate me’s over yesteryear?
I ran some basic numbers of attendance in 2016 vs. 2017. On average, stadium attendance is down 37,235 people per week. Part of that is due to the Chargers moving to a stadium that only holds 25,000 people. However, attendance is still down (roughly 6%).
If you take that 37,235 x 17 weeks x $75 a ticket you get $47,474,625 less in owner revenue from tickets (or roughly the one-year salary of the NFL commissioner). That also doesn’t include the lost revenue in fans buying food/drinks/merchandise/parking, etc. from a game. It won’t take long for owners to take action.
"Who cares"! It doesn't matter what they do at this point. Too little, too late!
The nfl, its "games", their "scores", the players are ALL totally irrelevant and utterly meaningless.
The nfl has become like the ancient gladiatorial games, the Circus Maximus; the famous gladiators and the charioteers of "renoun" from the ancient Roman Empire.
Their arenas are nothing but crumbling ruins and who can recall or name any of their "famous" gladiators or charioteers? The answer is no one! This is the fate that awaits the once "glorious" nfl:
Ozymandias
I met a traveller from an antique land Who said: `Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand, Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown, And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed. And on the pedestal these words appear --
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away.'
Percy Bysshe Shelley
This is the future that awaits the nfl, and they destroyed it all with their own hands!
ALL THEY REALLY CARE ABOUT IS THE MONEY, THAT IS ALL!
They literally strangled to death their fan base "goose that laid all of their billion dollar nfl solid gold eggs" with their own hands. The goose is permanently dead and they killed it! Now, all too late they want to put Humpty Dumpy back together again and resurrect the goose from the dead.
It is rich, the National Felon League chose to side and kneel with hate America, only blm, sjw, hate whitey, communist anarchists over America and their own nfl fan base and now their fan base has been totally alienated and the very monsters they willingly aligned themselves with have turned on them and are now eating them alive.
All too late the nfl has awoken to the reality that the entire league, has an INCURABLE CASE OF SELF INFLICTED FINANCIAL EBOLA and is hemorrhaging money out of every conceivable orafice to the tune of HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF DOLLARS A WEEK with no way out and no end in sight.
And now, again all too late, Jerry Jones and the rest are vainly trying to resurrect the goose and put Humpty Dumpy back together again.
There is only one problem with their plan: their mask of contrived, ersatz "love of country" and "patriotism" has fallen off and permanently shattered, and they have shown us all their REAL FACE and what they REALLY THINK about their fans and our country:
THEY LITERALLY HATE AND DESPISE US; ALL THEY REALLY CARE ABOUT IS THE MONEY! TAKING O U R MONEY IN ORDER TO MAINTAIN THEIR OPULENT, SELF-ABSORBED, SELF-INDULGENT, EXTRAVAGANT LIFESTYLES AT THEIR FANS (and tax payers) EXPENSE.
The once financially lucrative nfl is circling the toilet bowl into obscurity and is quickly becoming totally irrelevant and financially worthless.
We choose to STAND with Americans for America; we choose love of country, we choose patriotism, we choose to "Live Free or Die", rather than "huddle up", "bend the knee" and subjugate ourselves, our families, and our beloved nation to the black racist, socialist, sjw, PC tyranny and perverted ideology of the National Felon League.
They want us to compromise our patriotism, our love of country, flag and nation and symbolically join the NFL in show of rebellious "unity" but "What fellowship does light have with darkness, good with evil (and subjugation for the sake of 'unity')?"
The answer is a resounding NOTHING! We can have no "unity" with those who hate our nation, its flag, its values and with those who despise us.
The anti-American National Felon League has, to quote Admiral Yamato: "awoken a sleeping giant and filled him with a terrible resolve".
We are at war; the NFL started this cultural war against US, against America and they are attacking EVERYTHING WE STAND FOR, BELIEVE IN AND HOLD NEAR AND DEAR.
Like WWII, there can not be any, truce, or "compromise" for the sake of their false notion of "unity", no "cessation of hostilities" with the nfl and those who have made themselves our enemies with out a cause.
We Americans who love our county more than any game have now taken up the fight forced upon us by the nfl and like "the greatest generation" we too will settle for only one outcome: NOTHING LESS THAT THEIR TOTAL SURRENDER!
NFL players are like strippers- deep down, they despise their customers.
WHO really cares?
I've haven't watched a game this season and don't feel like I've missed a thing. Really!
I agree with your analysis—the owners need to choose between their politicized black players and their politicized white fans.
Let’s get ready to rumble!
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