Tuesday, September 26, 2017

Take A Knee and the NFL

So the NFL has placed themselves in an unenviable position.  As you may have heard, our president - who happens to also have been an aspiring NFL team owner at one point in his life, and when that failed was part of the short-lived USFL, and I'm just going to keep mentioning how incredibly relevant the 30 for 30 documentary "Small Potatoes: Who Killed the USFL?" has remained - but the president, who is not an uninterested party when it comes to the financial success of the NFL, even if we did agree that presidents should be commenting on private business, which we also don't - called the players who have been taking a knee during the flag display - a misogynistic term for being unpatriotic and suggested they should be fired. 
As a result, a large number of players, owners, and coaches either took a knee, or locked arms, or stood in the ramp, or didn't come out of the locker room this weekend.  And, you know what? Now the NFL has made everyone mad. Plenty of people had already quit, myself included, for the blackballing of Colin Kaepernick, for the CTE issues, for the racist team names, for the constant sweeping under the rug of domestic violence.  I can't speak for everyone, but I'm guessing most of those people did not tune back in this week.  And, if my twitter and Facebook are a reliable indicator (they are not) some more people quit this week because they were mad about the increased protests.  
And so now the NFL is in a place where they cannot make everyone happy, and it really looks like they are beyond the wishy washy players are able to do whatever they want that's peaceful, since it's clearly untrue and also not making any side sufficiently appeased to change their behavior.  I still love football. It's a fascinating sport.  I still have a football sized hole in my heart. But there are so many things I can do with my time, and at this rate, it doesn't look like the current NFL owners or commissioner have any plan to address anything, they are hoping it all goes away.