Yup, I Think I’m Pretty Much Done, Too
This morning, Karen Attiah contributed a piece in the Washington Post about how it’s time to cancel the NFL. She summarizes the sorry history of the league as pertains to not only race, but to life threatening brain injury and other chronic injuries that result when 300 lb. guys smash into each other for years. She also points out that the NFL teams have a terrible track record regarding domestic abuse and treating their players more like assets than people. The league owners are generally ultra-conservative zillionaires who, as Attiah notes, run their teams with “plantation style” politics and tactics. Said zillionaires are also more than happy to take billions of dollars from taxpayers for their new stadiums, then complain about taxes they have to pay taxes on the billions of dollars that flow into their pockets from people who pays upwards of several thousands of dollars a seat per game to watch 300 lb. guys try to kill and maim each other. The whole thing is Orwellian.
After this last decision where players must stay in the locker room rather than exercise their right to free speech, I have to say that I’m pretty much done, too. It’s not a big stretch for me since I love baseball, especially Astros baseball, WAY more, but I’ve enjoyed watching holiday games, and certainly the Super Bowl. But it’s time to take a stand. Maybe if the owners are hit in the wallet will their hearing improve.
I’m waiting for the fans in the stadium to take a knee for the players that cannot.
1I’m way ahead of you. I used to love, love, love football. Friday nights at the High School game, Saturdays meant College games, and Sunday–of course–was the NFL. Then, Monday Night NFL games came along. Then, I moved to DC and found the fans here so rabid as to be beyond comprehension. Also, the players got bigger and bigger and the game much more violent.
To my great good fortune, I discovered baseball, through the Baltimore Orioles, and never looked back. And, now, I have my very own MLB team to root for and games to attend. It’s much more civilized and the fans are just wonderful. Did you see the fans in Toronto rooting for the Seattle pitcher to get a no-hitter against their own team? Maybe it was because they are Canadian; but, I’d think to think they are just baseball fans.
2I totally agree; far too much money given to NFL owners, with free stadiums, etc., and they treat their players like s**t.
Boycott NFL and the Super Bowl, and NO MORE freebies to MFL owners.
3I’m mildly curious as to when (if?) players in any other professional sport will start taking a knee. They play the anthem at all those games, too, ya know?
4treating their players more like assets than people
Actually I think the word is “livestock.”
Not long ago I might have said that we need to keep politics out of professional sports. It is the one place we can go and be free of it. I still think this.
However sometimes the politics comes to you. The system is failing black people and other minorities (never did work very well but progress is there if slow) and there is simply no way white people would tolerate such treatment if the situation was reversed.
At this point I would bet there are not three degrees of separation from any black person and someone who had been killed by police because they were black. At the rate we are going it will soon be two.
NFL owners are spineless gutless cowards. If I were an owner I would be out there with my players.
5I grew up on football, and going to RFK with my parents. My father was a season-ticket holder from 1938 until the day he died. I will only disagree with you about your “300 pound guys try to kill and maim each other.” No, they don’t. They try to STOP each other, without injuries. I’m sure every player in every game knows that he is very likely to play on several teams in his career, and it would be very bad for that career if he were actually trying to injure someone on another team. Accidents happen, especially when 300+ pound men, heavily padded, run into each other at speed. I do think, though, that since so many of those accidents involve head injuries, that football should, and will, end up banned as too dangerous to play.
6As I recently related here, I am disinterested in American football. I am trying to find a way to watch the Canadian games. No flag issues there. Cuz there’s no Trump there.
7@BillR: I wouldn’t expect other sports teams (besides, perhaps, he NBA) protest during the anthem. Baseball, hockey, and soccer teams in the US are full of foreign nationals who may not feel comfortable getting involved in the politics of a country that’s not their own. Football is purely (almost) a US sport.
8We bring to you Steve Kerr and the Golden State Warriors. Literally. Tomorrow night, Game 7, in Houston and on TNT. We don’t need no stinkin’ NFL.
While the Warriors are an enjoyable team in a great sport, basketball, the organization behind the team represents what every workplace environment should strive to be.
Steve Kerr says: “I think it’s just typical of the NFL,” Kerr began. “They’re just playing to their fanbase, basically trying to use the anthem as fake patriotism, nationalism, scaring people. It’s idiotic. But that’s how the NFL has handled their business. I’m proud to be in a league that understands patriotism in America is about free speech, about peacefully protesting. And I think our leadership in the NBA understands that when the NFL players were kneeling, they were kneeling to protest police brutality, to protest racial inequality.
“They weren’t disrespecting the flag or the military. But our president decided to make it about that and the NFL followed suit, pandered to their fanbase, created this hysteria. This is kind of what’s wrong with our country right now. People in high places are trying to divide us, divide loyalties, make this about the flag as if the flag is something other than what it really is. It’s a representation of what we’re about, which is diversity, peaceful protests, abilities, right to free speech. It’s really ironic, actually.”
https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/nba/2018/05/24/warriors-coach-steve-kerr-nfl-national-anthem-policy/641398002/
Steve spoke and he isn’t worried about his job. Plus players Kevin Durant and Steph Curry love and respect their mothers. Gotta love them!
9NFL and Nascar always seemed to me to be so popular because it’s easy to follow while drunk. NFL in particular seems designed around short bursts of activity with multiple replays give the drunks multiple opportunities to comprehend what happened followed by numerous time outs (commercials) to argue about it before the next burst of activity. Which is why soccer just p’s them off. The game is stupid because they can’t follow it.
High school football and pro/minors baseball all the way!
10Last time I went to a pro game (basketball in Seattle) the circus atmosphere was such a turnoff I never went to any pro games of any kind again. Give me high school sports anytime.
11Webpage and forum owners can restrict the topics and language used in their venues. People accept this as their ownership rights; they own the “ballpark” and set the rules. Violators may be warned, censored, or banned.
So too is it with professional sports. League and team ownership limit what can/can’t be done and set penalties for violations. This applies not only to players, but to owners, coaches, staff, contractors, and so forth.
Neither the webpage/forum owners nor the league/team mgmt are infringing on individuals’ free speech. That right remains — just not in the venues provided.
That being said, I support the players’ kneeling and applaud the owners who accept it. Some people take the kneeling as a figurative slap in the face, but if that’s what it takes to get recognition of social injustice then it is but a small price to pay. The big thing, though, is making an actual change
12I agree with most every point you’ve made El Jefe, which has resulted in my current disappointment with NFL owners and the league in general.
I’ll only add that in a battle of zillionaires vs millionaires, I have a hard time ginning up sympathy, arguing the finer points of the intrinsically deep rooted problems on one side or the other (and the problems do exist) as it’s clear neither of them need or care about me for anything other than to buy their tickets.
Remember when Obama asked the NFL to mention the Affordable Care Act during games when the plan was being rolled out, to help Americans reacognize they finally had a way to get health care? The NFL said no.
13The notion that NFL players are at will employees (Master/Servant) is just wrong. They are unionized and work rules are subject to collective bargaining. The owners know and hate this. The rule will collapse.
The problem that we have with boycott is that it only works against a product one would otherwise purchase. I haven’t contemplated an NFL ticket for thirty years.
14I’ve always hated football; it’s a ridiculous “sport” that I was forced to watch while in school band. I can’t understand why any adult would watch it willingly. When my BFF posted stuff about professional football on FB, I asked her how she got into it. Her answer: Having a husband (since deceased) and raising two sons.
15I watch a lot less NFL than I used to, and granted there are plenty of reasons to drop it, but I do object to describing the game as “300 pound guys trying to maim each other.”
I remember when Joe Theismann broke his leg during a game. It happened because he went down on one knee with his other leg extended to the side, and Lawrence Taylor of the NY Giants landed on that extended leg and snapped both bones above the ankle. It was an accident, and Taylor, not a teammate, was the one who jumped up and waved for help; he felt terrible about it.
I didn’t watch football for the tackles. I watch it for the avoidance of tackles– how did he spin away from those three guys?– and for the passes. I love it when the QB hurls the ball halfway down the field to a receiver who just puts up his hands without slowing down or even looking and there’s the ball in his hands. How do they do that…? Dang, it’s pretty even when it’s the other damn team.
I can’t get into other sports. Baseball is like watching grass grow. Hockey, I can’t even see the puck half the time. Soccer, it’s run up and down and up and down and somebody almost scored and up and down and up and…. Basketball, they score all the time but each basket hardly means anything. I could get into Maryland’s state sport– jousting– but it’s not televised much and the meets are few.
16I quit watching last year. What I did after the latest NFL travesty is get rid of all my NFL branded gear (Green Bay in my case). I found that not watching games on Sunday frees up my afternoon to go to the dog park and lowers my aggression level.
17Actions by the NFL owners are, of course, deplorable (and I think “plantation mentality” is spot-on.
We are sentencing tens of thousands of children, especially low-income children whose parents may not have access to information on the hazards of the sport, to a lifetime of brain damage.
This video alone offers compelling evidence that the sport should be banned in the same way that gladiator contents have been banned:
http://content.time.com/time/video/player/0,32068,64253995001_1957921,00.html
And, no, better helmets do not protect the brain from banging back to front in a tackle.
18correction–gladiator contests
19NicaBrian, you are so right! How can you call it a sport when there are a zillion coaches all calling the shots, calculated to the 3rd decimal place by a computer? And the guys who play offense can’t play defense? And somebody else has to kick? It’s chess on a fake green carpet.
Now hockey, that’s a sport!
(And Zyxomma, I endured the same boredom in the high school band- freezing in an illfitting uniform with a flute frozen to my lip.)
20My now 13 year old grandson started playing football a couple of years ago. Never too young to get your first concussion, and of course, he did. I sent my daughter every article I could find on the permanent damage football can do to a kid, and she ended his football career very early. He plays basketball, soccer and baseball, runs track, and does just about every sport he can. Football? No way!
21@AK Lynne: There is some talk of football dying because parents won’t let their kids play it. The whole concussion thing, coupled with the moronic and greedy NFL owners, may just kill the sport outright. Which wouldn’t be a bad thing, IMHO.
22As some have already intimated above My moment with all of football came with the NFL’s ignoring of CTEs, which destroy the brains of some of their Players, although I have had my doubts about pro sports since Lyle Alzado died as a direct result of steroid abuse.
Too late for my boys who played football and hockey from early ages. I try to influence the current generation with trips to Frisco for MLS hockey and tennis racquets of various sizes and ping pong tables. Doing so may not be less expensive than a season of football or hockey but so far I have no signs of brain damage (in spite of what my little bride says) and neither do my sons. My sons-in-law all play soccer or swam in HS so their risk of concussion related injury is comparatively low.
So, shut down football in all its forms. OK by me. Shutdown hockey (blasphemous I know) in all its forms as well. And rugby. Just like boxing wherein the head is a target these concussion sports must end.
23I feel completely helpless in this situation. How do I boycott something I have never attended nor even watched on TV? What can I possibly do to make a difference?
Yes, I’ve signed any petitions that have come my way, but those are useless and I know it.
Meanwhile, the players have their rights trampled on in the short term, suffer debilitating injuries in the longer term and will be booted to the curb to die in the end – with no help from their teams which profited so hugely on their backs.
24I was pretty much done with the NFL when they tried to pretend TBI from concussions wasn’t leading to permanent brain damage at an early age in their players. (That’s being a former paramedic for you–I can’t NOT see the trauma-disability connection.)
Still had kinda a thing for my teams but no love for the owners. Then came the “controversy” over kneeling, which should have been about acknowledging the plight of black victims of police violence…but turned into bashing people for not being patriotic enough or not loving the troops…and I turned farher away.
I’ll miss the season games. I liked football (though I like both rugby and Australian Rules football better!!), grew up with it, understand it, played flag football in college and loved that. Watching high school football is fun; college football is sometimes fun; NFL is the clash of behemoths and increasingly loses the speed and tactical brilliance of college and even HS. Baseball bores me. Always did. Tennis is OK, but though the ball and the players move fast, the game is slow. Horse races, steeplechases, and the cross country phase of combined training I could watch every day. In fact, given galloping horses on turf I’d probably skip ever other sport.
But the NFL owners have finally torn the last of my heartstrings out of NFL football with their pretense of patriotism (into which my tax money goes directly to them for hiring the Defense Department’s troops and airplanes. YUCK.)
25@Twocrows:
I plan to boycott the NFL’s sponsors’ products and go from there. If enough hit their wallet, the NFL might just get a clue.
26I’ve been boycotting the NFL for over a year and I’m better off for it. But Papa has the right idea. Time to boycott the sponsors.
27PEOPLE, PEOPLE, PEOPLE!!!
WOMEN’S SPORTS! Do you have Any Idea how good they are? Have you watched Serena Williams play tennis? Don’t you know LeBron James, Kevin Durant and most of the rest of the NBA players are huge fans of the WNBA and admire their play? No team has been as smash mouth successful as USA Soccer Women.
WTF?! I didn’t think you were all a bunch of misogynistic trolls, but you sound like it. Read back over the comments and listen to yourselves. You should be embarrassed at least.
Or you can just be mad at me for bringing this to your attention.
28I agree with Andy Griffith about football
29Rhea, actually there are some advantages of Aussie Footy. Less padding for starters. I always regarded as a sport in which, if you broke a leg, you got up and continued because, after all, you still have a good leg. Our football is more like a padded suit filled with meat.
30I do not, nor have I ever, given a crap about any televised sports, except the occasional Olympic ice skating competition.
It has freed up an amazing amount of time for other pursuits.
I still know a bit about local teams, because Denver is obsessed with them. I don’t know about other places, but here the local 10:00PM newscasts often lead off with a sports story. Then they devote the last 1/3 of the 35 minute program to sports coverage. And of course, the additional freestanding half hour sports shows on weekend nights.
Add another 4 minutes or so for weather, subtract about 10 minutes for commercials, and we’re left with maybe 12-13 minutes of actual news, including human interest pieces, and, inexplicably “news” stories that are reruns from earlier in the week. About 2 minutes of national news is “reported”; i.e., they read the headlines in a voiceover while they show network footage.
No wonder most people are clueless about the current state of everything! Sports devour so much time and attention.
31I would have to be chained to my chair and beaten to watch one second of football. I was forced to be in the same room but was able to keep my head in a book for years when my husband was alive.
32In the very brief period after he died when I thought it was somehow necessary to be one of a pair. I found out another “truth” on the scale of Trump accidental fibs.
Men will say they don’t care to watch sports and all of them are good cooks….throw in a couple more.
As a kid with 3 brothers, I fondly remember the neighborhood
33pickup games. We altered the rules to protect ourselves. for instance, in football there was no tackling, strictly touch.
We played ping pong baseball using the ping pong ball and a paddle as a bat and “pitcher’s hand” meant if the pitcher got hold of it before you reached base, you were out. In basket ball, if you fouled somebody (crashed into them) you were out of the game, so everybody made sure they played fair.
Sports are so much more fun when you play them than when you pay to watch.
Debbo, the women of the WNBA are awesome. When it’s time for KJ and Jack to learn the fundamentals of the game, the women set the best example(s). That said, the WNBA needs to be wary of following the other major sports down the “owner” rabbit hole with that League Pass scheme. Your thoughts?
34My husband is a big fan of women’s soccer. He sits in the press box, interviews the players, and has a blog. I applaud him for that, and I’ve watched some games, but just can’t get into it no matter which sex is playing it.
Saw a photo of women playing rugby in their prom dresses for charity. I could probably get into that….
35Rhea –
36I’m assuming that they at least changed their shoes.
A wrenched ankle caused by a stiletto heel impaling the turf – not a pretty sight.
Think of all the time that could be used doing something productive, like cleaning the garage!
37Pro sports does nothing for me. My self-esteem isn’t affected by them in any way. I’m inclined to think far too many people have way too much time and money on their hands.