Bathrooms, Texas and Pro Football

Oh, this one will be fun.  As you know, Texas is associated with many, many things, not all of which are particularly big.  But one of the biggest is football, as the home of "America's Team", the Dallas Cowboys, as well as the Houston Texans, which also were a playoff team this year and which city hosted the S*per Bowl just completed.

As this article relates, the Senate of the State of Texas is currently processing a bill which would mandate that people use the bathroom of their gender at birth, or some definition of the like, essentially requiring that transgender folks go into public bathrooms suitable for their, er, equipment.

Let me quote from the article:

NFL spokesman Brian McCarthy told the [AP] that if a “proposal that is discriminatory or inconsistent with our values were to become law there,” it would be a factor in awarding future events. Simply put: If the bill becomes law, that will be included in the discussion of whether Houston or Dallas gets a Super Bowl in the future.

Texas Governor Greg Abbott was beyond "not amused."  Again, from the article:
 
“The NFL is walking on thin ice right here,” Abbott told conservative radio host Glenn Beck [citing the Texas Tribune]. “The NFL needs to concentrate on playing football and get the heck out of politics.”  We are assuming he said "heck", but not much.

I was particularly bemused when looking at the NFL spokesman's words, specifically "... inconsistent with our values."  "Our" values, he said.

I am immensely curious as to whose values are defined as those of the NFL.  Roger Goodell's values?  The majority values of the league's franchise owners?  The players?  Brian McCarthy didn't say.  I would be very interested in what the answer would be if someone -- and Greg Abbott might just do that -- were to ask the NFL exactly how it determined what the values of the league were, and if they are perhaps written down somewhere.

I say that because even now, as the champion New England Patriots are planning their ceremonial trip to the White House, several of the players are exhibiting their "values" by saying they won't show up (though I cannot possibly see what it is they are complaining about, based on less that four weeks of the current administration).

Others of the players, most of the team, will of course make the trip.  What are their "values"?  We know that Tom Brady is a Trump man, but Trump hasn't really even commented on the Texas bill and its North Carolina predecessor, and specifically made supportive LGBT statements in his acceptance speech.  So we don't know his take on it and how it jibes with his values.

We also know that many others who are going to the White House -- really, the rest of the league, champions or not -- are all over the gym as far as bathroom laws are concerned.  These are rather large, testosterone-driven men, and anyone who has been in a locker room knows that transgender people are not exactly the source of sympathy when such players are talking about them.

What are their values?

Here is the comparison.  Hobby Lobby is a privately-owned company, that we know to be owned by people with certain Christian values, that oppose abortion, and just recently won a case to allow them not to have to provide a type of medical insurance policy for employees, one that pays for certain services they oppose on religious grounds.

We know that when someone speaks to "Hobby Lobby's values", we know we are referring to the owners.  I don't think that every employee necessarily subscribes to the same beliefs, of course, but the owners do, and theirs count.  We know who they are and who speaks for them.

No one "owns" the NFL, although we could say that the team owners in fact do.  Were they polled as to their opinions before the league spokesman popped off, assuming the league had those values that he said it did?  Did they poll the players?  Coaches?  Sideline marker holders?  Cheerleaders?

I hope you get where I'm going.  I find it very questionable that an organization, a league with some alpha-male owners, an alpha-male commissioner and some serious alpha-male players and coaches, all agree enough on an issue that doesn't affect them at all, to where they have any right to have a spokesman give the impression of agreement.

But I can speak for my own consulting company.

We are with Texas.

Copyright 2017 by Robert Sutton
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