Since I only recently discovered that I had written two separate columns a year apart referencing the same 1914 quote for different reasons, I did some research. I had to, since I needed to make sure I had not stated this before.
There will be no NFL in this house.
OK, you knew that, not because I had already written this piece's theme before, but because it is actually the title, and most people at least do read the headline before going on to the piece. I'd like to think my readers don't need to, because they want to jump right in to the content as fast as possible, but I'm not stupid.
I'm so "not stupid" that I can recall most of the reasons for doing so, or not doing so, whichever applies to banning the NFL.
Colin Kaepernick, the entitled former NFL quarterback who started the whole kneeling-for-the-anthem business, is out of work, unless being a professional nuisance is paying his mortgage. He is not out of work because he knelt, despite what he and a bunch of other NFL players aver; he is out of work because he is not good enough to play in the NFL anymore.
Well, I'll give you this -- he is certainly not good enough to start in the NFL anymore, and if there are 50 backup-quality quarterbacks alive today, and if he were good enough to be compared to those backups, he still wouldn't be on a team -- because he doesn't offer anything that 49 other guys don't offer with considerably less baggage. That baggage, by the way, is having the police and military, including veterans and their families, refuse to attend games, buy from sponsors or support the team that would have hired him to be -- again -- a backup.
So lots of other entitled NFL players started kneeling, so many that they can't get their stories straight about why they're kneeling, to where I literally cannot tell you why any of them is taking a knee. By the time this peaked last season, the NFL was mired in a PR disaster of the highest level.
They tried, posting a $100 million planned donation that was supposed to go to charities of the players' choosing. Yes, read the link. Those charities, at least some of them, were some pretty offensive organizations with real questionable links (they could have just given it to the United Negro College Fund and called it a day without protest, but that would have been too easy).
The point was that it was supposed to buy off the players and get them on their feet for the national anthem.
Well, it didn't work, apparently, although I have not heard that the NFL is suspending its annual payments to those charities. Some players are still kneeling, and as we head into the preseason, we're also left with the aftermath of the NFL having tried to put in a rule requiring the players to stand, and then having to waffle on that. Frankly, I don't know what the rule is now.
Fortunately, I don't have to care.
My best girl and I have banned the NFL from our home TV screens. I certainly don't need the NFL. My hockey team, the Washington Capitals, won the Stanley Cup this year, and since they play in roughly the same season and then beyond, I can devote my sports attention, after the Red Sox run toward the World Series at least, to hockey (I don't watch basketball anymore regardless; the colleges don't keep players in school long enough to become a "team", and the NBA is so full of contemptible people randomly producing illegitimate children that there's no one to root for).
I enjoyed the NFL in the 60 or so years that I watched it before last year. Granted, I had a predictable reaction at the start of each season. I'd miss football, but then I'd see a preseason game and some clown would score a touchdown and dance like a fool even though his team was down 24 points. I'd go "That's why I don't watch as much football as I used to", and then watch the season with less loyalty than before.
The NFL is now a set of disagreeing owners led by a wildly-overpaid and acutely-incompetent commissioner, overseeing wildly-overpaid players with zero regard for, or understanding of, the people who ultimately allow them to buy those mansions and big cars (and those who defend them in uniform). I've reached an age where I simply do not need to be taken advantage of by them.
I'm over 65, and it is a fear of all of us of that age that we will be taken advantage of, either by scam artists, or government, or technology we don't understand. I will not be taken advantage of by professional football. If the choice is watching the NFL or feeling good about my support for Americans in uniform in the military and law enforcement, there is simply no choice to make.
We will not watch the NFL here. Go Red Sox. Go Caps. OK, Phil Mickelson too.
Copyright 2018 by Robert Sutton
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All these players could be my grandchildren and I don't recognize any of them anymore. I'm bored with it,I'd rather watch golf. Every golfer is competing against everybody else and kneeling would hit them in the pocket book. They are respectable and respected. Go golf!
ReplyDeleteI did yesterday. Following your advice ... Bob
DeleteI had almost abandoned football in the last few years....3 hours is too much time for me to give very often anymore.
ReplyDeleteThen the stories came out about some players beating the daylights out of their wives/girlfriends. I chalked that up to steroids, and for some, a bad childhood. Still, that made it hard to root for many teams. When the quite credible stories about brain damage began to surface, I lost most of my ability to watch a hard-hitting game. All I could think of was what they were doing to their brains...
When they decided to add political activism to the games that was way too much. Football teams used to unite the citizens of the cities they were in. No longer.
Like you, we don't watch football in my house. There are far more entertaining and less agravating ways to spend the time.