Posted on 10/16/2017 8:03:08 AM PDT by Kaslin
Y.A. Tittle died last week. A Hall of Fame quarterback for the New York Giants, he is best known for the taking a knee on a football field. Actually, it was two knees.
In September 1964, the Giants were facing the Pittsburgh Steelers at old Pitt Stadium. Tittle was 38 years old and at the tail end of a 17-year professional career. He had led his team to three straight NFL Championship Games, in ’61, ’62, and ’63, but did not win.
In the game against the Steelers, he dropped back into his own end zone to throw a pass. He was viciously knocked to the ground and his helmet flew off. The pass was intercepted for a touchdown.
He struggled to his knees and stared blankly into the open field, bleeding from his head. The other players backed off and left him to himself. At that moment, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette photographer Morris Berman snapped a picture.
It is among the greatest sports photographs ever taken. There is Muhammad Ali standing over Sonny Liston and Ben Hogan with his one iron at Merion’s final hole. But those are about achievement and victory. This is about the struggle to rise after being knocked down.
People watch the NFL to revel in such mythology. A game where redemption is purchased at a great physical cost serves as an allegory for the common man.
In the 1960s, American culture was fracturing along a fault line, with the common man on one side and scorn against his mores and values on the other. The league’s commissioner at the time, Pete Rozelle, chose to take the side of ordinary Americans in the raging culture war, because they were his natural audience. The league sent star players to visit troops in Vietnam and issued rules requiring players to stand upright during the playing of the National Anthem.
In 1967, the NFL produced a film that combined sideline and game footage titled, “They Call It Pro Football.” The film was unapologetically hokey. It was crew cuts and high tops and lots of chain smoking into sideline telephones. With a non-rock, non-folk, non-“what’s happening now” soundtrack, heavy on trumpets and kettle drums. John Facenda, who would come to be called “The Voice of God” for his work with NFL Films, provided the vaulting narration. The production began with the words, “It starts with a whistle and ends with a gun.” There was nothing Radical Chic about it.
The NFL surpassed baseball as America’s pastime with careful branding that conformed to the tastes and sensibilities of middle-class Americans – Nixon’s silent majority. A half century later, Roger Goodell would kill the goose that laid the golden egg.
In August 2016, America was experiencing a polarizing presidential election. San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick sat during the playing of the national anthem, to protest injustice. It was a politically divisive act directed at fans who regard the national anthem as something sacred. The league did not lift a finger to stop him.
Most employers don’t let their workers make controversial political statements to their customers. It is why you do not know your UPS driver’s views on the expansion of NATO. The Constitution does not prohibit private businesses from regulating speech during work.
A savvier commissioner would have reminded Kaepernick that he is being paid millions to wear the logo of the NFL, and the league does not permit players to use its brand to flaunt their personal politics. Instead, Roger Goodell permitted the pregame ceremonies to become the focus of intense political scrutiny, as the media lined up to catalog whether players stood, sat or knelt during the national anthem.
He knew, no doubt, that protesting the national anthem would be offensive to some people. With Hillary Clinton’s inevitable triumph looming, it was generally considered okay to offend those people. They would be described by Hillary Clinton a few days after Kaepernick’s protest as a basket of deplorables. The NFL was just pandering to the prevailing sentiment when it green lighted Kaepernick’s cause. Then Trump won.
The rule before Trump was that half the country had to endure any scold, put up with all name calling, and generally be treated like idiots by popular culture. The brilliant lights who made the rules never considered that scolding half the country may, in itself, have been divisive. And that people have been stewing about it for years.
When the 2017 seasons started, President Trump railed at the NFL for permitting the protests. Rather than back down, the NFL doubled down, employing the double speak of the cornered weakling. Try to imagine John Facenda speaking the words, “The NFL and our players are at our best when we help create a sense of unity in our country and our culture” – you can’t.
Television ratings have tanked. By permitting its games to become a forum for liberal politics, the NFL broke faith with its fan base.
Y.A. Tittle quit football after kneeling in the end zone and sold insurance. He hung Berman’s photograph in his office with the caption, “Nothing Comes Easy.” Last week, his death coincided with the end the NFL mythology he represented. The league is no longer a fanfare for the common man, an allegory about the struggle to get up after being knocked down.
It is easy to drop to one knee in a deliberate pose to protest something. Rising from two knees after spending yourself in a physical battle, that’s not so easy. It is why people watched, Roger.
The owners have absolute control over who is on their rosters and who is on the field. That is all the authority they need. Most of these players are not political kamikazes - if they see another player get cut over a stunt like this, they'll fall in line. But give the players no guidance and it is like the power going out in a big city on a hot night. Most NFL contracts are not guaranteed and even if those that are do not prevent the player from being cut or benched.
NFL SCUM ALERT
I remember him well:
“No Tittle,
No Title”
This situation is similar to what the U.S. auto industry was dealing with back in the 1970s and 1980s. Their union workers turned out crap cars but they couldn't be fired. The Big Three lost a lot of business to foreign competitors, and eventually they started building plants in Mexico to get around their union problem.
I’m sure you’re’ familiar with this famous verse form Hamlet
“Alexander was buried, Alexander returned to dust, the dust is dirt, and dirt makes mud we use to stop up holes. So why can’t someone plug a beer barrel with the dirt that used to be Alexander? The great emperor Caesar, dead and turned to clay, might plug up a hole to keep the wind away. Oh, to think that the same body that once ruled the world could now patch up a wall!’”
The NFL is biting the dust.
True. But if a player gets cut in the middle of the season then the owner loses out two ways — he has to pay the player anyway, then he has to pay someone else to replace the player.
“...only blm...”
Thanks for adding the word that is always implied but normally left out.
That's the first I heard of the ribs but with a broken sternum I'd be surprised if the ribs weren't involved.
The concussion and broken sternum are legend though, and Tittle finished the game and didn't miss a game the rest of the season.
Don’t think the union chief isn’t motivated in the end by money.
Numbers don’t lie, and the union head is going to fall on the side of making sure his exorbitant salary will be safeguarded at least until the end of his tenure.
This crisis jeopardizes pensions to players long retired. This is a collapse, and this collapse is occurring in an age of sudden collapses to institutions that NOBODY thought would fail, likely starting with the bankruptcy of PanAm.
The union is stupid, and even evil, but they are greedy, and that’s all you need.
Goodell & the NFL Team owners can fix this problem with one simple move. “You either stand to salute and honor the USA Flag with your right hand covering your heart, during the playing of our great national anthem or, don’t even suit up anymore...you are fired”!!!
Until the leadership of the NFL does this, I will never watch another NFL game...and any American citizen that does watch these “Hate America” Obama/Clinton/Weinstein, traitors and turncoats is just as guilty of treason as these players are. End of story!!!
I don’t think this affects pensions much at all. In fact, the NFL is notorious for having a poor pension system compared to other major sports. Only active players vote on the collective bargaining agreements, and they have repeatedly demonstrated over the years that they’re willing to bargain away pension benefits for retirees in exchange for cash up front. Those mutants you see kneeling on the sidelines are dumb as rocks — which means they’re as short-sighted as rocks, too.
To your point, you would not believe how many current players are living paycheck to paycheck.
Perhaps, also, to my point.
To take it to an opposite extreme using reductio ad absurdum, if a player was to take the field while waving a Confederate Flag, would there be an equal outcry to protect their freedom of speech?
Almost certainly not, the player would be benched on the spot, terminated later that day, and I'd think that the general response would be "Dumba$$. He got what he deserved." Same freedoms, same concept, only one is politically correct - therefore acceptable - and one is not.
I think that's what I find so offensive about this entire situation. Players exercised their freedom of speech, that's fine. The fans (me included) exercised their freedom of speech to say, "We don't approve.", also fine.
Where the NFL fell down was that they forgot who was in charge in a customer-vendor relationship. "The customer is always right", is an excellent cliché to follow. In this particular case, the vendor (NFL) said, "We DON'T CARE", when presented with what the customer said they wanted, then doubled down on the premise when the customer pushed back.
How many stores do you frequent where the clerks insult you, personally? Or argue with you about your purchase? Or, when you complain to their management, have the manager side with their employee rather than with you, the customer?
Speaking for myself, none. So to me, the only surprise about people's reactions to this situation is that they're not more vehement.
/rant off. Thanks for listening.
They did. The result you got was driven by the demographics of the teams and the league as a whole.
It's too late for that. If they have to be forced, F*** 'em.
At the end of the day, I don’t really care. I’ve lost interest. If I have to consider politics and mamby-pamby politically correct Bologna to watch a football game, I don’t enjoy it enough to include it in my schedule.
It teaches men how to fight together for an objective.
It is the game of the winners, the vanquished are forced to play soccer. The story is timeless:/
The loser left has hated football from it's very beginnings. The NFL has been infiltrated by traitors just as our government has and now they are both committing suicide. The left has convinced us to destroy the very institutions that have made America the greatest nation on earth and while our enemies are gathering strength, we are contemplating our hurt wittle feeeeeewingsssss.
All of this was brilliantly foreshadowed in the Lord of the Rings - Return of the King
Your post is important:
The opposite of love isn’t hate.
It’s indifference.
When the NBA struck a long time ago I lost interest completely. Love the NCAA’s despite the best efforts of the NCAA and CBS to ruin it.
Very good post. I am going to borrow your Confederate flag analogy.
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