Posted on 09/01/2020 3:29:45 PM PDT by conservative98
With their boycott of games earlier this week to protest the police shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wisconsin, athletes in the National Basketball Association and Major League Baseball have crossed a bridge that they may find difficult to return from. Though professional athletes have become increasingly politicized since former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick began his “Star Spangled Banner” protests in 2016, the widespread cancellation of games, including NBA playoff contests, is unprecedented.
The walkout in support of Blake, who was wanted on a sexual-assault charge and whose own girlfriend called the cops on him, hardly represents the kind of compelling case against police brutality one might build a mass movement around. If players, in the midst of a pandemic slowdown already costing professional sports billions of dollars, were willing to shut down their industry in this instance, how frequently will they feel compelled, or even pressured, to do the same in the future? Fans who were already watching less sports may react negatively to being lectured by wealthy athletes who regularly walk off the job.
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But the players themselves don’t hold all the cards. Americans have been falling progressively out of love with the NBA, for instance, and the pandemic has only exacerbated an already difficult situation. TV ratings, mediocre after the season restarted, are down collectively by 40 percent on the TNT network, and 20 percent on ESPN, since their peak nearly a decade ago. Even more troubling is that the league’s network TV premium broadcasts ratings on ABC are off by 45 percent, what a former public relations executive for the NBA describes as a “cratering” of viewership.
(Excerpt) Read more at city-journal.org ...
I could care less about those idiots and about their sports. I only watch PGA Golf on TV. Golfers are polite, nicely dressed, white, black, Asian, and Spanish.. Highly skilled.
The top player this year, Dustin Johnson, has a short beard so I always root against him.
Maybe marrying your child’s mother would be a better way to make his life matter.
from what I've heard lebrainless tried to run the boycott meeting. he supposedly grabbed the mic and began to tell everyone what they were going to do AFTER they had reached a decision.
the younger players didn't like it.
unlike lebrainless, they don't have his bank roll. that he even has a bankroll in this "systemic racist" country is beyond me.
and i've been watching the nba going back to the day when the championship games were tape delayed. that's how bad the game was back then. i certainly hope they go back to being that bad.
I guess John Rahm’s playoff put pleased you.
i’d call that 50/50 at best
I’m done with all pro sports.
Let them get real jobs.
You mean "receive a pass, take four or five steps, and then either dribble or slam-dunk" ...
The modern NBA allows more traveling than The Fuller Brush Company ...
What is this “dribble” of which you speak?
The game as played by the nba is people running with the ball and then trying to slam it into the basket to make the sports highlights or stopping at the 1/2 court line to shoot for the same reason.
The ball almost never hits the floor and these guys would pay their back child support before they would shoot a 10 foot jumper (which they would miss).
It was beyond brilliant. I hope Rahm wins the FedEx cup. I’ll be cheering him on—though just on TV. Wouldn’t it be fab to be there?
That is why the Nets owner took the team to Brooklyn instead of Newark; just because residents play “hoops” doesn’t mean they’ll buy tickets or merchandise. Unlike Newark, Brooklyn has an employed workforce that buys things; when the NJ Devils owner publicly stated he would have never moved the team to Newark if he’d known they’d come after him for more money, it was damning.
I’m enjoying the lack of a gallery, no idiots screaming “Get in the Hole!” on every swing.
whining, sniveling and protesting their way into irrelevance.
LOL. I’ve been known to yell that while watching on TV. Friends do too while watching together.
Yep. All of this is going to change professional sports in a big way. Many teams may cease to exist after this is over. By over, I mean the shake out in the next few years.
Many of fans are NEVER coming back. I know there are many on FR that will tell me I am wrong, but wait and see.
I just hope people are finding more productive ways of using their time.
MLB players went on strike years ago and it took quite a few years before the fans returned to the game. Hopefully this happens again. Lessons needs to be learned.
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