Posted on 02/03/2018 7:22:56 AM PST by Kaslin
I love pro-football. From the plains of Iowa, I became a Cowboys fan. Most of my friends like the Packers, Bears, Vikings, or Chiefs, but not me. I loved those Dallas Cowboys. Why? First, Iowa doesn’t have a professional football team and secondly in the late 70s the Cowboys were awesome.
The days of Roger Staubach and Tony Dorsett gave way to Troy Aikman and Emmitt Smith. As a boy those guys were larger than life…real life sports heroes. I suffered through two-a-days as a seventh grader because football was the greatest game I’d ever seen. I wasn’t too fast and at the time I was way too skinny, but I wore my #12 jersey with pride learning about great victories and sorrowful defeats.
Sports are great that way. They have the ability to put a Democrat and a Republican firmly and passionately on the same team. That special bond between fan and team seemed unbreakable. Until this year.
I didn’t boycott the entire season, but I can count the number of games I watched this year on one hand. That is unheard of for me. The reason was 100 percent because of the players kneeling for the national anthem. It hurt me so deeply that these sports heroes would so callously turn their backs on the greatest country that ever existed. The very country that allowed them to make millions of dollars playing a game. My father-in-law would stand from his wheel chair and remove his cap for the anthem. He took some shrapnel in Korea and old age had won its war on his body, but he stood till the end. And when they handed that triangle folded flag to his wife, we all wept.
That is what the protesters spit on for me when they knelt, and I am still not over it.
The NFL doesn’t seem to have gotten the message. They dig their hole a little deeper with the American public every day. As if the kneeling controversy spinning out of control wasn’t bad enough. They took it another step and banned a veterans’ group from running an ad in the Super Bowl asking people to “Please Stand” for the American flag. Now they’ve banned a digital currency from running a video advertisement because it mocks North Korean leader, Kim Jong-Un, insinuating that even his best hackers couldn’t hack this new cryptocurrency.
Of all the horrible commercials that have been allowed to run during the Super Bowl, outlawing these two smacks of a political agenda.
The NFL has not gotten the memo that Americans like to stand for the anthem. President Donald J. Trump received a huge applause during the State of the Union when he pointed out a young man, Preston Sharp, who was putting flags on the graves of 40,000 unmarked veterans graves when he said, “Preston’s reverence for those who have served our nation reminds us why we salute our flag, why we put our hands on our hearts for the Pledge of Allegiance, and why we proudly stand for the national anthem.” The NFL is doing its part in dividing America by getting involved in a controversy over disrespecting the flag. The flag is a unifying symbol for Americans of all heritage. In the flag, we are all red, white, and blue.
The fact that the NFL rejected not one, but two ads, because of political considerations simply shows their true colors. Rejecting an advertisement from Veterans is outrageous when they merely wanted to ask people to stand for the American flag. Rejecting a video advertisement from a new digital currency because it pokes fun at Kim Jong-Un is a head scratcher. Who doesn’t think Kim Jong-Un is funny? The ad uses humor to make a point and to encourage people to buy their product.
I suspect the NFL would have gladly run a commercial that made fun of President Trump, yet they are selectively infringing on the spirit of the First Amendment to the Constitution when they politically screen ads. If the NFL has proven anything this year, it’s that they don’t care one bit about what their consumers/fans want. The NFL trouble smells like politics and most of us have enough politics in our lives without it taking over our sports too.
If anything, the NFL has done a great job of making me a baseball fan.
When I was going to college in the 70s, I worked at a Sears appliance repair center. I remember one year the motivational theme was "Sears Excellence League," with a logo that was a take-off of the NFL logo (I can't find an image of it on the internet).
The reason I mention this is that I see the slow demise of the NFL following in the footsteps of the slow demise of Sears, with the leadership either not knowing or not caring about its customer base or its target market.
Unified blacks and whites...
It used to, as I have noticed
At the Shop.
Nobody is making $52 billion off the SB. Where ever you read that is a bunch of liars, don’t go there again. Now NBC stands to make a solid $500 million, but the NFL isn’t getting anything directly. They already got paid.
There are few and far, and I was including college
You really want to argue this point?
“Sunday’s Super Bowl”
Is that this weekend?
Die NFL, die die die.
“The fact that Justin Timberlake is once again performing in the Super Bowl halftime show is another indicator the NFL is sick and dying.”
Because nothing says “current” and “relevant” like an aging ‘90s boy band member.
A quick google check shows seven black NFL head coaches.
Eleven Division 1 (or FBS as it seems to be called now) black head coaches.
IF Brady wasn’t playing, I would not pay one little bit of attention.
Tomorrow I will miss my first Super Bowl since Green Bay played the Chiefs.
I don’t know any players on the lowly AFL teams, but Lombardi’s Packers? Had to watch Bart Starr & Co.
Yes. There are several black head coaches, coordinators, and position coaches. Your assertion that black players only look up to their white head coaches as role models is just eye-rolllingly stupid.
The democrats have got their people running the NFL with the purpose of ruining it as it represents America. Baseball will next but I think the owners there have made it clear they will fight as you do not see any knellers there.
Nope...no knellers under here either.
If anything, the NFL has done a great job of making me a baseball fan.
Whats wrong with the NFL. They need competition of a different kind of draft. Like the US Armed Forces.
There are too many teams, but not enough exceptional owners, coaches, and athletes, to staff them.
The most glaring deficiency is quarterbacks. There are 32 teams but only about 10 QBs who play at a consistently high level, and probably half of them will miss some part of the season with injuries.
Solution: Reduce to 16 teams and 12 regular season games.
Probability of That Happening: In the neighborhood of 0%
I know there are black coaches, et al. But do the math. Incredibly high illegitimacy rates and a disproportionate number of black players. Along with a dearth of black coaches.
And read the relationships in articles, particularly college/recruiting and see who bonds with who. If you read “absolute” into my post, then you’re the one “eye rolling stupid”
Anyone with a brain could infer what I meant. And it’s not lost on me you were the only one to complain
Why? They are playing a children's game that is completely and utterly irrelevant to our society.
Agreed. I don’t respect their skills any more than I would respect the competitive video game players, but they have acquired the skills.
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