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.
It is outstanding to me that Roger Goodell still has a job.
The owners are not very smart businesssmen at all.
Here’s the thing. The NFL and the NFL players were operating the old paradigm.
1. Made a very loud moral stand under the color of moral righteousness and under the banner of racial grievance.
2. Push the issue with some grandstanding virtue signaling.
3. The media culture will back the “movement” 100%, despite no specifics and an ambiguous identification of the problem and ambiguous articulation of solutions.
4. The opposition to the stand will be largely intimidated and no one of note will take a leadership position against the movement.
5. The movement wins, almost by default.
The script changed. Things got bungled up with step 4, and that gave average people (usually intimidated) more ability to speak their mind and engage in the debate.
The liberals continue to operate under the outdated paradigm. They simply can’t wrap their minds around the clear fact that finally, they’re being openly (for firmly) disagreed with. The see this as being defied, though.
That was Big Daddy Lipscomb who put the big hit on Tittle. I remember it like it was yesterday. Big Daddy was at the twilight of his career too.
and still finished the game
“The POSs belong in an insane asylum.”
Nope... don’t want them here sucking up my tax dollars.
Ship their sorry arses off to Europe.... they should feel right at home.
Limbaugh did a piece a long time ago about how communism killed Cuba's ability to make a good cigar.
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.
How things have changed... Today's NFL stands on the shoulders of giants - - and pisses on them...
The branding rules relate to clothing and shoes — and they’re very detailed rules. The NFL usually cracks down hard on those violations because their merchandising partners pay a fortune in licensing fees to have their logos on the players’ uniforms. If the NFL signs a $25 million licensing fee with Nike (for example) and then they don’t act quickly and harshly to protect Nike’s exclusive branding contract, they could face legal penalties and may even be forced to give all the money back.
Pre merger, there were some players who actually played both sides of the ball. Most notable was Chuck Bednarik who famously knocked Frank Gifford out of football with one hit.
Gooddell is a mercenary. He has been happy to pocket his 30Mil a year for doing basically a PR job. Now that he has screwed up the PR, perhaps he will be let go but even so, the toothpaste is out of the tube now. I cannot fathom anyone putting this back together again. The fracturing elements of our society are on display every Monday, Thursday and Sunday during most of the pro season. I admit to checking a score from time to time on Sunday but I enjoyed yesterday with my wife out walking along our town wharf, or what is left of it!
Gee, ORDERING them to stand for the Anthem, firetruck them.
What is it with this unity crap. Frankly each team should have taken care of this in the club house: I got your unity right here. The only thing they are united on is they want a pay check, after that, the nation can go to hell I guess.
I say you first!
The nfl, its "games", their "scores", the players are ALL totally irrelevant and utterly meaningless.
The nfl has become like the ancient gladiatorial games, the Circus Maximus; the famous gladiators and the charioteers of "renoun" from the ancient Romance Empire.
Their arenas are nothing but crumbling ruins and who can recall or name any of their "famous" gladiators or charioteers? The answer is no one! This is the fate that awaits the once "glorious" nfl:
Ozymandias
I met a traveller from an antique land Who said: `Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand, Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown, And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed. And on the pedestal these words appear --
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away.'
Percy Bysshe Shelley
This is the future that awaits the nfl, and they destroyed it all with their own hands!
ALL THEY REALLY CARE ABOUT IS THE MONEY, THAT IS ALL!
They literally strangled to death their fan base "goose that laid all of their billion dollar nfl solid gold eggs" with their own hands. The goose is permanently dead and they killed it! Now, all too late they want to put Humpty Dumpy back together again and resurrect the goose from the dead.
This is rich, the National Felon League chose to side and kneel with hate America, only blm, sjw, hate whitey, communist anarchists over America and their own nfl fan base and now their fan base has been totally alienated and the very monsters they willingly aligned themselves with have turned on them and are now eating them alive.
All too late the nfl has awoken to the reality that the entire league, has an INCURABLE CASE OF SELF INFLICTED FINANCIAL EBOLA and is hemorrhaging money out of every conceivable orafice to the tune of HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF DOLLARS A WEEK with no way out and no end in sight.
The once financially lucrative nfl is circling the toilet bowl into obscurity and is quickly becoming totally irrelevant and financially worthless.
We choose to STAND with Americans for America; we choose love of country, we choose patriotism, we choose to "Live Free or Die", rather than "huddle up", "bend the knee" and subjugate ourselves, our families, and our beloved nation to the black racist, socialist, sjw, PC tyranny and perverted ideology of the National Felon League.
They want us to compromise our patriotism, our love of country, flag and nation and symbolically join the NFL in show of rebellious "unity" but "What fellowship does light have with darkness, good with evil (and subjugation for the sake of 'unity')?"
The answer is a resounding NOTHING! We can have no "unity" with those who hate our nation, its flag, its values and with those who despise us.
The anti-American National Felon League has, to quote Admiral Yamato: "awoken a sleeping giant and filled him with a terrible resolve".
We are at war; the NFL started this cultural war against US, against America and they are attacking EVERYTHING WE STAND FOR, BELIEVE IN AND HOLD NEAR AND DEAR.
Like WWII, there can not be any, truce, or "compromise" for the sake of their false notion of "unity", no "cessation of hostilities" with the nfl and those who have made themselves our enemies with out a cause.
We Americans who love our county more than any game have now taken up the fight forced upon us by the nfl and like "the greatest generation" we too will settle for only one outcome: NOTHING LESS THAT THEIR TOTAL SURRENDER!
Fair enough. But didn’t I hear that the US Government pays the NFL for something having to do with the national anthem and military promotion?
Is it different then?
“...Trump has somehow initiated this situation. Kapernick was the first...”
Yes, and crapnick did it during 0bum’s administration when everything was so wonderful.
He also walked out on his contract - was never fired.
If the U.S. government paid the NFL for a military promotion and that contract included a stipulation that every player must stand for the national anthem, then the NFL would have to write these terms into its agreement with the player’s union like they do with the apparel and shoe deals.
One printer I used to deal with described an employee this way, “Give him a rock and a feather and he will find a way to use the feather to F... up the rock, I know that’s impossible but believe me, he will find a way.”
It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.
Theodore Roosevelt, April 23, 1910
They can save money AND recover their reputation. This author, by the way, with this picture, is giving the NFL a way back.
All they have to do is take it.
America is rising. Football is intergenerational. Less so now, but it can be going forward:
No Felons
Pro America
Pro Family
Pro Child
Pro Entertainment
Anti Political
It’s possible. I grew up admiring what Madden could do with rejects. Joe Montana, playing with a concussion, no time left, winning the game with an improbable throw to the end zone. Fran Tarkington, five times a bridesmaid, HOF’er and absolutely a hero for how he coped with amazing success and bitter failure.
I can’t imagine my childhood without football. We used to emulate those guys playing nerf football in the street in the summer until the streetlights come on. So many great memories.
Goodell could lead. He’s acting like a lobbyist, not a man defending a brand. He could have built a coalition of owners that aren’t stupid and this could have been over before it started. Instead, Goodell told them if they made a fuss, they’d be painted as slave drivers and there was nothing they could do about it. (Which is abjectly untrue - tweet the player’s signature at the bottom of his big fact contract and the whole thing is done).
I want these guys to pull up out of this death spin. I don’t think they will.
The democrat party infiltrated the NFL.
Goodell hired clinton and obama hacks.
He allowed the players and coaches and the owners to support the killing of police officers and disparaging the flag while supporting those that support mass murderers Castro and Che.
He also would not allow support for the police killed in Texas or 9/11 remembrance.
Goodell comes off like an ass here but everything I’ve seen tells me he’s playing this by the letter of the law — both labor law and the terms of the NFL-NFLPA agreement.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.