My fellow comrades of the land formerly belonging to the free and brave, I welcome you to this latest installment of sensitivity training as administered by Monty Python. In this lesson, we manage to poke fun at Australians, Aborigines, and of course, Homosexuals.
Those of you who are offended can shove it! I am tired of living every moment of every day on the societal egg shells that now dot the fruited plains like some sort of a Fellini nightmare. I have now self imposed a moratorium on all NFL goings on. I will not stoop to the level of calling for a national boycott, but I am personally done with what used to be my second favorite sport.
The NFL recently has done everything possible to ruin what used to be the gold standard in professional sports. Fifteen years ago, they had reached the top, the very pinnacle of what every business seeks for itself. Even bad teams had huge television contracts, and every Sunday in the Autumn had become entirely about the NFL, and the 16 lucky cities that got to hold the weekly mini carnivals and tie up their down town traffic. NFL pregame activity started on television at 11:00 am, and the broadcast day ended somewhere around midnight.
Those were fun days to be a fan my fellow future inhabitants of the reeducation camps. The NFL was all about athletic competition, and not at all about anything having to do with political consideration. I mean sure James Harrison refused to travel with his Superbowl winning team to meet President Bush, but he also refused to meet President Obama as well. His reason given when asked? Scientists are still studying his answer to determine if anything intelligible can be gleaned from his statements. We didn’t cheer on our favorite teams for any other reason than that they represented our geography. We didn’t care, nor did we ever ask, what their personal philosophies were on any subject. We just wanted to see them win. I never cared about James Harrison’s political philosophy, only his ability to make tackles, sack quarterbacks, intercept passes, and to disrupt the other team’s offensive endeavors. To tell you the truth, I always rolled my eyes when anyone asked those questions to begin with. It simply had no place. Sports used to be the last bastion of relief that we all had from placing the entire world into a forced political context. Winning and losing were all that mattered. Life there was good.
Then, a couple of years ago, the NFL began to take on a much larger role than mere athletic competition, it found itself becoming a platform for approved thought. Welcome to Kurt Lewin’s group dynamic theory once again my comrades. Winning and losing are no longer the measure of our favorite sport. Compliance with the approved thought and value system are now the measures. Five or Six years ago, Rush Limbaugh was denied minority ownership of an NFL team because of the fact that he is a Conservative who publicly espouses his views. Now, they labeled him a racist, but all that means anymore is someone who does not wish to live under Marxist tyranny.
The specific comment that landed Limbaugh in hot water was this one, made several years earlier as a part of his job with ESPN, who had hired him specifically to say controversial and politically incorrect debate provoking things as a part of their broadcast. This offending statement was in reference to Donovan McNabb’s troubles as the starting quarterback of the Philadelphia Eagles.
I’m sorry to say this, I don’t think he’s been that good from the get go. I think what we’ve had here is a little social concern in the NFL. I think the media has been very desirous that a black quarterback do well, or it’s in black and in black quarterbacks doing well. I think there is a little hope invested in McNabb, and he got a lot of credit for the performance of this team that he really didn’t deserve
As it happens, I disagreed with Limbaugh’s assessment of McNabb on that particular issue, but agreed totally with his assessment of the media. If you’ll recall, McNabb led his team after that 4 – 4 start to a 12 – 4 season, and lost in the Conference Championship game. I always thought McNabb was a great player and one of the better quarterbacks of his day. What I did agree with was the media’s desire to have the great black hope in what they termed leadership positions. I can remember media pieces on black quarterbacks and head coaches being aired on a weekly basis dating back to the early 70’s. I remember this continuing despite the fact that Donovan McNabb was not even in the first ten to have held that moniker. Fredrick Douglas, Joe Lillard, George Taliaferro, Bernie Curtis, Willie Thrower, Charlie Brackens, Sandy Stephens, Dave Lewis, Marlin Briscoe, Eldridge Dickey, Henry Johnson, Onree Jackson, James Harris, Karl Douglas, Dave Mays, JJ Jones, Parnell Dickenson, Doug Williams, Johnny Walton, Nickie Hall, Brian Ransom, Randall Cunningham, Joe Gilliam, Vince Evans, Steve McNair, Warren Moon, Rodney Pete, Andre Ware, Byron Leftwich, Charlie Batch, Dante Culpepper, were all on the seen prior to McNabb. Yet, here we were in 2003 discussing ad nauseam, why there were so few black quarterbacks in pro football. Some of the names on that very partial list by the way date back to the 1920’s.
The NFL for the most part never really participated in the idiotic speculation of the time. For members of the league at least, winning remained the focus. Black quarterbacks and black coaches were under the same pressures as everyone else, win or get fired. As great a player as McNabb was, the moment the Eagles started losing more games than they won with him at the position of field general, he found himself off of the team. There was no room for hurt feelings in the league of gladiators. Sensitivity, at least for personnel executives, remained the province of teen aged girls.
Next, we began getting doses of Bob Costas pontificating on what ever the Progressive talking points of the day happened to be, and he always tied it into some current event involving what ever sporting event we happened to be watching at the time. Televised sports programming became hours long commercials for Costas’ views on gun control, fair pay, title IX, or my personal favorite, social justice. Ostracism became the proscribed punishment for any who had the temerity to not comply with tacit and public acquiescence. Tim Tebow found himself hated for attempting to kneel in prayer while alone on the sidelines. (Those of you who’ve been around for more than one or two years may remember athletes of the past genuflecting on the sidelines or at the plate before every at bat. Such public piety today would have them attending sensitivity training and writing letters of apology to both the LGBT community and the National Alliance for Atheists.
Up until recently however, the NFL pretty much kept out of it. Sure, Dan Rooney in Pittsburgh pushed the Rooney Rule about forcing each team searching to replace the most recently guy fired for not winning to interview at least one black candidate, but such measures are farcical at best. There is nothing to say that the interviews are anything more than a waste of time if the interviewed candidates are not under serious consideration to begin with, not to mention the fact that often times, organizations might promote from within. There was no punishment proscribed for non compliance with the Rooney Rule, and certainly no punishment proscribed for any violation of not maintaining an Affirmative Action inspired quota.
Recently however, times have changed, and not for the better. The NFL has been going out of its way to make their product stink. Tackling it seems, has become undesirable in the professional version of tackle football. For years many have said, just give the players flags attached to Velcro to wear around their waste lines and be done with it. Penalties are now dished out for gloating or excessive celebration, taunting, and earlier this week a fairly heavy penalty was levied for engaging in politically incorrect speech. After witnessing what can only be described as gratuitous soft core porn as a part of ESPN’s draft coverage, (something in and of itself by the way that I find excruciatingly boring to watch to begin with.) a player for the Dolphins, Don Jones, was fined and suspended until he completes his training at a sensitivity reeducation camp. Michael Sam and the ESPN film crew felt it would be a good idea to treat America to a French Kiss betwixt Sam and his male paramour. In all of the hand wringing over the appalling critical reaction that took place in the new world of instant public reaction, not one person thought to mention that were Sam a heterosexual who’d slipped his female paramour the tongue in the same context, the reaction would have been just as negative. Or, have we all forgotten the national coma America slipped into when Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake decided that a game of motorboat during a Superbowl halftime show would be a grand idea?
Sam’s coming out of the closet was brave, and for that I give him props. What made it unique, was that he at the time was considered to be a prospect for the NFL draft. After his performance at the scouting combine, many pro personnel people stated anonymously that he was not an NFL caliber football player. Too small to be a linemen, too heavy to be a line backer, too slow, not agile enough, only has one skill, poor against the run, can’t drop into coverage, can’t fight off blocks, were all given as reasons to not draft. Whether or not any of that is true, I have no idea. I truly am ignorant about the specifics of football beyond being a casual fan. The picks rolled in and failed to include Sam among their number. Sure enough, after day two Roger Goodell, the league’s reigning sovereign, proclaimed that he felt it was important that some team, regardless of their consideration for the quality product placed upon the field for public consumption, draft Michael Sam.
Think about that for one moment. Here is the titular head of the NFL making the very clear statement that his view on politically correct considerations will trump the quality of the league’s product. He wants inclusion in his league of openly gay players, regardless of whether or not their talents make them worthy of such. If you believe that there have never before been gay football players, then you are a fool. Rumors for years have been floating around about many of the men we cheer for on our favorite teams. With that being said, their quality of play and winning has always trumped all other considerations. I watched Costas, (I really don’t know why I insist on sending my own blood pressure rocketing upward,) the day after the draft, and he pontificated that he felt it important for the NFL to draft more openly gay players, who haven’t even come out yet, so as to make this next foray into an inclusive NFL more successful. It’s of course not at all important that they at least be capable of playing the game at the professional level. What is important is that America has openly gay football players, and that we cheer for them so that every possible demographic is represented, in every aspect of our lives.
What about people from Mars, will they have Roger Goodell and Bob Costas pimping their inclusion as well? I’ve watched my last NFL game, at least I still have Hockey.
