Full disclosure:
I am not a sports fan.
I have never been a sports fan.
The last football game I attended was in college (more from curiosity
than Oregon Ducks loyalty) and my last baseball game was circa 1986 with a huge
Padres fan.
So: with the current flail about NFL players breaking
league rules about decorum, behavior, and patriotism—and the so-called
leadership ignoring those rules—what might a flat-footed asthmatic have to add
to the discussion?
Well, read on.
It’s always seemed peculiar that we Americans attach so
much significance to anything as trivial as a ball game. I assumed that it’s a residual of WW II when
President Franklin Roosevelt decreed that The Boys of Summer would continue
playing, though many baseballers entered the service, voluntarily or
otherwise.
Not true.
According to ESPN, the national anthem was inserted into
the national pastime on an impromptu basis, during the seventh-inning stretch
of Game One during the 1918 Cubs-Red Sox World Series. Typical of those days, and maybe due to the
Great War, a band struck up The
Star-Spangled Banner, prompting fans to render traditional honors. The Sox
took the series in six games, but the greater significance endures.
Some intriguing facts have emerged from the shadows of the
politically-induced protests among multi-millionaires who think that a sporting
event has any relevance to national policy.
The results reveal feckless management, owners and coaches, to industrial-grade
hypocrisy.
What does the national anthem have to do with the NFL's alleged
motivation of protesting police brutality?
Nothing.
However, the NFL knows a lot about both the police and
brutality. On average one player is
arrested a week, on charges including murder, assault and battery (women
feature prominently), substance abuse, and weapons charges.
Where’s the outrage?
The players and coaches who “take a knee” blather out of
both sides of their mouths, insisting that their disrespectful (and prohibited)
behavior represents some sort of social-justice statement while claiming to
Support The Troops.
Batguano.
If in fact the NFL ath-a-letes (as a high school coach pronounced it) need to get their own house in order before presuming to
instruct the rest of us on anything.
Here’s info from the FBI Uniform Crime Statistics:
The leading cause of death among young black males
is…young black males, around 90 percent.
Two years ago blacks killed about 6,000 other blacks. Police killed 258, and it’s certain that not
all of those were racially motivated.
Drug use and sales, addiction, casual violence (remember
The Knockout Game?), criminal career paths, all are part of the
African-American environment. And guess
what: neither the police nor The Man are instigators. Black America has self-selected for endemic
crime and cultural disintegration. As
black economist Thomas Sowell noted, before the 1960s most black children grew
up in two-parent families. In this
decade, nearly three-fourths of black babies are born to single mothers, versus
about 15 percent for whites. Absent male
parents and guidance, young blacks are set adrift in the urban jungle.
However, looking for white guilt produces at least one
significant hit: Lyndon Johnson’s “Great Society.” Whether due to naïve optimism or calculated cynicism
(LBJ feared that Republicans would get “the nigger vote”), white liberals
created the welfare state that plagues millions of black citizens trying to create a
life amid chaos.
Where from here?
It turns out that the National Basketball Association also
has requirements for decent behavior during pregame ceremonies. More than that, the NBA (which has even more
black players than the NFL) enforces its rules.
Evidently there’s little if any tendency among basketball players or
coaches to “take a knee.”
That’s because the NBA, unlike the NFL, has mature,
principled leadership.
NFL’s hypocrisy is eye-watering. Players are prohibited from professing their
religiosity; from showing support for slain police officers; and even from
dancing-prancing in the end zone. But Colin
Kaepernick was famously photographed in a scrimmage wearing cops-are-pigs
socks. Nothing happened.
Kapernick was born to an unmarried nineteen-year-old, never
knew his biological father, and grew up amid White Privilege as an adoptive
third son.
Radio host Dennis Praeger has a description for such
people:
Ingrates.
How the current flail may affect game attendance remains to be
seen. But for now, many fans are fed
up. Facebook pages contain ads for
cut-rate prices on remaining season tickets, and others show fans burning team
banners and jerseys.
According to a Rasmussen poll this month, one-third of
American adults are less likely to watch professional football. Meanwhile, 12 percent say they’re more
likely, leaving half unaffected.
Final analysis: the NFL’s 1,500 or so players are blessed
with physical gifts that few of us will ever know. But professional football is among the worst organizations
to tell the rest of us how to think or behave.
Aside from decades of accepting routine criminality, many of its members
lack the emotional equivalency of their on-field prowess, and I’ll go so far as
to say that the ath-a-letes in my college dorm seemed to wear their IQs on
their jerseys. Some of them had no
business in college—they were in essence professional players supported by the
alumni, since the football program paid off big time. Want womens’ sports? Want new band uniforms? Want a new chemistry lab?
Football, baby, football.
Meanwhile, consider the all-time college and NFL poster
child:
Orenthal James Simpson.
Meanwhile, this month by far the best-selling NFL jersey
is Steelers lineman Alejandro Villaneuva’s.
He stood alone during last week’s national anthem because, unlike the
huge majority of footballers, he’s not only an Army veteran but he survived
three tours in Afghanistan.
Which reminds me:
Here in Arizona I’m still asked if I’m related to
Cardinals player Pat Tillman, who left a lucrative career to become an Army
Ranger. He was killed in Afghanistan in
2004 under still-mysterious circumstances. I don’t know that I’m related to Pat (we both
had Ohio connections) but I certainly relate to his choice of nation over self,
though he came to question the war.
Another connection to football is much closer. My late-great friend Joe Foss, a WW II Medal
of Honor aviator, became governor of South Dakota and launched into other
public arenas. In 1959 he founded the American
Football League, and remained until the dawn of the Super Bowl era in 1966. Joe’s memoir was titled A Proud American, and as a combat veteran he would be appalled at
what became of professional football.
Despite what Joe brought to the NFL, the organization
never returned the sentiment. When Joe
died in 2003 there was talk of dedicating the next Super Bowl halftime to his
memory.
It never happened.
Which, considering the counter-culture emphasis of The Big
Show, may be just as well.
