The Downfall of the NFL

Here we are on a Sunday in early November.

The air is crisp and chilly, the holidays are approaching, and normally my day would focus on watching non-stop coverage of professional football from 1 pm through the night.  Okay, it’s not really “focusing” on football, but the games would be playing on my TV as background noise while I’m working.  I’ve been a fan of the NFL for many years now, and a large part of my Sundays in the fall revolved around watching my favorite teams.

The NFL was especially important on Thanksgiving.  We’d spend time going through the sales advertisements, cooking an early turkey dinner, and also watching the Dallas Cowboys and then Detroit Lions.  The NFL was part of that holiday, especially for my dad and I.

Like many people, that love affair with the NFL ended when players began taking a knee and protesting during our national anthem.  This season the protests escalated like wildfire as many more players joined and made their stances known (as if we didn’t already know where many of them stood, thanks to social media).  It forced us loyal fans to make a decision:  keep watching and supporting our favorite teams and players, or don’t.

The decision for me was easy — NO MORE NFL.

No longer will I pay casual attention to my television on Sundays in the fall, watching overpaid athletes use their fame to protest against values that I hold so dearly.  On top of that, many of those players are protesting against alleged “social injustice” that doesn’t even exist in this country anywhere near the extent that they believe it does.

These protests by NFL football players (and even college cheerleaders, such as the five Kennesaw State University cheerleaders who took a knee during the national anthem) are primarily based on lies and misinformation spread by the media as well as the cesspools known as Facebook and Twitter.

We saw it in 2012 after the death of Trayvon Martin.

We saw it in 2014 after the death of Michael Brown.

We saw it in 2014 after the death of Eric Garner.

We saw it in 2015 after the death of Freddie Gray.

We remember the rioting in Missouri and Baltimore, Maryland, and the numerous Black Lives Matter protests that popped up all across the country for several years.

We remember the BLM protests’ catchy slogans such as “Hands up!  Don’t shoot!” as well as “I can’t breathe!”

But do people remember how two NYPD officers were executed in their squad car in 2014 as a direct aftermath from a protester upset about Eric Garner and Michael Brown?  How about the “” chants done by BLM protests during that same time period?  How about the shooting of 12 Dallas police officers (five of them fatally) during a BLM protest in 2016?

No, most of those instances were swept under a rug and conveniently forgotten, or just outright dismissed.  The same goes when you point out that more white men are killed by the police each year than black men.  Oddly enough, that fact doesn’t seem to matter to the vast majority of the protesters.

On top of that, don’t try to debate and tell people that “all lives matter.”  After all, each individual life is important and should be protected from true injustice.  Shouldn’t all lives matter to everybody?  Not to most of the BLM supporters.

And why is that?

It’s all about power and racism.  Specifically, these protests have been about black people versus white authority.  We also know of the unspoken and growing problem of black-on-white racism, and how the media and most talking heads simply look the other way.

If the protests truly were about injustice with the police department, then we would have seen protests and rioting in Minnesota this past July when an unarmed woman was shot and killed by a Minneapolis police officer.  She saw a crime taking place, called 9-1-1, and was speaking to the police officers when she was suddenly shot in the abdomen and killed by one of those two responding officers.  That case was a prime and shocking example of a police officer murdering an unarmed person.

The officer claimed that he was suddenly spooked, so he quickly drew his service pistol and shot the woman, all while sitting in the passenger seat of the squad car.

But there were no protests.  There was no widespread call to action by national leaders.  There were no major campaigns against the police department in social media.

Why was that?

In this example, the victim was white and the officer who shot and killed her was black.  Not only that, but he was a Muslim as well.  Clearly didn’t fit the “social injustice” narrative being pushed by the media, so there were no protests, riots, or even meager “calls for awareness” on social media.  The story was in the news one day and then virtually gone a few days later.

So what does all of this have to do with the NFL today?

Many players are pushing this same false narrative of “social injustice” for one reason or another.  Some protest because they believe in cause, however flawed it may be.  Others protest to look cool and gain more attention from the media and “respect” from their friends and followers.  And others protest as a way of standing, errrr, kneeling with their teammates.

There are two major problems with these NFL protests:

• 1)  They’re protesting against our country’s national anthem.

Why in the hell are you showing blatant disrespect towards our COUNTRY of all things?  Last time I checked, it was the same country that allowed you to live your dream as a professional athlete.  It’s also the same capitalistic country that allowed for you to not only negotiate for a massive salary plus bonuses and endorsement deals, but to get as much money as possible as well.  We’re talking about many of them receiving more money in a single year than most people in this country will ever see in a lifetime.

Soldiers have bled and died for this very country, to protect our freedoms as well as our way of life, and those thugs and overpaid jackasses virtually shit on it.  All because of alleged “social injustice” involving black people and the police departments.

• 2)  The second problem is that it’s not their stage to use for protesting.

Those athletes are there to play the game of football.  That’s it.  That is not their platform to use to speak out and protest whatever is on their simpleton minds that day.

The owner of the stadium is the person who gets to say what takes place on the playing field.  Everybody else is an employee who has to follow the boss’s instructions.  Just because you “work” there does not give you the right to take over and do whatever you please.  That is not YOUR stage to make irrelevant comments and/or actions.

Football players are employees.  The team owners are the bosses.  It’s just like any other company.  Step out of line, make an ass of yourself, insult the company, upset the customers, and there’s the door.  You’re fired.  Every single football player is replaceable.  For each player that is fired, a dozen more will gladly jump up and take his position on the field.  It’s literally that easy to replace not just a rouge player or two, but entire teams as well.  It can be done.

So why do these NFL players think that they’re so special?

It’s because today’s society worships athletes in high school, college, and the pros.  For the longest time many of the star athletes have been given preferential treatment, whether it’s having grades changed, being given easier assignments, having disruptive / criminal behavior looked the other way, and even other perks including “$100 handshakes” from donors and access to easy women.  People love sports, and people will go out of their way to support and celebrate these athletic warriors.

But when players step way out of line (using this example of the protests), people are also hesitant to correct the behavior and deal with the problem correctly.  It’s a major blow to one’s ego when you realize that the people you respect and worship are not what they seem.  That goes double when talking heads and people on social media overwhelming side with the players and their “right” to protest.

The correct way to handle this problem is incredibly simple — boycott the NFL and their major sponsors.

• Don’t go to the stadium.
• Don’t watch the games on TV.
• Don’t buy any NFL-related merchandise.
• Stop supporting the major sponsors.  Write them a letter and tell them exactly how you, the consumer, feel about the people that those companies support.

I’m one of the millions of Americans who have joined the NFL boycott, and it feels so liberating and fantastic!  I ended that relationship with the NFL back in September when the regular season was getting into gear and so many players jumped onto the protest bandwagon.

These anti-American protests were the final straw.  I’ve been annoyed for years now regarding the media’s relationship with the NFL, and how some of the more irritating players are continually placed in the spotlight, on and off the field.  It was somewhat tedious but I dealt with it because of my love of the sport.  Then I made the change to stop watching the NFL months ago and haven’t looked back.  I’ve even gone as far as removing the NFL merchandise that I was selling on eBay and throwing it all into the trash.  Normally I donate my used clothing to thrift stores, but this NFL merchandise went straight into the garbage.

It’s been hilarious watching the news headlines about how the NFL continues to drop in the ratings.  Viewers are down, there are more and more empty seats in the stands, and you don’t see anywhere near as many people wearing their NFL gear on Sundays any more.  On top of it, contributing companies such as ESPN are also experiencing major drops as well!  I feel bad for the innocent workers being laid off from the company, but it’s great watching ESPN being kicked off its pedestal and learning a sharp lesson in not pissing off one’s customers.

It’s fairly obvious that the NFL is finished for this year.  There’s no coming back now, especially without any major adjustments in leadership.  They need to make serious changes in the off-season to win back the audience, but that’s going to take some major work.  Those spoiled sports have truly made asses of themselves and dishonored so many red-blooded Americans, and it’s going to take a long time to heal those wounds.

The NFL is dead to me, and I feel great!