The Left’s Long Game: Destroy The NFL

“NFL Players union teamed up with Soros to Fund Leftist Advocacy Groups.” – The Washington Times

“Shock poll: NFL now least like sport, core fans down 31%.” – The Washington Examiner

I want to ask a question. These are rhetorical questions but I still want to ask it. Why would somebody purposely want to steer something as large and, up until now perceived as apolitical, to the left? What is the left known for? What is the left proud of? What does the left want you to know about? They don’t like this country. They think this country has deep flaws. They think this country is racist. They think this country has a bunch of racist cops that are just wantonly murdering innocent black men. This is what the left thinks, among many other perverted and screwball things.

Why would you purposely want to steer your league toward that identity, when you know that it’s going to alienate statistically half of your fans? Why would you want to do this? On the other hand, I could understand why you would want people to think that your league is patriotic, that it believes in the time-honored American principles of hard work and discipline and teamwork.

You know, there are several identifying characteristics of conservatism that I would fully expect a sports league and its executives to want to identify with. I could understand if a sports league chose not to actively appear to be moving in that direction because liberals — some of them — go to games. Some of them watch, and some of them buy sponsored products.

And then when this protest stuff started, it became clear that the executive leadership of the NFL was in fact siding with the players. They had no desire, despite I think everybody should stand for the anthem, they took not one step to make that happen. They continued to let the people playing the game inflict damage on it. Why would you do that? You have a business to run here.

Well, the answer to the question is found in what is liberalism. And if you are dyed-in-the-wool liberal, everything must be. And if you have a powerful executive position or any other kind of position and you’re liberal, you’ve got to use it to advance it, to spread it, and if that means taking your league in that direction because you believe in it, that’s what you do, whether it inflicts damage or not.

Bob Costas was on a panel at some — was it in Baltimore? Was it Johns Hopkins? It was a panel of sports journalists and other experts talking about the NFL and I think sports in general, and Costas said — and this is the kind of thing I knew was gonna happen, by the way, and when it starts happening there’s no reversing this. Costas said that football damages people’s brains, and that if he had a 12- or 13-year-old that he would not let the kid play football.

I’m sorry, folks. Ever since this concussion stuff hit and all that, you know as well as I do that the days of the NFL, as you and I knew it, were numbered. We don’t know how many days remaining there are, but I think a lot of people realize that this game is winding down and slithering away faster than anybody thought it would. And now it’s not just the brain business and the concussions. Now all this other stuff is happening.

And you simply cannot watch an NFL game today and see only the football. When you turn on the NFL today on TV you’re gonna hear announcers talk about whether or not there were protests before the game. They may not televise it live anymore, but there will be videotape of it, and the announcers will talk about it. You can’t escape it. And it’s not why people tune in. They don’t want to hear it.

There’s something else that’s happening. You turn on any NFL show, and you know half of the news is? Whether player X’s suspension is gonna be held up by the second U.S. Court of Appeals or whether the appeals process will go over to the Supreme Court. This is the NFL. We’re talking about sports, but now we’re talking about the lead news item is whether some player’s suspension is gonna be upheld or whether the arbitrator is gonna force it on up to the next highest court in the land and then there’s some other player that comes along that has the same kind of thing happen.

The news about the NFL is about player suspensions, about wife beating, spousal abuse, what kind of penalties there are for it, and the media seems to eat this up, the sports media seems to relish reporting this stuff. You can watch them, you can see how excited they get talking about all this other stuff. And because they’re media and because the NFL is a big corporate entity, the fact the NFL might be being harmed by this is exciting because that’s one of the objectives of liberalism is to damage corporations ’cause they’re not people. They’re all suspects. But these media people are the ones living off of the success of the NFL, and there they are openly participating in what many people think is the downfall.

So now all of a sudden the commissioner comes out and says, “Fans attend our games to be entertained, not be protested to.” Where was this two months ago? Where was this a year and a half ago when Kaepernick got all this started? Where’s this been? Why now? Is it ’cause of Papa John’s leaving or threatening to? Some of this stuff, just from the standpoint of proper management, business thinking and decision-making, just flummoxes me.

And the answer is this is what liberalism is. It is a destructive force, and the people who believe in it and practice it believe that it must be forced on everybody, primarily because most people would not choose it.

A timeline:

1987: Super Bowl Sunday, several women’s crisis centers report that for victims of domestic violence, this is one of the worst days of the year.

1991: Battered women’s advocates say they are alarmed by a correlation they’re starting to see between aggression on women and sports viewing.

1993: NBC airs public service announcements before the Super Bowl to remind men that domestic violence is a crime.

1994-2004: NFL commissioner creates Mild Traumatic Brain Injury committee … the anti-NFL forces begin begin exploiting legitimate neurological concerns, turning focus to concussions.

2006: All you football junkies are asked to see “An Inconvenient Truth” by Sports Illustrated daughter.

2007: The NFL refused to run an ad for the Border Patrol in Super Bowl program.

Scientists told the NFL would put 1 million tons of carbon dioxide into the air.

2009: Atheists rights groups to take on Tim Tebow with his John 3:16 eye black.

Women should stop propping up or viewing men’s sports

NFL supports breast cancer awareness featuring oink cleats gloves and end zone elements.

2011: New Yorker article, Does Football have a Future?

2014: Is it immoral to watch the Super Bowl?, New York Times magazine.

2016: The NFL agreed to a deal where Ram did not have to do HBOs “Hard Knocks” series if they drafted gay defensive end, Michael Sam.

2017: Memorabilia from Kaepernick’s protest will head to the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History.

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