If you want something to get angry about . . .
Do you suppose the NFL sent flowers to Cam Newton, or a whole gift basket? Sure, the former MVP and Super Bowl quarterback managed to potentially alienate nearly half of the league’s audience with a sneering, chuckling dismissal of the idea of a “female” — is it hard to say “woman?” — reporter asking about football. Yes, it forced Newton to issue a sincere-seeming apology in which he said, “Don’t be like me. Be better than me.” Yes, it prompted a lot of people to either call Newton’s comments sexist, or reveal themselves as such.
But we live in the age of the hourly distraction, and what a distraction! Remember, it was just two weeks ago that a couple hundred NFL players protested racial discrimination during the national anthem, which created a tidal wave so vast that as espn.com’s Don Van Natta Jr. and Seth Wickersham reported, the league’s owners were worried about losing sponsors and fans, and they were so worried they actually told this to the players.
Also, one owner suggested that teams wear a patch on their uniform that read Team America, though presumably not to honour the 2004 satirically scatological puppet movie by the guys who make South Park. Never forget that even the richest plutocrats can be idiots.
But that’s what the fear of a weird, partisan, idiot boycott can do. The players can explain what they are protesting and what they are not protesting — in order, systemic racism, yes, the flag and the military, no — but some people will never hear anything but their own howling biases in their own selective ears. Anyway, here is a partial list of things that did not inspire the spectre of an NFL boycott in the last 10 years.
Removing Hank Williams Jr. from Monday Night Football just because he compared then-president Barack Obama to Hitler and said, “They’re the enemy! Obama! And Biden! Are you kidding me? The Three Stooges.” Michael Vick and dogfighting. Dan Snyder. There’s a long list there, but suing grandmothers and selling beer in the bathrooms are on the list. Ben Roethlisberger. Bountygate, Deflategate, Spygate, etc.
Approximately $6.7-billion (U.S.) in public money for the construction or renovation of football stadiums since 1997, per ESPN.
The lockout of league officials to save on defined pension obligations, which resulted in a game being wrongly decided on national TV.
The publication of League of Denial, a book which painstakingly and unsparingly details the league’s shameful history of pushing out- right false information through medical journals on concussions, which ignoring or downplaying the damage the game was actually doing to its players.
The movie Concussion, about Dr. Bennett Omalu and the discovery of chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE.
The league’s mishandling of Ray Rice and domestic violence, along with other cases of domestic violence.
The suicides of several players who were later found to have CTE.
The deaths of several players who were diagnosed with CTE. Both lists are too long to be reprinted in full here, but you can probably conjure the biggest names in each.
The league taking public money in exchange for promoting the military in such a way that even John McCain, as pro-military as any politician in America, found it overly flagrant.
The NFL’s class-action concussion settlement, which admitted that 30 per cent of all players would suffer from early-onset neurological diseases. Approximately one third of retired players were party to the suit.
The New England Patriots giving Donald Trump a Super Bowl ring.
Putting Hank Williams Jr. back on Monday Night Football, because who remembers him comparing the Black president to Hitler?
The Texans starting Tom Savage at quarterback in Week 1.
None of those things supercharged public anger. No, the tipping point for many was a peaceful protest over systemic racism that effects AfricanAmericans in the United States. It’s funny: Last week fans in Baltimore booed when players knelt before the anthem, and stood as it played. It was almost like the anger wasn’t about the anthem, or the flag, or the military at all. So weird!
Last week, this space went 6-10. Boycott THAT. As always, all lines could change.