🐱 Will the NFL push back this time?

https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2020/09/08/will-the-nfl-push-back-this-time/

As the NFL prepares to launch its 101st season, the 45th President, his supporters, and his family members will be coming after the league. So will the NFL defend itself, and its players, as the tweets begin on Thursday night, when Texans and Chiefs players (and Texans coach Bill O’Brien) kneel during the national anthem in peaceful protest of systemic racism and police brutality?

Maybe not.


Peter King recently asked Commissioner Roger Goodell about the looming intersection of presidential politics and pro football, saying to Goodell, “You know the president is going to hit you with a two-by-four.”

Said Goodell in response: “With all due respect, I don’t know those things. . . . I guess you know these things. You’re going into hypotheticals, you know, maybe it will, maybe it won’t. I think we said we’re going to support our players. This is a peaceful protest and we’re going to support them if they choose to do that.”

It’s not a hypothetical. It’s happened before, and it will continue to happen. Indeed, it flared up on Monday, when one of the president’s sons declared that “[f]ootball is officially dead — so much for ‘America’s sport.’ Goodbye NFL. . . . I’m gone.” That comment came merely in response to last week’s story that Cowboys players have received a “green light” to protest during the national anthem, without any protests actually happening.

What happens when the protests occur this weekend on a widespread basis? What happens when the President and those who support him see names like George Floyd and Breonna Taylor and Jacob Blake prominently displayed on rear helmet bumpers? What happens when they see the anti-racism messages printed at the back of each end zone?

What happens if/when the next video emerges of police brutality against an unarmed Black man or woman and NFL players launch an NBA-style wildcat strike?

Maybe the Commissioner is playing his cards close to the vest. Hopefully, he is. The NFL can’t simply wander into this crowded minefield without a plan for handling the inevitable explosions.

Frankly, the plan needs to be to fight back. Supporting the players means more than simply saying, “We support the players.” Supporting the players means standing up to anyone and everyone who will try to bully or attack them.

At a time when some owners are trying to thread the needle regarding support for player protests while also hoping that they choose to stand for the anthem, the more awkward needle to be threaded with a big, fat camel relates to the broader notion of having their players’ backs while simultaneously cramming money into the President’s front pockets. The latest Trump (son) tweet reconfirms that support for players and support for the President cannot be reconciled.

If the NFL once again stands silent in the fact of a torrent of tweets and other attacks, the disconnect will become even more glaring.

 

[AnotherPleb]

This politicization of team sports just makes no sense to me. What is the end goal? Trump loses? End the police? Then what, you've pissed off a significant percentage of your fanbase and everyone involved will eventually make less money, which is the only reason most of you are even playing.

They are trying to show that the dollar of the dirty trump supporter is only worth 60% of the regular man's dollar in their eyes, and that's being generous.

 

[BooneHelm]

the 45th President, his supporters, and his family members will be coming after the league.

Or they'll go about their normal day because it's the NFL and who cares what stupid shit they're doing.

 

[Thomas Talus]

Betteridge's Law of Headlines.

 

[frozenrunner]

This politicization of team sports just makes no sense to me. What is the end goal? Trump loses? End the police? Then what, you've pissed off a significant percentage of your fanbase and everyone involved will eventually make less money, which is the only reason most of you are even playing.

I really don't believe they're thinking further down the line than, "How can we harness the power of this movement and use it to make money right now?"

Over the years I've noticed there are a lot of businesses doing this kind of thing, clearly thinking one step ahead instead of thinking strategically and long-term. And not just on this retarded BLM shit. Maybe it's just a feature of global multinational companies and mega-brands that are almost impervious to market forces because they're so rich.

 

[Zbk3VmLfujjzjxBd43tL]

It's the fact that they've hired so many fat, unfit, large units of farm equipment to stand around and block anyone trying to play the sport, that the sport itself has changed. It's slower than ever and it was always a slow sport.

It's the other way around. You can barely touch anyone now because you get a penalty for it, so this means the wide receivers do whatever they please and they and the QBs put up ridiculous numbers every week. Incidentally, until Julian Edelman (chosenite) started for the Patriots, every single starting WR for something like a decade was black. I think it's something similar for cornerbacks.

Over the years I've noticed there are a lot of businesses doing this kind of thing, clearly thinking one step ahead instead of thinking strategically and long-term. And not just on this retarded BLM shit. Maybe it's just a feature of global multinational companies and mega-brands that are almost impervious to market forces because they're so rich.

Exactly this, they think they're invincible. They want to gain an audience of soyboys and black troons who don't normally watch the NFL and believe that no matter how much time they dedicated to worshipping some dead nigger troon like Muhlaysia or whoever they won't lose Cletus down at the trailer park because he's been a fan for all 40 years of his beer-chugging life.

It's the same thing why Disney can turn Star Wars into a feminist girl power fantasy and lifestyle brand for middle-aged women, because they genuinely believe they won't lose the old audience and they'll gain a new one. At the same time, I think your lower-level marketing and other crews are much more down with the social justice ideology rather than the suits who go with it because they think it's a good idea. That's why they target anything popular with men, and especially white men. Like nobody's going to say "hey, HGTV and Lifetime aren't doing enough to draw in straight white men" or demand Disney Princesses be marketed to boys as a "male power fantasy".

 

[Orange Man Costume]

This politicization of team sports just makes no sense to me. What is the end goal? Trump loses? End the police? Then what, you've pissed off a significant percentage of your fanbase and everyone involved will eventually make less money, which is the only reason most of you are even playing.

The end goal is that literally everything you watch or look at will double as a platform for the latest left messaging and as a filter to prevent other messaging from reaching you.

That sounds tinfoil hat-y but theres a reason why "X is inherently political" is the argument for politicizing something until a rightie does it and an opposite argument is made to deplatform it.

The bright side is that X (football this time) is never as popular after since it doesn't have a broad appeal anymore, people are too polarized to be politically converted by a preachy video game or the oscars, so a woke brand slowly slides into a broke brand.

 

[KooksandFreaks]

The NFL will go woke and go broke, there's already been plenty of warning signs they'll let the players engage in NBA-tier work stoppages and grandstanding, and Goodell is probably seeking to pump up his low approval by just about everyone from players to owners to fans, he'll let it happen.

The politicization of sports as a whole has been a disaster - whoever would've thought that we'd reach a point where if you support a sitting President, you are actively to be pressured to NOT watch organized sports because that is "irreconcilable" ?

Also, the out-of-touchness is amazing, a millionaire athlete who gets trash-talked in the locker room daily suddenly can't stand being "bullied" by some random online yokel? And needs the league to protect them?

Hockey is better.

 

[Consenticles]

. Incidentally, until Julian Edelman (chosenite) started for the Patriots, every single starting WR for something like a decade was black. I think it's something similar for cornerbacks.

That's just untrue. Wes "concussion" Welker would have a word with you.

 

[Woke Blue Muttlema]

Man, if Bill O'Brien wants to do something your first thought should be it might not be a good idea.

 

[Dom Cruise]

How dumb do the suits have to be to actively ruin the circus part of Bread and Circuses?

Reminds me of feminists emasculating video games and we wonder why there's so many angry young "incel" men.

 

[Zbk3VmLfujjzjxBd43tL]

That's just untrue. Wes "concussion" Welker would have a word with you.

Totally forgot about him, sorry. Same team though. Since the mid-90s there's something like a single digit number of starting white WRs.

 

[Tim Buckley]

“The United States has become a place where entertainers and professional athletes are mistaken for people of importance.”

Robert A. Heinlein

 

[Robert James]

So where in society did we fuck up to make the spousal abusing, child abusing, rapist, dog fighting ex cons think we pay them to do anything more that run fast and throw a ball real far. I blame the cuncussion bullshit that came out a few years ago, it tried to humanize the people who would beat the shit out of you and then get their team to either pay you off or cover it up.

 

[Honka Honka Burning Love]

Nobody wants to see the Niggers Fondling Linebackers.

 

[Dom Cruise]

This politicization of team sports just makes no sense to me. What is the end goal? Trump loses? End the police? Then what, you've pissed off a significant percentage of your fanbase and everyone involved will eventually make less money, which is the only reason most of you are even playing.

Remember when people used to cynically say that all anything really boiled down to was money? Now we wish that was the case.

If it's anything the modern day has taught us it's that human beings are way more moral creatures than we ever realized, hedonism is not the natural state for mankind, morality is, so when society became secular and amoral for a while it was hedonistic, until a new morality evolved within it because that's just what human beings want, the trouble is this new morality is an evil one, but it's still some form of morality.

The fat, dyed haired feminist working herself up in a frothing morally outraged hysteria is a more natural state than some spring break chick getting drunk, getting high and getting fucked.

Or perhaps I should say humans want meaning, money for money's sake is meaningless, humans will literally kill for meaning in their lives, today's world has grafted into racial justice as the absolute form of meaning and for that companies like the NFL will happily lose millions of dollars.

 

[draggs]

People are done with being lectured to constantly.

A more or less captive audience starved of sporting entertainment for months and the NBA's and MLB's numbers are in the shitter because they think they're actually important and can fail to provide their purpose, entertainment, because they are that arrogant.

Football to follow.

Basic economics has whatever that term is that I don't remember that we learned in high school and most us forget two weeks later, where a product is something people seemingly have to have but they switch their consumption between providers of that product rather easily. Something something demand. Whatever.

If entertainment no longer entertains people, and no longer wishes to entertain them, they will find new things to entertain them.

 

[AnotherPleb]

Reminds me of feminists emasculating video games and we wonder why there's so many angry young "incel" men.

These thundercunts are masters of projection, and if you don't agree with them then they'll do their damned best to make you as miserable as they are.

 

[Kheapathic]

If the NFL wants to support black people; maybe they should pay their black players a couple million more than their usual contracts.

 

[breadandcircuses]

McMahon literally gave up on the XFL way too early.

Sure, cancel the season because of Covid back in Febuarary, but at this point, he could might have been able to run it as a competitor to the NFL and blow them out in ratings.

 

[Mr. Zed da Robot Poon Fed]

The NFL is fucked.

Look at the new Madden NFL 21, a game that is getting lampooned by everyone for being buggy, missing features, transactions and just being a $60 roster change.

And EA’s solution is to say “fuck it” and pull a Yu-Gi-Oh trap card for social justice by putting Colin Kapernick as a free agent with higher stats.