A national embarrassment.
Itās almost like laws donāt apply to rich people and politicians. Weird.
In other completely unrelated news, r/trumpcriticizestrump is a damn gold mine right now.
I, for one, am so glad we (finally) elected a president to looks after the non-elite.
I will have to check this out.
Agreed. The swamp was LONG overdue for a draining. Wherever Zeb wandered off to, Iām sure heās filled with pride!
Make popcorn. And block out at least a couple hours of your day.
āPeaceful protests are a hallmark of our democracy. Even if I donāt always agree, I recognize the rights of people to express their views.ā - from realDonaldTrump, 1/22/2017
Thatās gold.
If people want to kneel to bring attention to police brutality towards blacks they can
If people want to wear nazi gear and march with torches they can do that too
Its America we dont all agree but we all have the right to speak
True, but that right only extends so far as protection from government persecution for speech. If people want to call you names, dox you, fire you, stop watching you play sports, not buy your products etcā¦ because they disagree with your speech, then tough.
So, do you have a problem with the message, or the forum?
I have no real problem with either. Free people can do whatever they want so long as they donāt infringe on othersā rights.
What annoys me is the hand wringing when there is a backlash from the public and consumers. I would venture to say that almost nobody wants their NFL with political messages and overtones.
The NFL is an entertainment business first. People want to escape their lives a bit and live vicariously through world class athletes as they give each other brain damage. The average Joe doesnāt enjoy political banter and arguing over nuanced issues (unlike the masochists here at PWI). There are whole websites, radio stations, cable channels, news papers etcā¦ devoted to making content for politicos. The NFL would do better to stay in its lane.
Allowing your very public employees to make political statements is bad business for the NFL. What happens when a guy holds an NRA sign or a picture of an aborted fetus during the anthem? Heād get fined or fired (justifiably), because heās pissing off half the fan base for no good reason on company time. Then he marches right down to the NFLPA office and they file an unfair labor practice charge with the NLRB, because the other guys were allowed to advocate for their views on company time. Then the NFL looks even more inept.
To the kneeling specifically I think Kaepernick was an imperfect messenger to put it lightly. He phrased it very poorly and the whole dead pigs iconography ruined any hope he had of changing hearts and minds. So now kneeling = hate the police for many people. Imagine the difference if he had said something like: āIām praying for and end to the turmoil in our inner cities. Thereās so much needless death in our black communitiesā Totally different reaction and conversation.
To keep it short cause Iām on mobile, I agree kap is an imperfect vessel of the message. For many reasons.
However, athletes ARE the most visible, most influential members of their demographic and IMO should use their EARNED platform to right the wrongs perpetrated against them by an unfair system.
They play a fucking childās game and they only āearnedā the platform because Americans, with real jobs, drop a lot of money to be entertained by said game.
Keep pissing your customers off, thoughā¦
I have to laugh every time I see football (or any professional sport, for that matter) derided as a āchildās gameā because thereās no real basisfor that phrase. Football originated as a game for college students to blow off steam and was played professionally by adult men in the 1920ās and 1930ās, long before it was commonplace for āchildrenā to play the game.
What exactly makes it a āchildās gameā - the fact that children also play it today?
I suspect that youāll agree with most of what Iām about to say, just expanding on this a little bit, so please donāt read any of this as a āpersonal argumentā with you.
Griping about what athletes are paid is basically griping about capitalism (with one giant caveat that Iāll get into below). Athletes are paid what the market dictates. As you noted, other āAmericans with real jobsā pay insane amounts of money to attend games (or sit by their television on Sunday and watch, and enough do this that the league can charge a bazillion dollars in rights fees to carry their games). Given that the athletes are the product, itās hard to argue that they shouldnāt take home a good amount of the profits generated by this activity.
That willingness of āreal Americans with jobsā to pay so much for tickets totally baffles me, BTW. I played football for 14 years, played against/with some guys that played Division I football, and used to babysit a current NFL linebacker (true story! lol). I genuinely love the game of football itself; I can watch games between two teams that I do not care about just to enjoy the game. My parents still go up to watch our high school team play even though my brother graduated 12 years ago; almost every week I attend a local college and/or high school game just to watch and enjoy the game itself. Point is, I enjoy the actual game of football more than probably 99.99% of people sitting in the stands at NFL gamesā¦and I cannot imagine shelling out the money to attend an NFL game (Iāve been to three games in my life, all with gifted or we-won-in-a-contest tickets). Who the hell wants to spend that much money when you can watch the local college team play for 5 bucks on Saturday afternoon and be home in time to watch the night college games?
Anyways, if you (Iām using the royal āyouā here, not just you personally, usmc) do not believe that the athletes are worth so much money, thereās a simple way to āprotestā that: vote with your dollar. Stop buying tickets, jerseys, hats, and t-shirts. Stop watching the games on TV. Athlete salaries will come down when the revenue generated by NFL teams decreases. If one believes that itās unfair that LEO, military, and teachers make what amounts to pennies compared to professional athletes, the simplest way to change that is to stop contributing to the revenue flow of professional sports. If you watch the games on TV, buy jerseys, etcā¦then youāre part of the reason those athletes are paid so much.
Now, my āone giant caveatā from above - another reason that professional sports are so profitable, thus allowing athletes to be paid such handsome salaries, is how badly NFL franchises often rape their host cities in stadium deals and other tax breaks. Many have tried to slip a shady deal past their own city to get hundreds of millions of dollars in public funding (your money, my money, everyone elseās money) to build their stadia, often while preserving the rights to most/all of the revenue generated by non-sports events (for example, parking/concession money from concerts held in the stadium). So thatās another contributor to āoverpaid athletesā that has nothing to do with the athletes directly, but the team owners, who are fine trying to squeeze hundreds of millions in public money out of cities to support billion-dollar corporations that could easily fund their own stadiums.
Iāve seen plenty of ādem overpaid athletesā folks turning around and arguing that they just canāt let the Bucks leave Milwaukee (just think of all the jobs that would leave! never mind that most of those jobs are part-time, low-wage, no-benefits jobs) even if it means shelling out $500 million in public dollars to build a new arena. One of my biggest pet peeves in the world.
People have been writing angry emails to sportswriters (and before that, letters to their local sportswriter) practically since athletes started getting paid to complain about something - the athletes on steroids, the athletes being criminals, the athletes being paid too much, the athletes having social stances (CK sitting for the anthem is hardly the first athlete to speak out publicly about social causes, nor even the first to do so in what people consider a distasteful manner). The āfan writing a letter to Peter King to say heās done with the NFL after (X)ā is nothing new. The NFL is raking in more money than ever. There are certainly some signs of cracks in the foundation - I think those have more to do with some business missteps (like pissing on a couple of loyal, longtime fan bases to move to Los Angeles when there was no evidence that LA fans would jump in for one team, much less two), a changing social/media environment (where lots of people would legitimately rather stay home and follow their fantasy football team on NFL RedZone than actually attend a game) than the athlete protests, but thatās admittedly a āgut feelingā that canāt really be backed up by data.
You, and a handful of others that have posted in threads related to the protests, may well turn off the NFL as a result of the protests. But the odds are pretty good, based on historical data, that this will not be the thing that ends the NFL (although CTE might if that starts to really decrease the root flow from the youth, high school, and college ranks).
I said something like this in the first CK thread a long while back. Whatās come out of this are basically two not-quite-parallel discussions: one, is the thing heās āprotestingā (systematic racism) a real thing in this country (which is still being argued in several places on here) and two, was his chosen method of protest a good one (my opinion is no, although I have acknowledged that the point of any āprotestā is generally to be disruptive, otherwise it isnāt really much of a āprotestā).
I agree that other athletes have done a far better job āmaking a differenceā with a different approach, like āactually doing somethingā (Warrick Dunn is one terrific example). As you alluded, Kapās behavior when this all began turned any action-during-the-anthem into an anti-police, anti-military action when several of the men protesting in other ways never had that intent. Malcolm Jenkins, for example, holding a gloved hand up during the anthem - gave a nice interview here:
As youāre alluding, BG, if the first domino to fall in this āmovementā had been Malcolm Jenkins, and if people took the time to listen to or read the remarks he made in this interview, one would hope that the reactions all around may have been different. This guy is the one who people should be paying some attention to, not Kaepernick.
Great post, @ActivitiesGuy.
On these scores: As you may know, the āLAā Chargers are playing their home games in a dinky little (30K seat) soccer stadium. As you note, few people in LA have an intrinsic tie/loyalty to the team (while itās true the Chargers were ābornā in LA, I dare say most of the people who would be old enough to have an originalist rooting interest in the team have passed on). So in short, they are a team with essentially no diehard fans, playing in an uninspiring venue.
Despite this, the team charges $100. To park your car at the stadium. Talk about clueless.
Iām not āderidingā it as a childās game. 99.99% of people that play any sport do so while they are children. Then they grow up and get real jobs. As far as Iām concerned, that makes it a childās game.
Agree with the rest.
One thing, though:
Great points @ActivitiesGuy .
Iām right with you, I really enjoy football. I was at a HS game last Friday where the home team (graduates 90 kids) was being crushed by a school that graduates 1000 (theyāre both āAAā now). Home team was in the red zone on 3rd down and right before the snap I see a whole in the zone coverage. I shout for all Iām worth āSLANTāS OPEN, HIT THE SLANT!ā They did for a TD. The 140lb QB (get that kid a sammich) gives me the thumbs up. Awesome moment. Crowd loses it.
Iāve tried hard to distance myself from NFL football though. In my opinion itās one small step above WWE as a sport. The rules are stacked to ensure high scoring games that get better ratings. But darnit if it isnāt entertaining.
My point wasnāt broad enough. I think that most businesses should avoid playing politics at all costs. Itās a minefield that doesnāt help anyone. It can only lead to lower sales/profits/ROI. CEOs of major corporations have been fired for political statements. Look at Targetās losses after the whole changing room thing.
I donāt mind players making money. The market probably values their work more than their current salary, but the NFL has a cap to keep teams competitive. I think they should advocate for whatever they want on their own time, merely because it is bad business to bring politics to the office. But what do I care? Iām not an NFL owner, so it isnāt hurting me. Just sharing my $.02.
Also random thought: Think of the major add revenue for NFL games.
Pickup Trucks
Insurance
Light Beer
ED drugs
Who do they think is buying all that stuff? Guys that like the anthem, or not? Iām picturing old fat white suburban/rural guys.
I can get people being annoyed at the few NFL players who were kneeling but letās keep in mind that the events of last weekās NFL games were completely blown up when President big mouth interjected himself and attacked the entire NFL and its players. So when people say keep politics out of my sports then realize that the most political person in the United States of America completely made the politics of this a huge focus.
If he doesnāt start shit you donāt have the entire NFL reacting last Sunday.
I just have an issue with people downplaying NFL players. I mean is it really that different than a lot of jobs in entertainment? Is a band or rapper a real job? Someone on Broadway? Actor in a commercial? Painter? Comedian? Cartoonist for a magazine?
The simple fact of the matter is NFL players are the elite among the elite of people who perform something that millions of people watch. It is something in all honesty the vast majority of people who have ever trained or visited this board would do if they had the talent to do it. And these athletes create tons of jobs through their abilities. They deserve to be highly paid and in many instances may be under paid. It is staggering to think of the amount of people who depend on college or NFL football for their livelihoods.
This is the whole problem though, people opposed to Trump are in such a frenzy that he can bait them into making these idiotic moves.
Politically speaking it wont matter how inappropriate Trump is so long as whoever he is against does something worse.
If people on the left want to avoid a second term they need to stop feeding the troll sitting in the oval officeā¦