I haven't been much of an NFL fan since back in the 1970's; but I would still tune in once in awhile.
That's over with. If I wanted to watch politics, I'd look for a channel that covered it as one of their two or three most prominent subjects. But sports?
Folks on the morning news programs are saying, hey, all we really want to see when we tune into a football game is the players playing football, not politics. We get enough advocacy when we are force fed commercial advertising as part of it too. Keep it off the field.
They have fouled their own nests with this political posturing.
So now, since the players are so fired up to put politics ahead of football, then I don't even want to see anything else they have in mind, either, including them playing their football.
Yes there are lots of players in the NFL, and the grand majority of them are not doing this. But it's all just one NFL. Those other players have a genuine incentive to do more than just gape and stare. I believe these other players have an obligation to the sport which elevates and compensates them, and to the folks out there in the seats who pay their way. That obligation is to fight back against the seepage of political pollution that is despoiling their occupation and their (America's) game.
i admire the commitment. But commitments carry costs. They think nobody will make them pay them, or that those costs will be negligible. They may be right about that, our Nation has lost its focus and its courage to stand for doing the right thing. I think, I hope, that they're wrong on that score. I think they are betting there careers on this one, and I also think they are being very irresponsible with those careers, and with the consequences as those consequences bear upon their dependents livelihood.
Then, there's the commissioner. He is employed at the pleasure of the team owners. If it is their intention to support his comments putting respect for football ahead of respect for the flag and the nation the flag represents, then that's another reason to deep six the NFL football, or at least in my living room. I don't hold season tickets, but f I did, I be turning mine back in.
Goodell makes some of his salary based on contractual baseline agreements, but another large part is based on performance bonus as determined by the owners at the end of each year. I think that when this comes up again, it either gets slashed, or NFL is off my menu for a long time along with the programming sponsors. I think that would be more in line with putting his money and his mouth into the same reality.
If this continues, it may be high time to start contacting league/program sponsors, and programming providers; holding them accountable for the content they are so lucratively financing. It's not like their products/programming have no competitors.Those six figure player salaries are largely financed on broadcasting royalties.
If this continues, I'd actually rather be watching Discovery Channel, and that's a really sad commentary on NFL football. I'm already halfway there with NASCAR. Don't get me started on NASCAR.
Maybe the broadcasters wouldn't be moved by such reasoning, but I suspect their advertisers might.
This is all just another facet of celebrity entitlement. They would appear to solidly believe that their elevation on the basis of one of their attributes entitles them to engage on prognostication on whatever other basis as they might choose.
Free speech supports their viewpoint; but the problem with free speech (for them, anyway) is that it also entitles them to demonstrate just how asinine any individual can be. They just get to do it in front of more listeners/viewers; yesterday's festivities, case in point. Right now these players are painting the entire NFL 'asinine'.
S'OK, they have that right.
My guess is that we are viewing beginning stages of another players strike. That would be bad for everybody involved, and that includes us,. too.
Greg
