Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:
Week 4, the NFL is in chaos of its own making.
The traditional way to show respect for the national anthem is to stand, face the flag, place your hand over your heart. Doing anything else is a protest. Some players sit, some kneel, some give the Black Power salute, some link arms . . . doesn’t matter: if you’re not doing it right, you’re protesting. Television is trying to hide the protests from the viewers by skipping the anthem, cutting in late, but it’s not working. Viewers notice. Viewers get upset. Why are they upset?
There are 168 hours in a week. Your game is on for three of them. We don’t tune in to learn your opinions on social policy, we tune to watch the team play football. Don’t hijack my football game for your lecture; protest on your own time.
The AFL is gone. The UFL is gone. There’s no reason the NFL can’t go broke. All you need to do is drive away enough customers.
Joe Doakes
I’m doing my part.
This discussion has certainly brought to the public attention the proper way to show respect to the flag and what it stands for. We all learning it in grade school- I remember learning it in 2nd grade. Pre 9-11, however, I think I was one of few adults to actually stand with hand over heart, hat removed, looking at flag, and singing the anthem. Post 9-11, people make a point to stand (usually silently) at ball games, most remove hats, hardly any have hands over heart. Most have hands behind, or crossed in front, or holding a beer. Hardly anyone sings, though some around me start when they notice me.
That’s at sporting events, where there was a lot of attention paid to loving our country after 9-11. At parades, when the first car goes by with the flag, the amount of people who know what to do dwindles. I stand, hand over heart, facing the flag as it goes by. I stand amongst mostly older guys who look like they are probably veterans. Most people my age and younger tend to stay seated, unless they’re kids crouching at the front, waiting to jump on candy.
It’s good the public gets a little refresher now and again.
The AFL is gone. The UFL is gone.
LFL is flourishing. Viva la LFL!
Customers is the operative term. When I was working in my medical practice, was I ever tempted to lecture my patients about my political/moral philosophy? Not really, but the soapbox was there. I figured they were paying me for my knowledge in my field of expertise, not my ideas about social policy. If I had crossed the line, they would be within their rights to go elsewhere and complain loudly about my lack of respect for boundaries. That’s why I’ve turned off the NFL.
When I was younger I wasn’t really much into team sports, and the only team sports I really was interested in were the games in which I was playing.
As I got older I found I watched more team sports as I had to give up others. Football I grew to somewhat like, although I’ve always focused more on college than the NFL. So I’m at best a casual fan of the NFL.
No, make that I was a casual fan of the NFL. Not worth it now. I don’t like politics involved in my entertainment. It’s my money and time and if you choose to risk that by trying to badger me with your ill-informed, self important views don’t be surprised by the reaction. “Shut up and sing!” has become “Shut up and play!” to me.
One good thing about politics invading everything: it finally got my wife to stop badgering me to go see Hamilton and nearly all other live theater.
The NFL is learning now what Hollyweird has been learning for the past decade; absent a decent product, people won’t be buying it. I anticipate that enterprising people are going to start airing old games featuring Red Grange, the Kansas Comet, Sweetness, and the Fridge, and the players today aren’t going to know what hit them. Just like actors today don’t know what’s hitting them, even though their earning power in real terms is probably ten to a hundred times what actors enjoyed half a century ago.
Maybe listen to the games on radio where you don’t have to witness the kneelers, sitters, or such. Big money for the game comes from TV so loss of viewership would hit their add revenue hugely. See what impact that will have next time the NFL prices their product to the networks. Just a thought.
Or not at all. I stopped watching the NFL back around 2004 when Cialis ads started coming on, and I wasn’t ready to explain some of the concepts mentioned in the legal disclaimer to my kids. I’m still not, and one is an adult.
Used to love the game, but when I catch it now, I can’t get past the fact that so many of the players are clearly spending as much time in the tattoo parlor as they are in practice, and how many of them have been behind bars, or ought to be.
I know part of this is simply that many players only looked respectable in the days of yore, but there is something telling today where so many make it very clear that they don’t even want to be seen as respectable.
And, right on cue, Iger doubles down on his support for the kneelers and completely exonerates Hill. Ditka was demoted for much less. Bias? What bias?
PC took over when they took out Howard Cosell and Rush Lambauh.