Asking because a) the NFL these days is supposed to be made up of social justice warriors capable of kneeling on demand anytime they see the American flag displayed and anthem performed, and b) just a few years ago wasn’t the NFL under fire for having a team called “Redskins”?
How is it that all those pad-jersey-and-helmet-wearing, football-throwing, linemen and backs and everything else, get to play social justice warriors on television before playing a game often featuring the Washington Redskins? Shouldn’t they ensure their own stuff doesn’t stink before protesting whatever it is they think stinks about America?
There is more to this than mere hypocrisy of NFL players – your average NFL kneeler isn’t intellectually capable of comprehending this as a matter of hypocrisy. For a while now, the left has waged a low-level campaign to try and shut the NFL down. Crying racism over “Redskins” was never very effective for the left in attaining that goal.
To date the left interestingly hasn’t taken a noticeable stance against NFL cheerleaders. Don’t be surprised when squads like Dallas are required to put more clothes on their cheerleaders or the Raiderettes are required to include males in their ranks. That assumes cheerleaders are allowed to exist at all and that they don’t go the way of the Miss America pageant’s swimsuit competition.
Since the racism argument fell on deaf ears, the left did what the left always does – they found useful idiots to advance their cause. Those useful idiots are the players who choose to kneel. They are the reason NFL viewership is down, and that a great many former NFL fans have chosen to discard the sport indefinitely. (They are all also unaware of a study conducted last year that showed teams with players who knelt before a game almost always lost that game, probably as a result of vocal fan disapproval directed their way).
The left then is getting their cake and they are eating it too. On one hand, people no longer enjoy the NFL the way they used to and are willing to reject the sport wholesale every time an NFL player knees. So they are accomplishing demise of the sport that way. At the same time, the left gets to own the spectacle of kneeling NFL players protesting never fully or openly defined injustice.
Imagine what the NFL may look like in 2028. If there are cheerleading squads expect them to be nearly 50/50 evenly staffed with men and women – they’ll wear unisex track suits though; it will be hard to tell them apart. The sport will still be played much as it is today, though the league will have divested of American markets and will be increasingly reliant on overseas expansion teams. NFL commercials will still feature weird martial quasi-rap music or 1970s-era symphonic scores with footage designed to make the game and players appear larger than life. Most importantly, professional football will be well behind other sports in terms of popularity – indeed, viewers may choose cricket over football.
And yes, Washington DC’s team will still be called Redskins.
Image: CC BY-SA 2.0; https://www.flickr.com/photos/keithallison/6009909019
