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I Just Decided not to Get the NFL Package!
I was waiting to see how the National Anthem situation would play out and I’m not surprised that a player chose to kneel. Brandon Marshall, a Denver linebacker and former teammate of Coward Kaepernick, showed his solidarity with his old frat brother by shunning the flag of the country that helps him get a 7 figure salary. Some Seahawks are contemplating the same thing.
I stood by the NFL as a customer even when they had murderers, rapists, wife beaters, child beaters, cheaters, drug abusers, and alcoholics run amok. I bought the NFL package every year as long as I can remember but no more. If those guys want to protest the flag so be it but I’m protesting with my pocketbook. I will not pay good money this year to go to any games. Even if one person on my beloved Bruins hockey team refused to stand I’d take the same stance and shun their product. There are consequences for everything unless you’re name is Clinton. I do understand the NFL won’t notice or care nor will anybody really but I’ll feel better about myself. We’ve all had friends or family serve and some have paid quite a price. The least a decent human being can do is to stand up as long as physically able. Whatever the protestors collective message is doesn’t matter one iota to me and until the players are standing for the flag the NFL can enjoy a season or more without my money.
Published in General
I gave up on it. And let’s not forget that the third person is likely the product of ethnic/gender box-checking.
Budweiser? Budweiser? The Belgian-Brazilian owned purveyors of urine from horses in renal failure that gave us Seth Rogan and Amy Schumer pontificating on gender inclusiveness and the supposed wage gap? That’s who’s going to tell the NFL that players need to respect the flag?
Doc
I’m way ahead of you, buddy.
Keep Boone or Mendoza, I don’t much care. Color commentators fall into two categories: Steve Stone and everybody else.
I wish Stony was still doing Cubs games.
Yeah, I know. Wishful thinking on my part.
I haven’t drunk their swill since I was seventeen years old.
BYOB else IMBB (it might be Budweiser).
Looks like I may be alone here, but what the hey.
He wasn’t attacking the country as a whole. He wasn’t denigrating our military as some here have stated (or at least implied). He thinks the police are out of control and wanted to make a statement about that. I don’t think he made a good decision about how to make the statement, not least because it opens him up to some of the charges here, but it looks to me like he is sincere and acting from his conscience.
I agree with Kaepernick that we have a police problem in this country. Kaepernick sees this in racial terms while I don’t, but I can see why he and other black people see it that way. There are way too many cops that have an out sized sense of their importance (or maybe an inferiority complex that manifests outwardly as such) and little respect for the constitutional rights that are the basis for the country’s greatness.
I don’t think the impulse of some here to attribute the “sin” of the one (or a few) to the whole NFL is becoming. I think it’s something that classical liberals and conservatives hate and denigrate when it comes from the left (e.g. painting all conservatives as racists based on a single or a few anecdotes) and something we should not engage in or tolerate.
I’d say more, but I’m out of words.
The Blackhawks and golf majors (and other important tournaments)are my only must see sports on television.
There is also High School football. We still go to our local school’s games even though out daughter has graduated. Its fun, its football, you see your neighbors, and meet new people. LOVE it. Recommend it. And the team / school would appreciate your support!
If you want to see real football, then you have to go see a game at my alma mater: Saint John’s University in Minnesota.
http://gamedayoncampus.com/2014/09/the-real-johnnie-football-concordia-23-st-johns-mn-14/
He didn’t say anything about “a police problem”, he said “[the] country oppresses black people”.
“I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color,” Kaepernick told NFL Media in an exclusive interview after the game. “To me, this is bigger than football and it would be selfish on my part to look the other way. There are bodies in the street and people getting paid leave and getting away with murder.”
It might be a good idea to dial this back until we see what happens. Baldwin is famous for shooting off at the mouth, but there are some serious professionals on the team who are focused on winning. Why would they go along with this nonsense, particularly when (unlike Kaepernick) their prospects for success are extremely positive. There are signs out there that the Seahawks pregame demonstration could well be a powerful rebuke:
I’m curious to see which football players are going to be stupid enough to not stand for the National Anthem before the game Sunday on 9/11.
Kapernick is on the bench. He is not able to access the powers he once had under another coach. He probably doesn’t understand this, and hasn’t for some time. He’s unhappy about it and looks for a way to distract from his unhappiness. Lo and behold, he finds a way to make others as unhappy as he is.
I respect everyone’s motives and actions here. Just making some noise in the NFL’s general direction is probably enough. They’re probably plenty freaked about it. This issue, potentially, has the power to do what the ’94 strike did to the NHL, or the MLB strike of the same year. It has the power to reshuffle our mental preferences and place the NFL behind a few other things.
As for Kapernick, I’ll be impressed when he announces job skills training scholarships from a trust he established utilizing the money he won’t earn (in terms of winning games for his team).
Well, in this case, I’d say that it reinforces a pre-existing belief, rather than being the evidence for a new belief. The NFL & its associated media have become increasingly liberal over the last few years, and this is just the latest outrage.
When All-Pro team captain Bobby Wagner publicly announces his call for unification I’m guessing he has the whole team on board.
I agree with you. My hate of the NFL comes from it not being about football anymore.
I see it was two years ago, but WOOOOOOO! Cobbers up, Johnnies down!
Maybe you’re right, but the “bodies in the street and people getting paid leave and getting away with murder” thing seems like a clear reference to police shootings.
which has nothing to do with the National Anthem or the flag.
Let’s do some myth busting about how Kaepernick and others perceive this so called police problem.
You usually are.
I know we are allergic to leftist tactics around here, but I think DocJay and the others need to make their feelings known to the NFL and the advertisers. Especially if you aren’t going to pay for the NFL package, let the NFL know they are losing a directly paying customer and exactly why. A buddy of mine used to work at Sam’s Club. He told me that the gospel there was they bent over backwards to retain customers since, as a membership club, there wasn’t automatically another customer to replace them. The NFL needs to know that your dollars are leaving, and aren’t going to be replaced by some Pajama Boy splurging on the NFL package.
Yep.
It does not matter a whit to me what his message is. There’s plenty of reasons, amusement being one of them, for me to burn a Koran. What would a Muslim see if I did that in protest of this that or the other? They would see the worst interpretation and rightfully so. Well I see these players as crapping on their country and so do most people, so these protestors can stick their message where the sun doesn’t shine because I don’t care.
Kurt, have read (or read about) Heather MacDonald’s The War on Cops? If not, I’d commend it to you. We do not have a police problem in this country. Violent crime is at historic lows (although that’s changing–rapidly–with the onset of BLM and the war on cops). Law enforcement professionalism is more broad and deep than it’s ever been.
Kaepernick is a middling QB who wants to feel like he matters, and may well be executing a ploy to indemnify himself against getting cut.
Yes, because he cheated. That affects the integrity and honesty of the game. Kaepernick’s political opinions do not.
Are you seriously suggesting that a player expressing an opinion you disagree with is worse than murder, rape, or child abuse?
You’re not. Though as anyone can tell from my profile pic, I may be somewhat biased…
Yes. Our country can survive some murderers rapists and child abusers but it won’t survive average people accepting crapping on the flag. We lock up or kill those other people but the left is lionizing the anti patriot guy and the consequences of not shaming such people reaches farther than criminal behavior.
If they aren’t willing to honor the National Anthem and the flag and everything and everyone those things represent, then they should move to another country.