I dislike the Eagles and I also dislike the Patriots. Who was I going to root for during the 2018 Super Bowl?
First, let me apologize to those who care not a wit for American Football, the NFL or my sports team preferences. There are tons of other issues that are far more important than overpaid sports legends and the machine that enables them to become who they are. Specifically, there are the issues of inner-city poverty, cancer, childhood obesity and school shootings that are far, far more important than a team winning a "world championship" where no other countries are allowed to participate.
That said, there have been a couple of changes in the NFL that have drawn much criticism. In its efforts to sideline (see what I did there) the controversy regarding the peaceful on-field demonstrations against minority social injustices, the NFL issued a new policy regarding protests at work. Namely, if you must demonstrate your 1st Amendment rights and protest during a game, you must now do so in the locker room. It's the equivalent of the NFL saying "Yeah, we hear you...but we don't want you to piss off our sponsors or our (declining) TV audience, one that perceives that you're disrespecting our flag and our Anthem [which they're not, ed.]." Take your ideals off of our field of play or get penalized financially. Why would they do this when, statistically speaking, fewer players knelt during the anthem in 2017 than 2016...except on week 3, right after the President said that any player who kneels should be fired?
What? The same law that protects their ability to kneel, protected a man whose "grab 'em right in the pussy" comment got him elected President!
There's no law requiring your to honor the flag or the anthem. And, any President who uses his podium to influence hiring and firing practices in a private company is ethically challenged at best, like he did when he called team owners and scolded them to make this issue go away. All it did was bring the matter back to the forefront. Why would he stoke the fires enough to reignite the issue? Perhaps it was because, in September 2017 he was taking heat for his stance on the Nazi...sorry, White Nationalists rally where he declared that "both sides are at fault." Perhaps because he was pissy that some of the Golden State Warriors decided that, due to his defense of those same Nazis, they weren't going to visit the White House to be honored for their championship win, and so he cancelled the visit by the team entirely before more people could call him out as an alleged racist. Sound familiar? Perhaps he's got a chip on his shoulder from when he attempted to sue the NFL for direct competition of his $8 million dollar team (10 times less expensive in 1983 dollars) in the US Football League, a competing sports league. While he won his lawsuit, the judges awarded him $3 for his efforts, and shortly thereafter his $22 million investment went bust and the entire USFL folded. Boo hoo.
So, here we go again. The President is still spreading the narrative that NFL players don't care about their country, the flag and it's anthem. The players maintain that what they are protesting is police brutality against minorities, blacks and people of color. The President doesn't care. Once he discovered that only a delegation of the Super Bowl winning Eagles were willing to make the trip to Washington, he cancelled and rebranded the event as a celebration of patriotism. This move stank of his pandering to the public who believes him over the players in the NFL, who are overwhelmingly black (70% of NFL players identify as black). How many Eagles players knelt during the 2017 season? Zero. What were the pictures that Fox News was broadcasting of Eagles players kneeling? It was the players praying before the game, something that happens before every game played and even before the anthem is played. Talk about #fakenews.
Here's the thing. Those players that Trump would have fired for not standing during the anthem...those terrible Americans, are some of the most generous humans I can think of. They regularly use their wealth to contribute to charities and causes that improve the lives of so many. Like, Patrick Peterson (Arizona Cardinals) who donates to help inner-city children have the resources to succeed during and after school. He also visited Haiti with Missions of Hope to improve conditions there. Or, how about Vic Beasley (Atlanta Falcons) who created a foundation dedicated to the scientific discovery of new treatments for many childhood cancers. Or, Charles Johnson from the Carolina Panthers who built affordable housing units for seniors in Rock Hill and Columbia SC as well as providing college scholarships to students who attend his alma mater, Hawkinsville High School. And then there's JJ Watt, who raised over $37 million for victims in Houston after the hurricane devastated that city...as well as paying for all of the funerals for the children who were murdered recently in the suburb of Santa Fe. Most recently in the news, Malcolm Jenkins (Philadelphia Eagles) created his foundation dedicated to improving the lives of children in underserved communities, and Chris Long (Philadelphia Eagles) who donated 100% of his salary for the 2017 season to charities, specifically scholarships to students from his home town, Charlottesville, Virginia, the same location where the President's defended Nazis marched and killed that woman.
That being said, this is but a short, short list of how individual NFL players give back to their communities. It's a complete misrepresentation to say that they don't care about the United States and don't honor its citizens. And, by stoking this particular fire, along with major news outlets contorting the news for their viewers, the President completely misses the point about the objectives of our nation's athletic leaders. As much as it pains me to say this as a New York Giants Fan, I have immense respect for the players on the Philadelphia Eagles players who have been vocal about our nation's social inequities. With that, Fly Eagles Fly and NFL players in general, keep doing the work that our federal government keeps defunding: affordable housing, cancer research, community development, and education.
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