Does the NFL Have the Power To Be Politically Incorrect?
Doing so may determine the sport’s survival.
Earlier this month President Donald Trump reached out to NFL players and asked them to recommend potential Presidential pardons.
Three players, Seattle wide out Doug Baldwin, Philadelphia safety Malcolm Jenkins, and New Orleans tight end Benjamin Watson, as well as Anquan Boldin, the former NFL star receiver who once caught passes from Colin Kaepernick on the San Francisco 49ers, wrote an editorial last week to the New York Times responding.
They did not ask for a single person or two to be freed from jail. Instead, they asked for the radical idea of asking for a blanket pardon for non-violent drug offenses. They also ask for senior citizens arrested on drug crimes in years past be pardoned.
Such moves would essentially legalize the drug trade in this country. While I realize there is a movement to do so, I wonder if the man cooking meth in the mountains is really helping society.
And a pardon for non-violent drug crimes implies it is worse for this drug dealer to be carrying his shot gun at his meth lab than the actual production of the drug!
While it is unlikely the President will release thousands of drug dealers to the streets because four football players want him to, it shows the power of sports in society.
It shows how today’s athlete, realizing the public platform he or she has and how fame is fleeting, wants to make an impact on society.
It’s their right to do so, but the problem is politics divide. Sports have become the new Hollywood.
We’ve all heard the statement “actors who make political statements make me sick!” Look for the statement to now include “athletes” as well.
Four players editorializing we should open up the prisons and release the drug dealers isn’t going to help sell football to the heartland.
The NFL was, and is still clinging on to be, the last everyman’s sport. Football bonded America. It now divides in a more dramatic way.
For every fan uncomfortable with the activism of its labor force, there’s a fan like rapper T.I. telling Jemele Hill this weekend he’s boycotting the NFL because he’s upset the league will insist players on the field stand for the Star Spangled Banner.
I wonder if he’s going to boycott the National Basketball Association, which has the same rule. And the NFL’s rule is even more liberal, allowing players to stay in the locker room if they do not wish to take part in the anthem ceremony.
The politicization of the NFL means it is destined to be pigeonholed as all of the other sports in America. The question is if it will align itself with the left or the right.
Looking to the demise of NASCAR, consider how 10 years after massively defending the use of a cigarette company sponsoring their premier series, NASCAR shunned them at the start of the century, even though, say, Sports Illustrated continues to accept cigar advertising to this day.
It stands to reason turning your back on the one advertising entity that allowed your sport to become mainstream because it is no longer politically correct is not wise.
And it has proven not to be.
Once a sport goes political, it cannot come back. Why does the NBA get half the ratings the NFL does? Because the NBA’s political climate is not inviting to conservatives.
NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, however, has asked his players to not “stick to sports.” After all, not doing so caters to the sport’s fan base and, if given the forum, the hope is the future player’s political comments, leftist as they may be, will ultimately have an influence on society that will only increase the amount of fans potentially the sport will have.
Society is asking the NFL and sports at large to be political. We’ve seen what has happened to NASCAR when they have moved away from their base.
Problem is, football is always going to be militaristic. It can’t go leftist as some of its labor and media wishes it would.
If it does, then the NFL’s ratings and popularity will increasingly decline.
That’s the challenge for Roger Goodell. Does he have the strength to be politically incorrect?
Marky Billson hosts Tri-Cities Sports NOW on 1420 NBC Sports Radio Tri-Cities 12–2 p.m. ET weekdays. Watch his show live and archived here and here.
