To begin with, in terms of spending money on football, last year I spent a grand total of $0.00 - zip, nada, nothing. I think that same sum holds for the previous decade or so. I actually spent money on the NFL HD video package on DirecTV some years ago, and that would be all I spent. A friend told me, "viewers = dollars" or eyeballs = dollars if you're online. To be meaningful to the sellers, I'd have to be a viewer of their commercials. I don't watch the commercials. I couldn't even tell you who the advertisers are, except I'm sure there are beer commercials involved from somebody. I'm not buying anything in response to any commercials during a game.
That means that in real dollars and cents, and in truthful "TV audience", I don't show up in the NFL's ledger at all. I can't boycott what I'm not supporting with my money. Do I end up paying tax money to support them? If I lived in a city or county with a professional team, I'd assume so, but I don't live there. Does the state tax us? I honestly don't know, but I'm sure that nothing I could do in front of the TV would affect that.
Second, I agree that the protests are stupid and juvenile; in other words they're just the thing you'd expect from a bunch of spoiled "man-child" brats. Protesting "police violence"? Please. That's like "hands up, don't shoot", or the picture everyone has of Trayvon Martin as a 12 or 13 year old, not the large, functionally-adult man that died that night. Both of those are total fabrications, lies from the get go. and to borrow the quote, the lies went around the world while the truth was putting on its pants. The whole protest movement is based on a lie.
To hear pro football players talk about being a disadvantaged class because of their race is insulting. The minimum wage for a rookie drafted in the last round this year is about $485,000 year (average). For a single person, that's over 40 times the poverty limit in this country, and in the top few percent of all wage earners. Disadvantaged? These guys have been pampered all their lives because they can run fast, throw well, or tackle hard. Even the guys who technically didn't make the team, the practice squad, get $115,200 for the 16 game season.
There's something more going on here, it's not just this protest stuff. There seems to be an effort to shut down the NFL and football at all levels. Think about the fuss about concussions, CTE and players dying from brain injuries. What about boxers? Boxers die from getting hit in the head repeatedly. What about soccer or rugby or any other sport that involves getting hit in the head. They don't seem to care about those guys, but they're trying to get parents to tell their kids not to play football and only football. I think that the whole "kneel for the pledge" act is theater; something that Colin Pumpernick came up with to impress his girlfriend. It's just been incorporated into a larger hard-left plot to get rid of football. Rush Limbaugh has been talking about this for easily the last two years, if not more.
If it's really a hard-left plot to end football, then, well, why? As I was putting together ideas on this topic, I ran across this piece on Hot Air, "The Left's (Brilliant) Scam Behind the NFL Anthem Protests."
Why? Because the activist Left has despised the NFL for years. They hate everything about it. It’s a game filled with big, tough, manly men engaging in the closest thing to warfare you can manage without guns. It’s a game rife with symbolism and, yes… nationalism. Even people who would never buy an album from a country singer could feel their blood heating up when Hank Williams used to sing, Are you Ready for Some Football. The military loves football and they fly jets over the stadiums in formation and send our nation’s finest out to pay tribute. And it’s not just the military. Our police and other first responders are frequently called out for honors at the games. Everything about it screams of apple pie, fireworks and patriotism. (Or, if you prefer, God, guns and flags.) And the activist Left hates it. Probably the only sporting event they despise more is NASCAR.If I watch football, it's for escapism. I want to avoid politics, and to see really good athletes do things very few people can do. Avoiding the annoying politics is very easy. I record the game and start watching an hour or two after the start. I fast forward until the kickoff and miss the protest. If the announcers talk about it, I either mute the audio or fast forward a little bit. I fast forward through all the commercials, too, so I never really see any of them.
Pro football players are skilled dancing monkeys. All I want to see is some good dancing.
The inevitable conclusion to this line of thinking is that if we do bankrupt the NFL in five years by boycotting every business that sponsors them, we're handing the left a win. If that matters.
Excellent points, SiG.
ReplyDeleteI don't watch football, and never have. I hate it, so I don't watch it.
And I agree with your assessment of the players.
A win for the Left?
ReplyDeleteI'd say not.
The marketplace would depreciate their value, and they'd be guys who worked real jobs in the off-season, like they did not so long ago.
Ticket prices would get average folks in to see games.
And you'd never see another dancing monkey getting lippy about not showing off, or mistaking the filed for their own pulpit.
The lesson would ripple down to other industries, like TV and movies, already hurting from the same problem, but not brought to heel.
Hollywood can lie about ratings correspondence to reality (they have for decades, but no one wants to rock that boat); but you can't lie about empty stadiums, and people wagging their fingers under store managers' noses about the products they aren't buying.
It's doubtful the NFL will be killed, as even now, it's only about 10% of players and owners who've come out to support the nonsense.
But a chastened and humbled NFL will react to poverty and irrelevance in short order, and the troublemakers will be remembered for decades, and not in a good way.
If you spank a puppy, you don't have to shoot a dog.
A boycott at this point is still a rolled up newspaper.
I rarely watch games now, as I unplugged cable some years back, and ditto broadcast.
But you should've seen the last three or four facepalms at fast food places and grocery stores, when I chatted up the mgr.-on-duty about how I wasn't going to be eating there, or buying products that sponsored the NFL.
Those guys tell their district mgrs., who tell their regional mgrs., who tell their CFOs and CEOs.
And suddenly, a few hundred exemplars later, it's not funny anymore.
And in a tough economy, the message comes across like a shock collar.
Especially when it's just as easy to sponsor baseball or NASCAR, or even the NBA, which has zero tolerance for the sort of nonsense Colon Paperdick started last season.
Everybody should do what they like, but the NFL is finding out they're the tail, and not the dog, in this particular game.
This isn't some weird left wing conspiracy to hurt a blameless NFL. The commissioner and the owners are standing right there kneeling too.
ReplyDeleteOpen your eyes. If you don't want to boycott them, fine, but at least be honest with yourself.
This isn't some weird left wing conspiracy to hurt a blameless NFL. The commissioner and the owners are standing right there kneeling too.
DeleteNo, but there is such a thing as being a "useful idiot" that doesn't know what they're doing.
Step back from the theatrics of taking a knee and look at all the other attacks on football going on. Go read that article on Hot Air. It's not long.
Yes I will boycott it in any way I can. I boycott any movie with Jane Fonda in it for essentially the same reason. If someone hates America so much that they cooperate with anti-American communist groups (the BLM) then I will boycott them. If I could do more than that I would.
ReplyDeleteThe main part of my argument is that they aren't getting a penny out of me anyway, not that I can control by boycotting, so there's nothing I can do to affect them.
DeleteWe _do_ pay taxes (federal) ALL of us. From an article by Michelle Malkin:
ReplyDelete"As for the NFL's status as a "private" enterprise? That's some Super Bowl-sized audacity right there. I first started tracking publicly subsidized sports boondoggles with my very first watchdog website, Porkwatch, back in 1999. Since then, taxpayers at all levels of government have foot the bill for football stadiums to the tune of an estimated $1 billion every year."
RTWT at http://www.jewishworldreview.com/michelle/malkin092717.php3#Cx11dh156qaZviEk.99
So, if we _really want to boycott them, we could try to get our "representatives" in the Senate and the House to cut the subsidies from the budget (or CR, since we seem to have trouble getting Congress to provide a budget).
DeleteMight be the most reasonable thing we could possibly do. In the "I heard it on the radio so it must be true" category (/sarcasm) I heard the NFL is considered a "non-profit". They could remove that incentive.
DeleteI have never understood why cities and counties tax themselves to build a new stadium, or to attract a team. It's a private business, let them sell their own bonds or raise their own money.
It really is quite simple:
DeleteCities and counties tax their citizens to build new stadia because the people who own the elected officials in said cities and counties WANT the circuses there.
And quite frankly, the hive dwellers eat up the panem et circenses. They live in those hives because they want Big Government to take care of their every need and want.
Once they get their collective heads out of there asses and realize that the people who pay the bills aren't buying the crap they are selling. People may go back to watching.
ReplyDeleteOnly if they fire every sumbitch who took a knee first.
ReplyDeleteOtherwise, anything they say after getting spanked is just crocodile tears.
Well SiG, your Title is correct. You can't boycott something you don't participate in. But for others, the issue is being aware of the hypocracy of these gestures as well as the subversive movements being orchestrated by the likes of Georgie-boy Soros and other Socialists. Their aim is to destroy any vestige of the "nation" and have people believing that such things are irrelevant in today's world. Globalism is where it is at. All Hail, the UN, the EU, the Global Masters! And the black athletes who care so much about police violence on other blacks neglect the larger crimes of Planned Parenthood (Margaret Sanger) to commit genocide of blacks, and the astounding murder rates among blacks (black-on-black crime). These "jocks" need to get past their ignorance, get read up and learn to put their efforts into meaningful issues and do so in meaningful ways. As it is, economics will soon teach them the reality of spitting in the face of the public who is the consumer for their "entertainment." Dumb jocks is fitting. All they need is to wear their jock straps on their faces to finish the stupidity.
ReplyDeleteThat is probably the perfect comment in my eyes. You get everything exactly right. Black on black violence kills massively more than police violence, and Planned Parenthood kills even more than that.
DeleteMy favorite NFL jock story, that I unfortunately don't have a link for, but my wife gave to me. I think it was one of those "life inside training camp" shows. A group of NFL rookies get their first paycheck and are amazed at how much is withheld. The HR guy patiently explains to them that they are now the Wealthy that they've spent their entire life hearing should be penalized. You could see the frustration, and one or two lights going on.
Compare to a former cornerback named Troy Vincent. He was drafted by Miami and one of his first comments was, "Florida doesn't have a state income tax!"
I always will stand for our anthem...
ReplyDeleteYet I do fear this trend toward blind Nationalism. To remove the right to protest for anyone, would be to go against our Constitutional rights.
As a former Ranger officer in military intelligence, I vowed to protect the Constitutional rights against all enemies foreign or domestic. Even if I don't agree with their stupid protests. It would be a dangerous route to go down in removing the right to be stupid.
What little of our rights which remain that is.
Just my humble opinion of course...
Well said, Spud. I will always stand for our anthem.
DeleteIf I may use the old saying for your conclusion: the only speech that needs protection is the speech that the majority finds offensive.
It begs the question. Yes everyone is entitled to protest UNLESS they protest something the left likes. Can a baker protest gay marriage? Could the NFL players (or any sports team) protest Obama? Could they conversely demonstrate in favor of Trump? Don't fall into that left wing trap that the constitution allows any protest when the left are vicious about preventing anyone on the right from protesting. The left only wants anti-America protests not protests favoring religious or pro-constitution points of view. By condescending to these racist anti-American protests you fall into their trap.
DeleteMy point is you can indeed protest but you must accept the results of your protests. I sincerely hope the NFL goes belly up.
Interesting post ... food for thought
ReplyDeleteQ
I agree that everyone has the right to express their beliefs, and to demonstrate them - in a peaceful fashion. That doesn't mean I can't express _my_ beliefs or opinions, by not supporting these _ungrateful_ anti-Americans. There is absolutely no reason I should be required to pay taxes that get used to support things abhorrent to me - like Planned Parenthood, political parties, professional sports, television shows, NPR, etc.
ReplyDeleteThe question in my mind is this: can an employer - not the NFL, but the owner of each particular team - require certain behavior from his employees? If their contract (which probably also requires that the follow NFL rules)says that the expression of political opinions cannot be displayed on company times or while "working", then it would seem to be acceptable that they have the right to fire those employees who break the rules of their contract.