*The NFL announced the continuation of the “social justice” messaging in the endzone for the 2025 season.
Yes, I’m complaining again. Maybe I shouldn’t. But I can’t help but notice that pro-football, both the NFL and Division 1A college in this era of the transfer portal and NIL, has swelled beyond an athletic contest of trained, skilled, and fit athletes under great coaching into an extravaganza, a bacchanalia in many cases, a show to rival anything on Broadway, and embellished with trendy ideological crusades. A manufactured over-the-top enthusiasm is evangelized in the commercials that glosses over reality. The whole thing from the pregame to halftime and afterward has become our secular society’s version of America at worship, a worship of the outlandish.
Our pews are emptying but 100,000-seat stadiums packed, tv ratings off the charts. But where’s the game; where’s the simple fact that this is a match between teams of the highly honed in mind and body? The comely Carrie Underwood struts out on a runway to belt out the theme of Sunday Night Football amid pyrotechnics, strobe lights, and flashy cameos of rock and football celebrities. The Sao Paulo game between the Chiefs and Chargers had a gaudy Super Bowl-style halftime that’ll rival anything in February, or the raunchiest Mardi Gras. Again, where’s the game; where’s the clash of great athletes in shoulder pads in all this hubbub?
Trendy ideological beliefs permeate the production. Five years after George Floyd, the deadly summer of chaos, defund the police, metropolitan downtowns laid waste, and the subsequent flight of business and the middle class from these toxic environments, the NFL is still pursuing “social justice” – er, “equity”. The games continue to be festooned with a national anthem for a racial group. End zones are tattooed with “End Racism” or “It Takes All of Us”. Is this a Democratic Party rally or a game?
Yeah, “end racism”, and end the gratuitous virtue signaling. The NFL overtly perpetuates the myth that men and women are equal in their fascination for sports (see #1 for insight into that). The NFL lavishes funds on flag football so the girls can show off their physical prowess (proof that everyone is over-paying for this thing). I thought that transgenderism abated the illusions of physical “equity”. It’s more than expanding the fan base. Throughout, including the commercials, physical differences are whitewashed, and women are equally gonzo as the men. It’s as if the NFL is busy shaming those women, maybe most, of different inclinations. It appears to be the NFL’s vast social engineering project.
It’s true. The NFL is proof of John O’Sullivan’s First Law (see #2): “Any organization not explicitly and constitutionally right-wing will sooner or later become left-wing.” Thanks, Roger Goodell, for the garish twice-weekly cultural revolution. I just want a game absent all of the folderol.
Watch Greg Kelly and Megyn Kelly (no relation) on her show. I won’t vouch for everything said but sympathize with the sentiment. I, too, am done with the NFL.
Oh, by the way, you can drop that ridiculous kickoff routine.
RogerG
Sources:
1. For instance, review “A Sex Difference in the Predisposition for Physical Competition: Males Play Sports Much More than Females Even in the Contemporary U.S”, Matt Hayward, editor, NIH: National Center for Biotechnology Information, at https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3498324/.
2. Can be found in “John O’Sullivan’s First Law: All organizations that are not actually right-wing will over time become left-wing”, Emil O. W. Kirkegaard, at https://emilkirkegaard.dk/en/2021/05/john-osullivans-first-law-all-organizations-that-are-not-actually-right-wing-will-over-time-become-left-wing/.