As I write this, it's another Sunday morning in America, another glorious day for football. All around the country, people will be waking up early to watch the London game (maybe), getting ready to tailgate at their respective stadiums. Grown people will act like little children today and football Sunday will be glorious.
As I write this, it's a Sunday morning of work for these athletes. Many of them are playing road games today, waking up in foreign hotels and being away from their families. They're getting into their pregame routines, listening to music, making sure they're stretched and ready to do battle with the other behemoths around the league. They're ready to go to war today and it will be glorious.
As I write this, Roger Goodell, the NFL commissioner, is probably already awake, rubbing his hands together and laughing like Emperor Palpatine. Because every word I type about this, every pregame show, every beer commercial is going to put money in his pocket. Every hit, every touchdown, they just all add up to a payday for him and he thinks it is glorious.
But a lot of it isn't. These past few seasons have really exposed the non-glorious side of football, between Ray Rice, Greg Hardy, Deflategate and Johnny Football. The NFL is facing a point of crisis, as highlighted by Richard Sherman this week. More and more fans are realizing the cold hard truth of the NFL, that it is a business entity and they do not care about player safety.
The NFL has a long history of not giving a fuck about their "employees." And part of that is the players' own fault. As a football player, you're taught to be tough and play through pain, because every play hurts. Seriously, have you ever tried to tackle a grown human to the ground or been tackled by one? It hurts no matter how it happens and these are mammoths doing this damage to each other. But a lot of the fault must reside with the NFL as a league and more specifically the office of the commissioner. Seriously, read this piece by Ta-Nehisi Coates of The Atlantic. Learn about Elliot J. Pellman and tell me that the NFL truly cares about the players.
Learn about Mike Webster, Junior Seau, Jovan Belcher, Steve McNair and countless others whose lives were changed forever by the game of football. Learn about how Roger Goodell handled the Ray Rice incident, learn about his salary. I love football and I'll always love football, but I've come to a point where I despise the league almost as much as I love the game.
To paraphrase what Sherman said in his fantastic piece, the NFL doesn't care because they don't have to. Their bottom line is never going to feel an impact, no matter how many players speak out. As he said, if the NFL won't protect the reigning MVP, why should we expect them to protect the rest of the players? Because we're going to keep watching either way.
As I write this, I'm about to turn on the Jacksonville-Indianapolis game from London. I'm just as much of the problem as the rest of us. But I'm trying to stay educated about these situations, trying to learn what I can about CTE and how it has impacted some of my childhood heroes. And that's all I'm asking of you. Educate yourself, learn what you are supporting and what you're truly rooting for and maybe, just maybe, one day the NFL will have to care. And it will be glorious.
