Response to Right Angle:
Coach Cancel Culture: Seahawks Pete Carroll Drills NFL Fans for Persistent Racism
I was going to just leave a comment, but it was getting very long and thought a blog would be more appropriate. I’ve really struggled on and off with this issue for some time. I stopped watching the NFL for about 6-7 weeks in 2017 at the height of the kneeling crisis. My thoughts looking back on that were that while President Trump was certainly right that players should stand for the flag, it was a mistake for POTUS to get himself involved in this way and may even have lost some support among what few pro-Trump players and owners there are, such as Tom Brady and Jerry Jones.
But to the present: Eventually I started watching again. As the playoffs grew nearer I remembered the excitement I felt every year. I also thought, “Okay, it’s just a few kneeling players. You really do enjoy football, don’t you? Are you going to let Kaper-dick and his ilk prevent you from watching? I actually started to feel in a strange way like I had to get the protestors were (or not) giving me permission to watch, because I’m letting my leisure activities be dictated by whiny athletes doing something beyond my control. I even thought, “Well on some level I can’t blame the kneelers.” NOT that they’re right!! But that if I were a black person and grew up in Democrat-infested areas of the country and I had heard nothing but “White police get up in the morning wondering how many n*****s I can kill today,” how would I feel? I thought to myself that underneath it all, they’re (with the exception of Kapernick himself) good people doing what they think they need to do to solve a crisis in our country, misguided as they will be.
So I didn’t get over the kneeling controversy, but rather I made my peace with it.
Fast forward to 2020. Now my own team’s coach (who is older, more experienced and should probably know better than 20-something black athletes growing up being told every day how evil white people are and being infused by professors in their colleges (assuming football players even attend classes) with anti-American rhetoric. Pete, I’ve admired you for a long time, as well as your late owner Paul Allen. I thought you would be above this. I could even MAYBE, PARTIALLY forgive the NFL knowing that they felt tremendous social pressure from sponsors unless they took a “courageous” stand on the police-brutality-black-racism-thing. Doesn’t excuse it. But at the end of the day, if I deprive myself of the highlight of my weekend because I’ve let the actions and words of misguided players and socially-bullied coaches ruin it? Isn’t that kind of like asking their permission? If I were on-the-fence with football, maybe a casual fan, I would have dumped them like I dumped the NBA 20 years ago. I was a regular basketball fan but when they started going south, I wasn’t enough of a fan to lose any sleep over stopping my support. I can’t say that about the NFL.
So I’m not sure what I’m going to do this year yet. Watch? Don’t watch? Become a Cowboys fan? I don’t think I would stop watching a sports league, or team, or actor or whatever simply out of protest. Let the far left do that! I’m not going to let a few malcontents ruin my weekend or my optimism and pleasure that professional sports brings me.
If it wasn’t for Covid and we were going to have college football this year, I’d just record all my Big Sky games and watch some of those on Sundays. But it’s not that simple any more, at least this year, is it? And now we have NHL players kneeling? I’m not at the end of my rope yet. For now, the enjoyment I get over watching is still slightly winning against the disgust that I feel for these leagues. But for how much longer?
One reply on “Response to “Coach Cancel Culture””
I’ve loved football ever since I first became aware of it as a child. You have put into words exactly what I’m thinking and feeling about the sport since the kneeling fad began.
(I’ve always been a Packers fan and I chose to hate the Seahawks several years ago just because it’s fun to have a team to hate, not because I actually have anything against them – except that I’ve always thought they have the ugliest uniforms in the league. I hope you won’t hold that against me. ☺)
I, too, stopped watching the NBA, when defense became optional and thugs began ruling the court back in the 80s. I also long ago stopped watching baseball until the playoffs because what’s the point before that? (Never been a hockey fan, though I watch highlights now and again. And soccer is hockey at the speed of golf – I never bothered.)
Football is also the only thing I ever watch on TV, not counting very rare events and occasional movies on Netflix. So losing the sport to COVID and political correctness matters to me, a lot. Thanks for expressing my pain.