It’s important to put the NFL in context.<\/p>\n
Understand that it’s fucking Mordor.<\/p>\n
<\/a><\/p>\n It’s totally evil.<\/p>\n It really is.<\/p>\n Entertain for a moment the idea that the NFL might actually be nothing more than a flashy delivery system for gambling. The games are just accessories created to facilitate the exchange of a mind-bending amount of money. It’s impossible to calculate how much cash– both legally and illegally– is bet on the NFL each year, but it’s hundreds of billions of dollars. It might be a trillion. The NFL, and the owners of each of the the 32 teams that comprise the league, make pornographic amounts of money– so much so that even the pathologically greedy Donald Trump wanted in on the action back in the 80’s.<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n Working beneath these overlords are the players. About 70% of them are black, and the average length of a career is about 3 1\/2 years. It is a brutal, collision-based sport, but beyond the mechanical failure of knees, hips and such, there is CTE, a brain disease that virtually every football player seems to acquire due to the concussive nature of the sport. And because the NFL is evil, they withheld this information from the players even as symptoms set in and raged amongst them.<\/p>\n Essentially, what the NFL does is hire people to engage in combat while America bets on who the winner will be.<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n It’s the bread and circuses we’re fed.<\/p>\n The game itself is about martial precision rather than athletic improvisation. The players are armoured and anonymous, strategically deployed by the technocrats on the sidelines, and whatever exuberance or individuality they bring to the game is swiftly crushed. When celebrating and dancing after a touchdown became a thing, the league outlawed it. It was considered \u201cdisrespectful,\u201d ( but not in the same way that calling a team The Redskins might be \u201cdisrespectful”) which put another way means it was considered too black. In effect, they took an African-American product, subordinated it to the tastes of a conservative white audience, and profited obscenely from it.<\/p>\n Colin Kaepernick, a talented black quarterback, ( It was not that long ago that a black quarterback in the NFL was unheard of, the belief being that they didn’t have the \u201cfaculties\u201d to perform the job) began the practice of taking a knee during the national anthem as a protest against against racial injustice.<\/p>\n