Ready for Some Football?

No, I'm not. And if I didn't have an excuse earlier, watching the National Football League's mealy-mouthed response to President Trump's blatantly racist attacks on black athletes expressing their views on police brutality...If watching the NFL give a free pass to wife beaters and child abusers until they were shamed by the media into doing something about it...If watching the NFL allow players to beat each other into a bloody pulp with irreversible brain damage and then suppressing evidence of concussions...If, if, if. As if I needed yet another excuse.

I have run out of excuses. I'm no longer going to watch or read about the NFL, after being a die hard fan for over 45 years of the team with the most racist names in professional sports.

The NFL's shameless, spineless kowtowing to the Orange Menace and then exerting its control over the players, 80% of whom are men of color, their bodies and their constitutional rights to free speech were all too much for me to stomach. Stick a fork in me. I'm done. No more. No más. Ça y'est. Bas!

I'll stick with hoops, maybe even learn to enjoy ice hockey now that the Washington Capitals are in the Stanley Cup, after largely ignoring them for the past 45+ years. I'll just take it one Sunday at a time, because I don't want to willingly provide the NFL with one more media hit or dollar of advertising revenue. They don't deserve all of the unfair, competitive advantages they've been gifted only to abuse this privilege to further fill their purses while exploiting players with impunity.

The NFL and its owners are, with few exceptions, greedy, entitled old white men who still treat players like chattel and fans like marks. The owner of the team I rooted for for 45+ years is the poster child of this vile form of narcissism, but he's still a distant second this country's narcissist-in-chief, who has never lost an opportunity to unload his deep-seeded hatred of people of color for political gain. All of these plutocrats are despicable, and I hope that one day karmic justice delivers to them what they deserve, a taste of their own vile medicine.