For the NFL, issues have to outweigh the optics this time around
This is an ideal time for America’s sport to lead the conversation
BY J.A. ADANDE
The reason the NFL keeps winding up in the middle of the police brutality debate is because both professional football and violence are woven into America. You could actually make a case that professional football is so quintessentially American specifically because it is so violent. The nexus of football and violence also reminds us of the limits historically placed on African Americans, that their prominence rarely accompanies power, that for all the attention given to black players in the NFL and their outspokenness about police brutality, they were unable to do much about it on their own. It is a dynamic as old as America itself.
As a way to quantify the prominence, consider this: Black players scored 80% of the touchdowns in the NFL last season. Not to diminish the importance of blocking, tackling, special teams play, film study, playcalling or any of the other components of winning football games, but ultimately what matters to us are touchdowns. Black people, in overwhelming numbers, produce the thing we care about the most in the sport we care about the most.
“Touchdowns equal happiness,” John Madden once said as the cameras showed jubilant fans reacting to a touchdown. The equation is unbalanced. For all of the happiness produced by black players, there should be an expectation to not only pay their salaries but to pay attention to their concerns, hopes and fears. That didn’t happen in 2016 when then-San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick started a wave of players kneeling during the national anthem to protest inequality and injustice.
https://theundefeated.com/features/for-the-nfl-issues-have-to-outweigh-the-optics-this-time-around/
