Never have I enjoyed a football season less. I'm ready for the 2017 season to just end.
I'm up to here with Zeke talk. Jerry is now suing anything that moves, weeks after being inducted into the Hall of Fame. I've learned more, and now know less, than I ever have about the US judicial system. Colin Kaepernick has been anointed as the Dr. Martin Luther Unitas of football. Flags are flying out of referee pockets like they're wrapped in fire ants. Targeting hits are now grounds for Harvey Weinstein scorn.
And all the while, the games are just putrid. Bad football by dudes from college who aren't prepared for NFL football. Teams no longer practice for more than 10 minutes at a time. Hamstrings are getting pulled more than Harvey Weinstein's....oops, already used that one.
This seems like a conflation of so many related and unrelated events, movements, and issues all coming to a collective head simultaneously. It's been brewing inside and outside of football for a long, long time obviously.
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The Owners: The NFL is gorged with a band of megalomaniacs, who appointed a wannabe owner with a God-complex to protect them from themselves. Jerry Jones has never been puppeteered like this in his life, and Roger Goodell seems to have him by his genital shorthairs. Same goes for a collection of owners who pride themselves on unrestrained and unquestioned power. They've cornered themselves by their own doing, and now they're eating their own in a dogpile to re-establish the pecking owner. This is going to get ugly.
The Players: Today's players suffer from the same sense of entitled and unchecked ego as their owners, believing somehow that they are "owed" these lavish lives by some form of self-indoctrination. They are largely just simpletons with born physical genetics, and so little more, yet they equate their abilities with an intellectual prowess they simply don't have but for rare exceptions. They are literally pissing on their lottery tickets by pretending to be more than what they are, and soon to be less than most. The regrets of fallen athletes is cliché to the point of boring anymore, yet still a huge percentage of them conduct themselves like predatory ingrates off the field, behaving like they just don't care, which they don't. They are becoming less and less likeable with each passing season.
The League: The NFL has developed a false sense of itself and overreached its limitations in hopes of creating new fanbases out of thin air. *******ized rules now confuse its most ardent and knowledgeable followers, who played and watched a very different game than what's presented these days. Oversaturation of this "different" style of football is hurting the league as well, as games are too many and too often, including faraway places that would rather watch cricket than football. The build-up of each week is gone. All football all the time is taking away the mystique and special occasion that the NFL once held. The insatiable pursuit of money has castrated this game of its greatness. The aura is gone.
Us: And then there's the United States of America today that is encroaching on everything the game stands for. The masculinity of football is being attacked from all sides. Academia has put its crosshairs firmly on football, not to make it safer, but to eliminate it altogether through predetermined CTE theories that are being "proven" before qualitative data has been established. "Bullying" is now a thing in the locker room. Seriously, bullying. Gay rights for draft picks became a 24-hour debated topic for weeks on end. Pregame anthems have become social battlefields. There's as much NFL on CNN and Fox as there is on ESPN, and you can't tell which channel you're actually watching.
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Ratings are dropping for lots of reasons, not just those bandied about among the agenda-laden talking heads. The NFL has changed, and not for the better. It's leaving those of us most loyal and in love with football out to roost and find our way alone.
I'm getting tired. I watch every Cowboys game, and I root like always. But it doesn't feel the same. I'm not as emotionally invested as I should be, like I've always been. Some of that is because of Zeke and Goodell and Jerry and endless legal motions and appeals and rulings. But a lot of it is just because of everything else.
Maybe the NFL will enact massive social changes and re-invent itself as a more palatable and less brutish sport for future generations. Perhaps there's a way to electronically tackle somebody coming soon that will save brains and prevent injuiries. Perhaps we can figure out a way to perfectly and equally represent every race, religion, nationality, and gender across the spectrum of owners, players, referees, and broadcasters.
Maybe football utopia really is possible. Big goals and aspirations are great, I suppose. These are just the required painful steps.
Not me.
I just wish I could have my old football back. Can you imagine if I actually said that out loud in public?
