Football fans who were concerned that coronavirus would put a damper on the NFL season like it did other professional sports leagues now have something else to worry about that could detract from or derail the 2020 season: Racial politics.
Earlier this week during an interview with ESPN, New England Patriots running back James White confirmed that yes, his teammates will no doubt conduct protests before games to continue bringing attention to the death of Minneapolis man George Floyd who was killed last month at the hands of police, a death nearly every American with a pulse already believes was a terrible injustice.
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“I’m sure we’ll figure something out as a team. I’m not sure exactly what that will be, but I’m sure guys will peacefully protest in some type of form or fashion,” White said.
ESPN adds:
White was among 17 Patriots players who kneeled during the national anthem for one game in September 2017 in support of former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick. All Patriots players stood on the sideline and locked arms during the national anthem for the remainder of the season.
White, who has served as a captain the past two years, said the decision to kneel at the time was “difficult” but that “we wanted to stand with Kap. Being black people in America, we understood exactly what he was talking about.”
In 2016, his final season with the San Francisco 49ers, Kaepernick kneeled during the pregame national anthem to protest racial inequality and police brutality.
White said Thursday that with more people now speaking out after George Floyd’s death, things feel different to him than in 2017.
“I think people’s awareness wasn’t as heightened back then,” White claimed.
It’s never been the case that most Americans believe in justice – for all, not just Americans with white skin.
And it’s not even that most Americans believe Kaepernick’s protests and those of other players who supported him and knelt with him were wrong, per se.
What most people seemed to disagree with was his claim that ‘racism’ is ‘systemic’ in police departments around the country, when the stats and the evidence don’t support the claim, then or now.
And Kaepernick being caught wearing socks during practice featuring pigs with police hats on didn’t help his cause any, because by far most Americans – then and now – support police officers and don’t want to see departments “defunded” or “disbanded.”
There’s also this: Americans are constantly bombarded by the grievance industry and the lamestream, garbage media that feeds it. The last thing sports fans want is to have to deal with the grievance industry during games, and yet, fans were forced to do that while Kaepernick played and for a year or two after he left.
Now, it seems, they’re going to have to endure this kind of inappropriate abuse of their time, money, and support once again. Not a very good business decision, considering that thanks to the coronavirus pandemic, tens of millions of Americans and football fans are smarting, economically, and are going to have trouble coming up with money to go to games and buy NFL merch this season. Why in the world would any player want to endanger fan support at a time like this?
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Floyd should not have died in the manner he did. We get it. Got it. The officers have been charged and now the justice system has to be given time to function.
Shoving this in NFL fans’ faces for another season is not going to bring him back and it’s likely going to lose the league even more fans than Kaepernick did.
Including this fan.
As for the Patriots, they would better spend their time figuring out how to win now that their decades-long Super Bowl-winning quarterback, Tom Brady, is playing for Tampa Bay.
