A TERRIBLE GAME PLAN

If any group of people were to recognize what a winning game plan looks like, one would think it would include NFL players. There is a faction of players and coaches using tactics and mostly incoherent reasoning to justify not standing for the Nation Anthem. It’s a terrible game plan.

In the game of football it’s easy. What combination of offensive plays would most effectively utilize personnel to score the most points? And what defensive scheme will be most effective at stopping your opponent from scoring. The goal? Score more points then your opponent.

From what I can discern some players believe that their gesture will in some way help end police excesses and improve the lives of black Americans. It is beyond my comprehension to understand how taking a knee does anything to help accomplish either of these goals. But it appears we have entered an era when people confuse drawing attention to themselves while professing pure intensions is a substitute for doing something productive. Let alone suggesting a specific effective plan of action.

We saw this kind of ‘look at me’ self-indulgence on social media featuring celebrities demonstrating sympathy for the girls kidnapped for sexual slavery by Boko Haram. What followed? Not much of anything followed. Solidarity is action and impact free though ego enhancing. Look at me. I care. Its major accomplishment? Make the sender feel good about him or herself. At least those meaningless gestures didn’t show disrespect for the National Anthem while fruitless and harmless.

Let’s be perfectly clear about the straw man argument as offered each time the subject arises. The players have a right to kneel or sit as long as their employer does not object. In their private time they are free as birds. But the First Amendment protection of free speech does not apply to an employee – private sector relationship. Wal Mart can prohibit its checkers from lecturing customers or wearing protest tee shirts.

There is no aspect of this self-centered protest that makes any sense. The premise of significant “oppression of people of color” is factually inaccurate in this country. Any connection between player protest behavior and making the lives of one person better is nothing more then a phantom residing in the minds of people who are unable to distinguish anecdote from reality. Of course having chosen the moment of the singing of the National Anthem to draw attention to themselves and then denying disrespect is logical hocus pocus.

What is on a player’s mind as he kneels is irrelevant. It’s no more relevant then what’s in ones head if he or she shows up at a White House ceremony or a funeral in shorts and flip-flops. That behavior is disrespectful.The general public and the fans couldn’t care less what motivates the players. Just like a coach doesn’t care that the quarterback didn’t want to throw that interception. Unlike what kids are taught in school today about the primacy of intension, life judges you based on your behavior and it’s impact on others.

The cause is what? Oppression as defined by police involved shootings and stops of back young men? A sad cultural reality is at the root of stops, arrests and violence committed by police against black men. No doubt rare police excesses and crimes have occurred and the cops should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. But when 50% of homicides are committed by the fraction of young men in a group that constitutes 13% of the population, dangerous and deadly encounters will proliferate. That’s called the police focusing their efforts where the crime is committed. Ironically in the vast majority of cases the people who benefit most from good aggressive policing are the blacks that are the victims at a rate of 90%.

This sad phenomenon has nothing to do with race. Its primary cause is a culture where 75% of kids are born into homes with no father. As Jason Riley pointed out in the October 18th WSJ, “In 2016, according to census figures, the US. poverty rate was 22% for blacks, and 11% for whites but it was only 7.5% for married blacks”

Since the mid-sixties trillions of dollars have been thrown at these problems. Civilian police review boards were instituted. Minority mayors, city councils, prosecutors and majority minority police forces were alleged sources of the problems. Police were demilitarized. Over more then 50 years all these false causes have been addressed. The problems have gotten worse. We have playing around the periphery rather then attacking the issue at its cultural source.

But our well-meaning players persist in pursing gestures with conviction that will make not one thing better for black people.

My dear magnificently talented athletes whose skills and hard work I genuinely admire and whose games bring me much enjoyment, you need a new game plan. If you expect one spec of good to emerge from the most recent behavior of some of your peers, you are sadly mistaken.

It is for these reasons I enthusiastically throw the yellow flag. The infraction is as follows: for violation of sideline behavior that is both disrespectful and self-indulgent bringing disgrace on the league and a slap in the face to millions of fans whom are ultimately the source of your wealth. The penalty is being imposed by millions of people like myself who will now hesitate to turn the T.V on Sunday, Monday or Thursday, let alone consider paying an outrageous fee of a ticket. Payback is hell.