It was 1967. I was 15, a freshmen in High School. During summer two-a-days I broke my left arm for the second time. Waking up from surgery in post-op I saw Mom looking down on me with flowing tears. Suddenly another face entered the scene, it was Charlie E, my baseball coach. I smiled at both thinking that this must be heaven as two of my favorite people were here with me. That day was effectively the end of my football career - for when Charlie spoke he had one question - and one suggestion for me.
Charlie E: Kevin, do you want to play baseball?
Me: Yes.
Charlie E: (EMPHATIC) Then stop playing football.
From that day forward I was a fan, playing baseball and following football.
Across town in the LA Coliseum the LA Rams where changing the game. Their defense, and in particular their defensive line, aka The Fearsome Foursome, were kicking ass and taking names. It was my first introduction to the game at its Hollywood best. It was emotional, violent, dramatic and special. It had everything, speed, grace, power, strategy, a ticking clock, humanity, a mix of ethnicity and culture and, of course, those ultra-cool helmets. We watched on black and white TVs as the weekly ritual unfolded on the static filled screen. I was vaguely aware of college football at the time, surrounded by USC and UCLA, but the Rams were my team, my guys and my passion.
Fast forward to 1987 Seattle. The NFL players go on-strike and boycott management in the hopes of improving their (rather antebellum) position as modern day athletic slaves. I get a glimpse of the old boy network and their far reaching racist tentacles. I am not happy. This is about as far as one can get from my (at the time perhaps naive perception) of wholesomeness and solidarity of those Rams. I have also begun what was to be a complete migration away from the Pro game towards the College game, establishing the UW Huskies as ‘my’ team. I begin a boycott of the NFL. There is too much hypocrisy for me to stomach. I will detail what was taking place on the UW campus in the 60's later.
Fast forward to today, 2018 America under the dubious and corrupt ‘leadership’ of the Republican party and one donald j trump. I am still boycotting the NFL. I am still a Huskies fan. We have some serious issues to discuss that, rightly or wrongly, includes football as both stage and scene. It is another metaphor that I find excruciatingly painful.
Let me clarify, again, my position. The President is a racist pig. Clear enough? He is using the NFL as both a distraction, to keep his ‘base’ incensed with hatred and fear, as well as to further divide the population into camps of ‘patriots and winners’, against ‘disrespectful and ungrateful losers’. His lies, tone and strategy works only with an audience that shares his low-brow, cruel, supremest values. He knows he cannot win in a fair fight, America is too smart, so his tactic is to incite his racist, bigoted, fearful, weak and pathetic base into doing the dirty work for him. FIND SOMEBODY TO BLAME and unload on them.
I stand with the players this go-around. The ruse of protesting minority discrimination, police brutality disproportionate to people of color spun into being about disrespect for the flag and our service men and women is right outta the Nazi Germany playbook. His base sees red when this flag is hoisted and violence naturally ensues, spilling the blood of innocent Americans guilty of simply wanting a better place to raise their kids. This is criminal. And must end immediately.
The heroes of Thursday night’s game between the Seahawks and Colts were not the stars who lined up and did battle. The true heroes, those willing to put their careers and livelihoods on the line for something supposedly guaranteed with their citizenship, were three guys named Jackson, Jefferson and Brown.
Sounds pretty patriotic to me.
I will leave you with this pun, seemingly appropriate today, when so much honor, integrity and moral turpitude is missing from the national dialogue; Dear mr trump, take a hike.
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