As I was driving into work this morning, the topic of kneeling for the national anthem once again came up on sports talk radio. So, I started to think some more about the situation, which for the last few weeks I’ve largely been trying to avoid.
There seems to be little doubt at this point that the NFL owners simply would like the topic to disappear. As much as they don’t want to admit it, it’s hurting the bottom line for the conversation to continue focusing on pre-game activities, and the number of people who are outraged and/or actively avoiding the league over this topic seems to be at a minimum holding steady, if not growing.
At the same time, the owners also are clearly not pleased with a certain President stick (more…)
I watched last nights game and followed along on Twitter with much amusement. There’s seriously nothing funnier in the sports community than watching Twitter blow up after a questionable call. Unfortunately, less than twelve hours later, and it feels to me like very few people have really thought this through rationally or objectively, and instead are just insisting that we need to get these refs out of our sacred game, so we can get back to…yelling at the regular refs for blowing calls.
Here are some of my (somewhat disorganized) thoughts on the current situation with the referees:
I was shocked when I heard news yesterday about Bill Polian—not that he had been fired, but that apparently Twitter was blowing up with Vikings fans & local sports media wanting to quickly make a move to bring him in as the voice of authority for the team. Digging deeper showed that many other media & fan bases, including Chicago, Oakland, and even Dallas were clamoring over the opportunity to hire a “proven commodity” in Polian.
But they all seem to be overlooking one significant factor – Bill Polian’s track record is generally one of building teams that are great in the regular season, then failing in the playoffs, or ultimately in the big game itself. Essentially he is to football exactly what the local media uses in Minnesota ridicule the Minnesota Twins – regular season success followed by postseason failure.
I still maintain that there is not a right side to the NFL lockout. I believe there is enough blame for this situation to go around and that the NFL and the NFL’s union, err, former-and-someday-to-be-again union, should realize they have more incentives to work together to find a deal than they do to stop negotiating and keep the players out of work.
I don’t agree with every point TJ “The Dude” Johnson makes. But it’s a well-written, well-researched look at the reasons the players have taken the strategy they have used.
In fact, if they hired this guy to make their case with the public they’d probably be better off. If you have a few minutes, check it out. I thought it was a pretty good read.
Since the NFL and NFLPA decided they could not come up with an agreement for how to split $9 billion on Friday afternoon I’ve checked in on the twittersphere from time to time and it’s not really helping either side win the public relations battle.
I was already irritated that a bunch of rich guys couldn’t come to an agreement with a bunch of richer guys on how to split a plenty big pot o’ cash. But then I started reading.
Some players, in between hollow apologies to fans or tweets of disbelief wondering why fans are irritated with them instead of or in addition to being upset with the owners, are posting “jokes” like Alex Brown (alexbrown96) did Sunday afternoon: So since I am unemployed and have a pregnant wife and 2 other kids can I go get WIC?
Soon after my wife and I moved into the same house I was watching an NFL game in front of the basement television when she sat down beside me. She watched silently for a few minutes, then said “Who designed those terrible outfits?”
I don’t remember who was playing during that game. It might have been Detroit and Tampa Bay or some other out-of-market game I had on after watching the Vikings complete their game for the day.
With Nike taking over NFL uniforms sometime during the next couple seasons, there is a good chance any time she sits down with me to watch a game (a rare occurrence) that she’ll be saying the same thing more emphatically.
This scared me a bit because Nike is responsible for the yellow/green/checkerboard hideous things resembling jerseys that the Oregon Ducks wear for their NCAA games. The different combinations could not possibly be more disgusting, ranging in ridiculousness from banana yellow to something (I think) slightly darker than baby poop green, some of which have checkerboard designs on the shoulder pads and knees. I think the Ducks are the best team in college football this season. I think their uniforms are the worst college football has seen since I’ve been watching football.
Well, something called BusinessInsider.com has published potential uniforms for each of the NFL’s 32 teams. Reportedly they are fake, according to sports business reporting guru Darren Rovell’s twitter status.
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