"No wonder the Uniparty and all their puppets hate our President who embraces Winning with gusto!"

Here is what some of the commenters in the Conservative Treehouse had to say about the Denver Broncos and NFL Executives.

Another chapter in the ongoing mind-manipulation to get a nation to believe that to surrender is to win. No wonder the Uniparty and all their puppets hate our President who embraces Winning with gusto!

Yeah. I can’t tell you how totally deflated I felt when Brees decided to cave. What a shame. And then the Broncos virtue signaling . . . . a team I idolized in the 80s and who earned and deserved my respect and admiration. Done and done.

The NFL took a massive financial hit a couple years ago, due to their wokeness. They managed to recover after they dumped the idiot backup quarterback and stopped the kneeling during the anthem. But now it appears they haven’t learned their lesson. And they’re doing it while ticket sales are in play, unlike last time when they were already sold. They kept that ticket money, but had to repay for the advertising eyeballs that weren’t watching on tv. It’s going to go far worse for them this time.

Free Speech?

hat tip 90 Miles from Tyranny

Is the Left ginning up this whole controversy over the NFL?

At Hot Air, Jazz Shaw has a different take on the NFL controversy. He believes

This has little or nothing to do with police shootings, racial profiling or any of the rest of it. What we’re seeing is an almost brilliant and concerted effort to damage, if not eliminate, the National Football League.

Why? Because the activist Left has despised the NFL for years. They hate everything about it. It’s a game filled with big, tough, manly men engaging in the closest thing to warfare you can manage without guns. It’s a game rife with symbolism and, yes… nationalism. Even people who would never buy an album from a country singer could feel their blood heating up when Hank Williams used to sing, Are you Ready for Some Football. The military loves football and they fly jets over the stadiums in formation and send our nation’s finest out to pay tribute. And it’s not just the military. Our police and other first responders are frequently called out for honors at the games. Everything about it screams of apple pie, fireworks and patriotism. (Or, if you prefer, God, guns and flags.) And the activist Left hates it. Probably the only sporting event they despise more is NASCAR.

Read more here.

Politicizing professional sports

At Bookworm Room, Wolf Howling writes about the NFL Knee Battle.

By interjecting radical black Marxist/progressive politics into the NFL, the progressive left has just accepted — and indeed, doubled down — in a huge gamble in the culture wars. While half of the nation already buys into the poison the progs are selling, the other half has never been faced with the choice of accepting white guilt and pleading guilty to racism (just by being a non-black American) in order to continue to watch NFL games. The means of voting will be by free market economics — spending dollars at a stadium gate or tuning in to watch the games.

Just to recount the contours of this wager and how it came about: last year, back-up QB Colin Kaepernick (2016 salary $11 million+) began taking a knee to protest all of the horrible racism he and his fellow blacks were being subject to in this country. It caused enough heart burn even in San Francisco, the prog capital of America, that he was let go by the Forty-Niners. And Kapernick has been radioactive since; no team has been willing to sign him. (2017 salary $0). As Giants co-owner John Mara explained when it was reported that the Giants considered signing Kaepernick:

“All my years being in the league, I never received more emotional mail from people than I did about that issue,” Mara told TheMMQB.com’s Jenny Vrentas. “If any of your players ever do that, we are never coming to another Giants game. It wasn’t one or two letters. It was a lot. It’s an emotional, emotional issue for a lot of people, moreso than any other issue I’ve run into.”

A week ago, basketball’s Stephen Curry (2017 salary $34 million) made noises about not accepting a White House invitation, ostensibly because President Trump is racist. Trump responded to Curry by withdrawing the White House invitation. Also in the past few weeks, the media reported that “[a] group of NFL players has asked Commissioner Roger Goodell for a month dedicated to social activism in a letter . . . they titled, “Player Activism for Racial Equality and Criminal Justice Reform.” Kneeling is not enough for them.

Then a few days ago in a speech in Alabama, Trump laid down the wager, so to speak:

When people like yourselves turn on television and you see those people taking the knee when they are playing our great national anthem – the only thing you could do better is if you see it, even if it’s one player, leave the stadium. I guarantee things will stop. . . .

Wouldn’t you love to see one of these NFL owners, when somebody disrespects our flag, to say, “Get that son of a bitch off the field right now. He is fired.”

And over the past few days, many players and several teams in the NFL accepted the wager. A combined total of 23% of all NFL players including the Ravens, Seahawks and Steelers (less former Army Captain Alejandro Villanueva) in toto, either took a knee during the anthem or stayed off the field while it was being played. (Villaneuva has since apologized for standing for the flag instead of standing with his teammates, while the Steelers, after the fact, contend that they stayed in the locker room, not as a statement about the flag, but in an effort to reset matters to 2008, when teams appeared only after the national anthem was played.)

We can say with certainty that not a one of these players has been subject to systemic racism — the oldest players on each roster rarely exceeds 35 years old and thus all were born far too late to have experienced anything like Jim Crow. I’d be surprised if any them had ever experienced more than a smattering of actual racism from some fringe yahoo, if any at all, in their entire lives. They live in a country where they have become millionaires overnight for just signing to play a year of professional sports. They live in a country that supports and idolizes their physical skills, with over 100 million tuning in to watch the Superbowl every year. They agree to provide superb entertainment once a week, and the public agrees to part with their hard earned money at the stadium gate or indirectly by watching their games over the air waves. These athletes are not victims, let alone victims of racism.

And yet almost 25% of these athletes just made overt shows of disrespect to our country and its citizens with incredibly symbolic acts. I am sure a few might have meant it only towards Trump in their minds. Regardless, those of us who pulled the lever for Trump or who do not buy into the toxic narratives being taught in victim’s studies classes are being soaked in the backwash. You might as well have played Hildabeast braying on loudspeaker overtop of our national anthem declaring half of America “deplorables.”

The genesis of these acts by the footballers comes from the heart of Marxist progressive politics, where each person is wholly defined by the color of their skin (or their gender, etc.) and not by the content of their character. It has its genesis in radical black academia where professors inculcate the most vile of ideological excreta into their students, painting a dark fantasy of permanent black victims and America as Selma circa 1952 writ large. All whites — but for the progressive whites — are damned as inherently racist. Racism is still systemic in America, the Constitution is the political instrument of black oppression written by white slavers, and capitalism is the concomitant economic system of black oppression. It is an ideology impervious to facts, as it is founded on post-modernism and the execrable claim that all reality is subjective. All of this is not something taught by fringe nuts on the left, it is the progressive’s bread and butter.

The progs cover this poison with words like social justice, equity, fairness, etc., with the result that few people, even if they have an inkling of what is happening, pay it much attention. Few grasp that they are seeing a deeply radical and separatist attack not only on the fundamental tenets of our nation, but on the character of our people.

In that, it is almost like Rev. Wright of a decade ago, whose anti-American, black liberation screed was preached into the ears of the Obama family for twenty years. If Wright’s screed had come from Obama’s mouth, Obama wouldn’t have been elected President (and certainly not on a promise to “heal the racial divide”). Obama downplayed Wright’s obscenities, and the progressive media was not about to delve into what Obama’s multi-decade attendance at Wright’s church meant, so it was ignored.

Until now, a similar thing went on in halls of academia largely below the national radar. The professors teaching this toxin were teaching it to blacks and other progressives. It has only become a real problem — and the sticks of capitalism kicked in — when their toxic waste spilled out into the national news, as happened with Missouri State University and Evergreen State College.

And sure, we’ve watched the progressive left toss the race card around with wild abandon ever since they found out in the 60’s just how powerful charges of racism could be. It could not only end debates and protect prog policies, it could end careers. But those charges of racism were almost always hurled not at the average American, but at this or that politician for daring to take a position on some topic that the progressive did not like.

But this most recent foray, into politicizing professional sports, is different. One, it is a clear slander landing on average Americans. Two, it could not be more visible. It’s Mizzou and Evergreen to a factor of 100 on the visibility scale.

We don’t pay to have these professional athletes insult us — and I can think of no greater insult to me personally, having lived a life in the highly integrated U.S. military, having never acted in a racist manner nor having tolerated racism, then to be tagged a racist. And given the utter paucity of stories about actual racist incidents in our deeply progressive media, it is safe to assume, in 2017, that the vast majority of Americans are likewise not animated by racism in their lives. But every one of them has been slimed by the almost quarter of NFL athletes taking a knee or refusing to stand publicly for our national anthem as they act out the bankrupt ideology being taught by victim’s studies professors across the length and breadth of our nation.

So now the bet becomes, will the tens of millions of non-black, non-racist football fans meekly accept the progressive charge that they are inveterate racists in order to continue being entertained by people who hold them in contempt? Will some not realize the stakes? Or will a large number realize and vote “no” with their dollars and Sunday time? Or perhaps even take it up a notch and start boycotting those who advertise during NFL games (Hmmm, I wonder who might have a list?).

I think that the ramifications of this vote could be almost as important for this country as the 2016 election itself. It puts the issue of full frontal toxic prog politics — not the deliberately misleading campaign happy talk — front and center in America in a way nothing else could.

Go here to see all of the links.

Being paid to be patriotic

Hat tip Bookworm Room

Standing for God Save the Queen, but refusing to stand for the national anthem?

Remember when Tim Tebow was criticized for kneeling to honor God when he played in the NFL for the Denver Broncos? Now those same people think it is cool for players to take a knee instead of standing for our national anthem!

There is mounting opposition to the NFL even though football has long been America's most beloved sport. Many people on Facebook today are expressing disgust with the NFL players who today stood for "God Save the Queen" in England while refusing to stand for our national anthem.

NFL messes with Texas

Derek Hunter reports at The Daily Caller,

The Super Bowl was just held in Houston, Texas, last Sunday, but if lawmakers in Austin don’t act in accordance with the NFL’s wishes in regards to transgender bathroom use, it may be the Lone Star State’s last.

The Texas legislature is currently considering a bill requiring people to use the bathroom of their biological sex, not their chosen gender. This is not sitting well with the National Football League.

NFL spokesman Brian McCarthy put Texas on notice when he said, “The NFL embraces inclusiveness. We want all fans to feel welcomed at our events, and NFL policies prohibit discrimination based on age, gender, race, religion, sexual orientation, or any other improper standard.”

McCarthy continued, “If a proposal that is discriminatory or inconsistent with our values were to become law there, that would certainly be a factor considered when thinking about awarding future events.”

Read more here.

Incredible finish in Arizona

Do you want to know why the NFL is so popular? I just watched the most awesome ending of a game I have ever seen. Green Bay tied the game with no time left on the clock on an Aaron Rodgers hail Mary pass, which was his second hail Mary pass of the fourth quarter. Then, in overtime the Arizona Cardinals quarterback found amazing wide receiver Larry Fitzgerald wide open. Fitzgerald sped across and down the field, making at least two amazing cuts, then accelerating forward. He didn't quite make it all the way to the end zone, but on the very next play quarterback Carson Palmer threw Fitzgerald a shuttle pass, which Fitzgerald took into the end zone for a Cardinals victory.

Entertainment today and yesterday

thezman.com has an excellent piece comparing a Texas rodeo with a Dallas Cowboy football game. Here is a brief excerpt:

I think the big attraction to rodeo for many folks is that it reminds them of a better age. The rodeo is wholesome family entertainment. There’s no sex or crude jokes. There’s no hip-hop music blasting from speakers. It’s just wholesome looking young people, corny jokes and a good time. Cheap too. Tickets to a rodeo are nothing compared to a football game.

That’s what makes it feel like a trip back in time. For most of human history, entertainments were relatively cheap. Entertainers lived on the fringes of society and made very modest livings. Maybe the showman who owned the circus or traveling act made a good living, but the performers did not. Running away to join the circus was not a move up, it was giving up. If you could not hack it in normal life you ended up as the bearded lady in the circus.

Contrast that to today where we venerate knuckleheads with the IQ of a goldfish and shower them with millions. In order to do that the cost of entertainment has skyrocketed. I was at the Dallas Cowboy game on Sunday and the prices are staggering. Cheap seats are $500 just to get in the door. The facility, which is incredible, is simply a massive platform from which to sell you stuff.

Read more here.

Could the NFL ban helmets?

The Tennessee Titans and Jacksonville Jaguars prepare to bang heads at the line of scrimmage

Matt Slater of BBC Sport writes,

The chairman of the National Football League's health and safety advisory commission believes American football could ban helmets in the future.

The NFL has tried to reduce the risk of head injuries over the last five years and recently reached an almost $1bn legal settlement with ex-players suffering with head trauma.

But some experts think helmets give the players a false sense of security.

Faced with a spate of tragic incidents involving former players struggling with depression, memory loss and mood swings - as well as growing cultural awareness of the issues surrounding concussion - the league has introduced a raft of rule changes.

Kick-offs were moved further up the field to reduce the number of high-speed impacts and helmet-first tackles have been banned. More protection has also been given to players unable to protect themselves, such as quarterbacks in the act of throwing.

But York, who is also the co-chairman of the San Francisco 49ers, says that has been only half of the story, with each game now having at least 27 "health officials" on the sidelines, as well as an independent expert assessing television pictures to make sure injured players are taken off.

Hard plastic helmets entered the game in the 1940s, with facemasks becoming commonplace in the early 1960s.

By the next decade, extra cushioning was added and all helmets had to meet minimum impact-resistance standards.

These developments were intended to improve safety, but they also emboldened players to make bigger hits, often using their helmets like battering rams. Concussions were inevitable.

For the game to be played without helmets, York says the league would have "to do away with" the three-point stance and start each play in a more upright position.

The three-point stance is the starting position usually taken by linemen when the ball is snapped - the three points being the player's feet and a hand on the ground for balance.

Such a stance enables players to launch themselves at each other headfirst, providing the trademark crunch that punctuates each play.

Read more here.

Can you tell I have two high school age sons who are engaging in football practices this summer?

Why does the NFL allow each team to supply its own footballs?

Mike Bianchi asks in the Orlando Sentinel,

Did the NFL look the other way for years while quarterbacks used performance-inducing balls much like MLB had its head buried in the on-deck circle while sluggers brazenly bulked up on performance-enhancing drugs?

Why do you think the league listened to Brady, Manning and the NFL's other top quarterbacks back in 2006 when they successfully lobbied the league for a rule change that would allow each team to supply its own footballs? Do you think the Competition Committee would have listened if the league's top cornerbacks or linebackers had lobbied them?

"The thing is, every quarterback likes it [the ball[ a little bit different," Brady told the South Florida Sun-Sentinel back in 2006. "Some like them blown up a little bit more, some like them a little more thin, some like them a little more new, some like them really broken in."

And some like them illegally deflated, too, which shouldn't be surprising to anyone. Good grief, allowing NFL quarterbacks to supply their own balls would be like allowing NASCAR crew chiefs to supply their own restrictor plates. Except the NFL — like Major League Baseball with steroids — wants us to believe now that it had no earthly idea players and teams might actually cheat to gain an unfair advantage.

The most under-reported story during the entire Deflategate saga came when the Tampa Bay Times reported in January that former Tampa Bay Bucs quarterback Brad Johnson bribed some ball boys and paid them $7,500 to scuff up the balls that were used during Tampa Bay's 2003 Super Bowl victory over the Oakland Raiders.

"I paid some guys off to get the balls right," Johnson told the Times. "I went and got all 100 footballs, and they took care of all of them."

Sorry, but I simply cannot believe a multi-billion-dollar industry like the NFL is so stupid that it couldn't foresee cheating when it allowed its most important piece of equipment — the actual ball itself — to be supplied by the two participating teams. And it certainly doesn't make any sense that the league would leave its precious Super Bowl balls in the care of some poor schlubs who can be bought off for $7,500.

...The NFL's performance-inducing balls are no different than MLB's performance-enhancing drugs. Football fans loved seeing Manning and Brady setting offensive records just as baseball fans loved seeing McGwire and Sosa chasing home run records.

Hulked-up players bulked up baseball's bottom line just as deflated balls induced football's inflated TV ratings.

Read more here.

Wasting time

Michael Walsh has come out and said it: spending hours watching NFL games is a waste of time. I wasted several hours watching my first full NFL game last night, so I couldn't agree more with Mr. Walsh. I'm completely on board with his advice:

Get a life, get a job, or just read a book.

Now let's hope the Broncos do us all a favor and avoid making it to the Super Bowl this season.

"Operation Sensitive"

My two sons are obsessed with football. They play at lunch, at recess, after school, when they get home, and all weekend. What do you recommend I do? This obviously must be stopped as soon as possible, but how?

Luckily, Manhattan Infidel has written a blog post about "Operation Sensitive," which has given me some ideas. Read them here.

A new NFL season

Peyton Manning embarks on his seventeenth season tonight, as he and his fellow Denver Broncos play the Indianapolis Colts in Denver. I have never seen such excitement and anticipation at the beginning of a Broncos season. Fans are snapping up everything stores can sell that have a Denver Broncos emblem on them.

The game has started, so you can roll up the streets and highways now. All television sets will be turned to one channel. Stores can close their doors and send everybody home.

Update: The game is over. Broncos won 31-24. Next up: the Kansas City Chiefs come to Denver next Sunday afternoon.

Brutality and ferocity

As we get ready to watch Superbowl XLVIII in just a little more than one hour, perhaps we should mention that Craig Morton, who wore number 7 before John Elway came to town, has joined in a lawsuit against the NFL.

The complaint alleges that defendant NFL and its promotional arm, NFL Films, glorify the brutality and ferocity of NFL football, propagating the myth that receiving big hits is a badge of courage without serious health impacts. The complaint details a number of NFL Films productions which prominently feature big hits and include players dismissing the risks of concussions.

Jess Place writes,

Morton quarterbacked the Broncos to their first Super Bowl during the 1977 season. During the playoffs, he struggled with injuries and was secretly hospitalized in the days leading up to the AFC Championship game. What most fans don't know is that Morton didn't finish Super Bowl XII at quarterback, Norris Weese did. In the third quarter of that game, Morton was sacked for a 9-yard loss. Two plays later, he was pulled. Granted, Morton had been largely ineffective most of the game and had a bum hip, but it begs the question... Did Morton get concussed in the Super Bowl? Weese was sent out onto the field mid-series after an incomplete pass to RB Rob Lytle. Makes one wonder if it was more injury related than Coach Red Miller let on at the time.

Morton joins 287 other Broncos in their pursuit of compensatory and punitive damages for injuries suffered, as well as ongoing medical monitoring to protect him in the event of future medical issues. Notable broncos with pending concussion lawsuits are Ring-of-Famers, Rich Jackson, Floyd Little, Dennis Smith, Randy Gradishar, Karl Mecklenburg, and Tom Nalen.

USA Today reports that

The 84-page lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in northern California, claims the league had access to medical research on the impact of concussive and sub-concussive hits but "produced industry-funded, biased, and falsified research" that said otherwise.

That reminds me of when the heads of the four largest tobacco companies testified before Congress, saying that they weren't sure if nicotine was addictive.

In August, the NFL agreed to a $765 million settlement deal with thousands of former players who had sued the league on similar grounds.

Morton was the first quarterback to start in the Superbowl for two different teams. Another guy to do that is named Peyton Manning.

If only football was played with the mouth

This man has anger management problems. Don't worry, though; Peyton Manning, Julius Thomas, Jacob Tammy, Demaryius Thomas, Wes Welker, and Eric Decker have the cure!

A short celebration

Yes, the Broncos beat the Chargers to earn the right to play the Patriots in Sunday's AFL Championship game. However, they lost the services of the man who is arguably their best defensive back, Chris Harris, when he was injured in the third quarter of the Chargers game. After he went down, Phillip Rivers caught fire with the San Diego passing game. Harris had a M.R,I, this morning, which confirmed he has a torn anterior cruciate ligament in his left knee, according to two NFL sources.

I don't know if this is the defensive equivalent to losing Peyton Manning on offense, but it is a very significant loss that Tom Brady, Josh McDaniel and Bill Belichick will surely exploit.

This article in the Denver Post lists some possible ways the Broncos will try to compensate for the loss of Harris.

Playoff fever

The Denver metro area is gripped with playoff fever. The Denver Broncos play the San Diego Chargers Sunday afternoon. If you hurry, you can get a $3.00 Broncos tee shirt for $54.97!

They are a danger to liberty, but also a danger to themselves and their loved ones

Did you know the NFL has a rule not allowing ads for guns during the Super Bowl? Matt Walsh weighs in:

I wish it was as simple as saying that our culture loves sex and hates violence, but even that isn’t true. We seem to be obsessed with sex while hating only the particular brand of violence that can be morally justified. Abortion is violence, but you won’t hear these anti-gun idiots cry about that sort of brutality. Pornography is violence, but again the “anti-violence” gun grabbers stay silent. They rarely even chime in to condemn violence for entertainment. No, it would seem that they only oppose the “violence” of men and women protecting themselves and their loves ones from predators and tyrants.

Matt goes back to the first quarter of last year's Super Bowl and describes the action:

Game: violence, violence, violence, concussions, violence, concussions, violence.

Commercial break: sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, booze and sex, booze, booze, sex, booze, action movie preview (violence), sex, booze, sex.

Game: violence, violence, violence, violence, time out.

Commercial break: sex, booze, sex, booze, booze, sex, sex, sex, boozy sex, sexy booze, goat beating up guy for Doritos (weird violence), sex.

Game: violence, concussions, violence, time out.

Commercial break: sex, sex, sex, booze, sex.

Game: violence, end of quarter.

It’s become popular to laugh about the “tea bagging rednecks” who are “obsessed” with guns. But the tea bagging rednecks I know aren’t obsessed with guns at all; they own guns because it makes sense to own guns. It’s the anti-gun crusaders who have the unhealthy obsession. They are the danger. They are a danger to liberty, but also a danger to themselves and their loved ones. They proudly go through life defenseless, vulnerable, ready to be victims.