WOW! EVEN THE NATIONAL FOOTBALL LEAGUE IS GETTING ON BOARD THE "BLACK LIVES MATTER" EXPRESS

To say that a sports league which has so many black athletes in it, has been functionally racist for a very long time is surprising to some. Most of the rest of us, including those like me who are not rabid football fans but do pay attention, are not so surprised. The Colin Kaepernick scandal is merely the most recent, publicly atrocious behaviour by the NFL. Mr. Kaepernick is the former San Francisco 49ers quarterback who took the knee during the national anthem in protest of black deaths at the hands of police. He was not by any means alone but the NFL clearly decided to make an example of him. He was shunned and blackballed by the league while lesser players (quarterbacks) were hired and kept on staff.

NFL Commissioner, Roger Goodell, released a video taken at his home last week in which he publicly stated that "we were wrong for not listening to NFL players earlier,". The Waterloo Region Record published this article by Christine Brennan (USA Today) yesterday titled "NFL knows it's at a critical juncture". Oddly I can't seem to find it on-line today in order to provide you, the readers with the link.

History is funny sometimes. Why does one person's untimely, immoral and illegal death cause a world wide reaction while dozens to hundreds of others don't? I simply don't know unless people have been sensitized to their feelings due to the Covid crisis and accompanying deaths because of it.

The final paragraph in this article is huge namely: "There are owners in the NFL, plenty of them, who are big Trump donors and big Trump guys. They cannot be happy right now. But this is bigger than them, bigger than their league. If it's a choice between Trump and Kaepernick, Goodell made the right call. He chose peaceful protest. He chose Black Lives Matter. He chose his players. He chose the latter."