A few years ago, I was staunchly against such a change. While I still oppose it, my stance is not as rigid as it was back then.
The plain fact to me is pro sports has gotten so fat with treasure that unlike most entertainment businesses they simply don’t relate any longer to their customers.
Sports figures are not office workers but they are entertainers like stage and film actors, musicians, artists and others.
You don’t see stage plays or films stopped during performance for performer led protests or grievances.
Again I don’t have any problem with players or coaches using their earnings to support causes they believe in.
But the thought process that as a consumer I have to be intimately involved in every issue NFL or NBA players want to protest over before, during or after games is BS.
Once you open that door there are many issues that could become public in a sports setting in the future that are protested and the legitimacy of these issues could be much less than those over police misconduct.
I separate out non- football issues from ones drawn from within the game.
The discussion of hiring minority coaches is an in game issue and deserves NFL discussion.
But our foreign policy with North Korea or issues with political corruption should be left on the outside.
I dont want to hear about either on Sundays. Just play the game you're paid for and leave the mediots and drama seekers to discuss it outside of then.
The difference between sports then and now, is that in prior years the country had politicians on both sides of the aisle that were capable of addressing issues and being thought leaders.
Today, we don't have that so it has devolved into a Twitter war of anonymous handles and radical groups whose goals are not tolerance but the imposition of their views to the exclusion of all others.
Team sports athletes are now the intermediaries. The media is going to them to ask questions they normally ask politicians, and you are seeing players becoming lightning rods.
It's a new world, but not necessarily a better one.
Why not better? Again, because it's unsustainable. Sports figures become heroes or villains to specific groups and what you will see is a break down of support for teams as players and coaches fail to satisfy everyone's need for validation.
What I will say based upon my own experience traveling the world is that intolerance, bias, gender discrimination, authoritarian seeking groups on the right and left are not unique to the United States.
Players in the Bundesliga wear 'Black Lives Matter' patches on their jerseys but in Germany only a few years ago there were riots and protests in several cities with acts of violence targeting ethnic Turks and other recent emigre minority groups from Syria and Afghanistan. In fact, violence against the former 'guest workers' from Turkey has been ongoing since the early 1990's when the German government sent a number of these workers 'home' despite living in Germany for 20 plus years and having children born in the country. I actually met a number of these Turkish deportees in Istanbul in the 2000's.
So, instead of congratulating themselves perhaps the Germans can look and see how our problems reflect back to their own recent experiences.
We have a lot of progress to make here. But the one thing I don't want to see is politicians and sports figures get up and talk about how horrible things are here, making believe that the world is composed of tolerant, rationale, freedom-loving societies and somehow the US is out of step.
The protests and calls for reform here are actually illegal in a number of our fellow nation-states around the world.
Let's admit the truth in how far we have come and how far we need to go.
You haven't joined any rooms.