We’ll still have a Super Bowl party.
There just won’t be any football.
We’ll leave the TV off, ignore the alerts on the phone, and enjoy the company of family and friends.
If the NFL doesn’t respect my country or my service, then I won’t respect it.
Yes, this is about the anthem. It’s also about the NFL’s attitude, and the recent insult it offered a leading veterans group.
Here’s the story.
A few weeks ago, the National Football League approached a veterans group of which I am a member – AMVETS – and asked it if it wanted to put an advertisement in the printed program commemorating whichever number Super Bowl it is they’re playing in a couple of weeks.
The NFL burned a lot of red, white and blue bridges this year and it is trying to rehabilitate its image with the folks who left its stadiums and telecasts in droves. Thus the solicitation of a veterans organization for a place of honor in the official game program.
All for just $30,000.
Donating the space to an organization representing veterans was apparently never on the table.
Which shouldn’t surprise anybody. Salutes to the military have always been huge money makers for the NFL. That organization has all the patriotism the taxpayers can afford.
So the NFL wanted to AMVETS to pay so that the NFL could wrap itself in AMVETS glory.
And AMVETS said yes.
The AMVETS executive director, Joe Chenelly, told me yesterday that he agreed to the NFL’s terms, and committed to buying a display ad.
A few days later, he sent it in.
That’s when the crap hit the fan.
The AMVETS ad is a simple vertical rectangle. It has a background of sky blue with a paragraph of text and the AMVETS logo at the bottom. In the left center, stretching from top to bottom, is the photographic profile of an Air Force color guard holding one flag – the American flag.
To the right of that imprinted on the sky blue, in black ink, is the hashtag “#PleaseStand.”
The NFL said no.
There was back and forth. There were efforts to keep from losing the $30,000 sale. But at the end of the day, the NFL wouldn’t budge. Apparently in its world, #TakeAKnee is free speech, but #PleaseStand isn’t.
Apparently, football players have a right to be heard but military veterans don’t.
And thus is demonstrated the hypocrisy of the NFL.
It cowered all year before its players, even tacitly offering them hundreds of millions of dollars to stop protesting, and saw between 10 and 30 percent of its customer base disappear.
And still it gets it wrong.
Still it disrespects a simple group of veterans who want to express a viewpoint.
Basically, the NFL told the veterans to go screw themselves.
So I’m going to return the favor.
I’m going to watch something else. I can eat chips and have fun with my family without there being a football game playing in the background. I can with the Super Bowl what an increasing number of people did this year with the National Football League – forget that it exists.
It’s a pretty easy decision, really. It’s like one of those elementary-school math problems, where you use little signs to indicate whether something is greater than, lesser than or equal to something else.
First question: My love of country and my interest in football.
First answer: My love of country is greater than my interest in football.
Second question: My respect for the judgement of professional athletes and my respect for the judgement of honorably discharged veterans of the American military.
Second answer: My respect for the judgement of professional athletes is less than my respect for the judgement of honorably discharged veterans of the American military.
Third question: My loyalty to the NFL and my loyalty to a pile of dog crap.
Third answer: My loyalty to the NFL is equal to my loyalty to a pile of dog crap.
You can go to war so a bunch of fat-cat millionaire jocks can piss on the flag and the country, but you can’t say what you want in an ad that you have to pay $30,000 for?
Apparently that’s how the NFL says to America’s veterans: Thank you for your service.
So I won’t be tuning in.
Next Sunday or next year.
Because I won’t stand for those who won’t stand for our anthem.
And I won’t support an athletic league that provides a forum for contempt for country but not for love of country.