The most interesting thing to me about the Colin Kaepernik situation is that no matter what you think about him you will come up with the right solution.
If you love Colin K, then stop watching the NFL.
If you hate Colin K, then stop watching the NFL.
Even if you grew up loving the NFL as I did, you should probably stop watching the NFL.
But please stop whining about how much money the players get. The NFL is the closest thing we have to a pure meritocracy. I have no idea if the world’s best research scientist is trying to cure Cancer, but I can tell you with 100% certainty that the best quarterback in the world is currently playing in the NFL.
Football players get exactly what they are worth in salary. The players who are the ones getting their heads bashed in get for the most part a fixed percentage of the revenues. If you think they make too much money then stop watching them. Stop buying hats and jerseys and devoting your entire week to fantasy football leagues. Go watch a high school game or better yet, volunteer or donate money to a high school.
Football players are not lazy people gifted with talent alone. They work incredibly hard to weed themselves out from the millions of people who are also working incredibly hard to be the best of the best of the best. Football players work so hard in college that it is nearly impossible for them to actually get an education at the same time, no matter how much they want one, and 99% of them will not make the NFL.
I used to play basketball with Northwestern’s players, and they were unbelievably good, then I would watch them in real games and they would be trounced. That’s how hard it is to become a professional athlete.
Colin Kaepernik is right on the edge. If he was a tad better, he’d definitely have a job, if he were a tad worse there wouldn’t even be a controversy.
Stop comparing him to Tim Tebow and his prayer kneeling. Everyone in the NFL wanted Tim Tebow to be a superstar. The only reason he lasted as long as he did was because he was such a loved personality and role model. He isn’t in the NFL because he clearly wasn’t good enough.
Michael Vick went to prison for detestable animal abuse and he got his job back when he got out. If you hate him or others in the NFL that break laws, well stop watching the NFL or at least lobby your teams to stop signing these guys.
The average career length in the NFL is three years. The average life expectancy of an NFL player is something like 50. No other sport has contracts that don’t guarantee your salary in case of injury quite like the NFL. These guys are literally risking their entire careers on every single play and if they are seriously hurt, they have to stop doing the one thing they have spent all their lives training for forever and immediately start finding a new profession.
What other field almost promises you that in time you will be completely done with what you have trained your whole life to do and then instantly can no longer do it anymore forever.
Only the stars make serious money and even those have wound up broke soon after paying their taxes and their agents. These guys aren’t financial wizards they’ve been knocking their heads in for 7-10 years.
I used to love watching Jim McMahon play. He was the gutsiest player I’ve ever seen. If he had two broken legs, he would still be furious that he wasn’t starting that week. Now he barely knows where he is because of CTE and the owners knowing lack of concern for years on this issue. The movie North Dallas Forty exposing just how heartless these teams were by shooting up their players with pain killing drugs was over 40 years ago and those players made peanuts.
It’s a well acknowledged fact that when these guys get injured, they shoot them up with Cortisone, so they can get back on the field, but Cortisone doesn’t heal it just covers up the pain so it doesn’t hurt while you are out there further destroying your body.
Why exactly are our nation’s colleges running a minor league football league? Rick Telender’s book The 100 Yard Lie came out like 30 years ago.
It was a farce before we found out about how all of these guys suffer from CTE, it’s completely unjustified now. The players are too big and fast. The game as great as it is, is in fact broken probably forever. It’s essentially extremely skilled cock fighting at this point. It’s the Roman Empire’s gladiator fights.
So stop paying to see it. Read a book. Play a safer sport with your kids. Fathers and sons bond over sports, but there are plenty of safer ones to pick no matter how big your son is. Boxing is pretty much dead. Let’s say goodbye to football and watch the billionaire owners lose their value like a unsuccessful start up at the end of the internet bubble.
If you insist on watching the NFL, then you are complicit to the injuries, the crimes committed by the players, and a league that uses determined hard working athletes to beat themselves into a bloody pulp every week. I don’t care how entertaining it is either stop watching it or stop complaining.
When I was in college, I rented a car to drive across the Indiana border and got a hotel room to watch an important Browns game. Then my team took the most loyal athlete in Cleveland history, a man who had graduate from college early so he could play in his home town, watched him get beaten to a pulp, and then one day said, “Bernie Kosar you can’t cut it anymore so you’re gone.” Zero loyalty back and it was handled as shabbily as possible.
Teams tell you to be loyal to your home teams, but it’s all a con. Just by putting your city’s name on their jerseys doesn’t make you indebted to their billion dollar business venture. The Browns haven’t had a single offensive play maker other than the most over punished athlete of all time Josh Gorden, since they returned from hibernation after their greedy owner reached into the fans’ chest and pulled their hearts out like that guy in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. They haven’t played an aesthetically pleasing game in almost two decades. Why do you keep supporting them? It’s an abusive relationship.
It’s time to end it. It’s little better than Michael Vick’s dog fighting ring at this point. Stop giving your money to skilled brutality. Get a new life. The NFL is irredeemable. You know it’s true. Stop watching.
