Sundays make me ashamed to be an American. What was once a day for worship, reading the Bible, and cataloging your neighbors’ sins has been utterly eroded by the National Football League (NFL). Or as I like to call it: the New Front for Leftism.
I’m not talking about "bullying." Richie Incognito is a personal friend and poker buddy. I co-own a South Beach nightclub, Spelunk, with Mike Pouncey. You don’t know the meaning of hazing unless you were at my 1976 initiation into Severed Bull, the international supper club for facilitators of successful coups.
What I’m talking about is social rot. I’m talking about civilizational gangrene on the gridiron.
I long for the good old days of professional football in this country. I want an NFL where skill position players aren’t coddled by special rules the same way the lamestream media protects President Barack Hussein Obama. Position players these days are showered with fame, endorsement deals, and MVP awards even though the workhorse linemen are the purest embodiment of real America in the land. Linemen are oversized but underappreciated. Biff can relate.
I worry that prohibitions against touchdown celebrations and taunting sends the wrong messages to America’s youth. Kids today are so steeped in our success-punishing culture of empty scoreboards and participation trophies that American exceptionalism—which the current leader of this regime does not believe in—is at stake. Just wait until the NFL inevitably scraps the playoff system, until timeouts are rebranded as "team growth sessions." Then you’ll know I was right.
I’d consider watching a NFL where the games are played on real grass, and are always outside, no matter the conditions; where climate zealots aren’t appeased with fancy domes, or staged blackouts at the Super Bowl; a league where the coaches wear suits and ties, and aren’t wired up with headsets and microphones and Google face lasers. Why not just settle all the games on an iPhone app? At least then we’d have more time for hunting, for freedom caroling at dusk.
I want an NFL where the quarterbacks aren’t so doggone handsome, or at least don’t grow their hair out like women. My buddy Ken once spent 15 minutes in a pool hall in Hoboken chatting up someone he thought was a rugged-looking chica. It was Joe Namath. They kept talking.
Some of these team names have nothing to do with America. Patriots? Good. Eagles? Fine. Cowboys? You bet. (Romo is another friend.) But I don’t see the point of having a non-indigenous mascot such as the Bengals or, worse, naming a team after America’s nautical enemies the Buccaneers and Raiders. No wonder so many team owners are chums with Mitt Romney, the Ivy-League expert who gave us Obamacare.
As far as the Washington Free Beacon’s NFL coverage is concerned, the publication appears to rely on a French illiterate named Robert Charette. He’s not so bad. I loathe sports reporting that strives to do anything beyond simply listing the final score and a handful of relevant statistics, but Charette’s insight into Bill Belichick’s love life and adventures in modern "cheersmoke" culture have forced me to reconsider my position.
I’m not trying to do away with professional football. I have fond memories of teaching the game to Brigitta, an old flame from my salad days in West Germany. "This, America," I remember her saying one afternoon as she clutched the pigskin, her hair enticingly disheveled. She had been chasing me around the hop fields while carrying a plate of Kalbsleberwurst and Lachsschinken. I was still flush from the times I let her catch me. We ate Braunschweiger in the long grass. And I punted that ball clean across the Ardennes.
Biff FREEDOM-ALLCAPS Diddle is excited to contribute to the Editor’s Blog. His full bio can be read here.