Looks like I’ll be sitting out the NFL again next season and the season after that etc.
It was much easier to boycott the NFL last season than I anticipated. For one, I underestimated how much I’d enjoy having my Sundays back. Also, my NFL fandom belongs to a team with a racist name that also happens to suck more often than not, so boycotting because the NFL blackballed Colin Kaepernick was as much “Why don’t I just enjoy life” as it was actively taking a stance.
But a stance I did take. I specifically didn’t watch NFL games because I think the NFL is remarkably tone-deaf and places the value of a dollar over the rights of persons from affected communities to use their tremendous platform to speak on issues that directly speak to them. And it also kept Kaepernick out on purpose because white people put up a stink. But the league sucks in lots of other areas, too.
When the NFL stops a person from being able to even support breast-cancer awareness in the name of his own mother during months that the NFL doesn’t have a specific interest in doing so, there’s a problem.
Thus, I was right there with my support of all the players who chose to kneel or protest silently against police brutality, following in the activist steps of Kaepernick who wasn’t able to do so on the field. Fuck the NFL.
So, I sat out last season, and haven’t worn any NFL-related ’nalia since longer than I can remember except for that one time I wore my Colin Kaepernick jersey to Jay-Z’s 4:44 concert stop in Washington, D.C…..