The State of the NFL: A Partial Eulogy

Every great and popular TV show hits a crest: a point in its lifecycle where it is at the very apex of its power and appeal. The ratings are high, the critical acclaim is voluminous and it achieves that amazing status where “everyone” is talking about it.

However, usually within one or two seasons and without most fans even consciously observing it, the fall begins. It’s still a major destination – either in real-time or through the DVR – and it still evokes joy in the watching….but. But there just seems to be something subtly missing. And when that “it” show finally ends, most true and observant fans can look back and point out the season where the decline began. “Lost” had it, “Seinfeld” had it, “Breaking Bad” had it, and “The Sopranos” had it. They all had it.

2017 seems like the year and the season where the NFL is truly and irrevocably on the decline. And the inevitability of this decline has nothing to do with quality of play, owners or players. It has everything to do with fans and their wandering attention.

To me, there are five reasons why 2017 is a watershed year for the NFL and the mark where the great and might Shield started the fall toward irrelevancy.

1.       CTE

The worry about concussions and CTE hangs over the NFL like a nation-sized black cloud. And that cloud causes three separate national mindsets that have the unique ability to further damage pro football’s brand and longevity.

First, head trauma makes watching football feel dirty. I am a life-long fan and former high school coach, and even I feel like a bad person for viewing the spectacle of head-on-head collisions, stumbling players and the new “medical tent.” I now begin to wonder if the Romans felt this way two thousand years ago during the coliseum era.  Football has always been dangerous, but with what we know about head trauma it now seems more Russian roulette than athletic endeavor.

The second issue CTE creates is the “boxing-ification” and “enlistment-ification” of the sport. White middle class families simply no longer let their sons box, and by-and-large don’t let their sons enlist in the army. We understand the inherent long-term risks of both (concussion for boxing, death for the army) and we have the ability to simple say no, not my son. With CTE, a lot of us white middle class families are now saying no to football for our sons and that is going to sap a lot of the much needed fodder for elite athletes to compete against. I know my son would never become an NFL caliber player if I allowed his participation, but his participation, and the participation of thousands of other similar lads, is critical toward furthering football and the ultimate level of the sport – the NFL. Fewer players’ means the lifeblood is starting to dry up.

T

he other issue CTE is helping to destroy, if not severely warp, is the concept of hero worship. The NFL has always relied on fans loving the players –buying their jerseys and posters, seeking their autographs and shelling out big bucks to watch them play. The Brady’s and the Rogers, and the Watt’s and the Ryan’s drive the sport. But what happens if we start to truly care for their long-term health? What if we are afraid that our gridiron hero of today becomes the drooling idiot or suicide victim of tomorrow? Might we start to do what we often do when confronted with tragedy beyond our control – to look away and pretend it doesn’t exist? And isn’t it easier to pretend the problem doesn’t exist by turning the channel and watching “American Ninja Warrior,” “The Handmaid’s Tale,” or NBA basketball instead?

Race

Like everything else in America, race and racial tension is inescapable in the NFL. I’m not going to add my two cents on the Collin Kapernick issue, other than to say that race is absolutely and inarguably part of the issue. But I think the Kapernick situation is really just a symptom of a larger race issue for the NFL. It’s starting to feel like fans have to choose sides regarding their NFL support: are you a god-fearing, flag waving, NASCAR-supporting Houston Texan Fan, or are you a latte-sipping, NPR-listening, touchy-feely Seattle Seahawks fan? Baseball has precipitously fallen from the national consciousness in the last few decades, and one possible reasons for that is its hard right shift over the years. It seems strange that baseball – the first sport to integrate – has now become mostly the prevue of the “Duck Dynasty” and truck nuts set. And a big part of that shift is that black players are not nearly as fundamental to baseball anymore. That has led to baseball to become a niche pastime for more rural, suburban and older white fans and ignored by the huge percentage of urban, minority and young fans. Could the racial divide do that to football as well?

In the era of Trump, Goodell seems redundant

Roger Goodell is almost universally hated. Most people believe he is a corrupt, despotic ruler who doesn’t know what he’s doing and doesn’t care who he alienates. And in most eras that wouldn’t be such a big deal. I’m sure Pete Rozelle had his emperor-like tendencies and I’m not sure Paul Tagliabue was any kind of genius. But Goodell, in 2017 is living in the Trump era. If you are a democrat like me you think Trump is impossibly corrupt, incompetent and mean and you absolutely do not want the commissioner of your favorite sport to be just like the much-hated president. If you are a republican, you want football to be a distraction from the creeping sense of buyer’s remorse you feel with Trump and Goodell is just too similar. With Goodell apparently attached to the NFL for the foreseeable future, the uncomfortable feeling from CTE is only made worse by the truly icky feeling of knowing this commissioner is in charge of it all.

Better enjoyment for free

Attending a football game is a major commitment with a diminishing payoff. It’s expensive, time consuming and forces oneself to endure bad sightlines, drunk fans and disgusting public restrooms. For what? To be “at” the game. Who cares? Watching any football game at home in the comfort of one’s favorite chair in front of a 60 inch plasma, with unfettered access to a clean bathroom and free snacks is sports fan nirvana. And, watching the game at home allows any super fan to exploit all the riches of watching a televised game without having to pay a single red cent into a greedy owner’s hands – save for your monthly cable or satellite bill. If, in the next decade, the vast majority of season ticket holders stop going to games, the NFL will be in for a world of trouble. No more publically financed stadiums, no more personal seat licenses, and no more $15.00 beers. Can the NFL survive on TV revenue only? We might find out sooner rather than later.

Which leads to…There’s so much more to watch on TV than ever before – especially during the dark winter months of the football season.

Network executives of the other channels used to avoid NBC’s Sunday Night Football and ESPN’s Monday Night Football like the plague.  Not so much anymore. I stop watching most Monday night games at 8 p.m. because that’s when American Ninja Warrior starts. If you don’t know what that is, it’s a quasi-sporting event that was created exclusively for TV and is becoming hugely popular. NBC has it run right when MNF starts the 4^th quarter. Such scheduling was unthinkable just a few years ago. On Sunday Night, cable networks are trotting out great quality TV that is gobbling up eyeballs and fans at record numbers.  Watching an entire game of NFL football is no longer as simple as lazily slumping down on one’s couch. It takes an active mind and a commitment to stay focused on three hours of one game. There is a great comedy, a compelling drama or a riveting action thrilling just a channel away. You tell me, what would you rather watch? - the Colts vs. the Brownsn or a TV show that everyone discusses at work the next day. “Did you see that catch last night?” has been replaced with, “man! The plot twists on Game of Thrones have me reeling!!!” as watercooler talk these days.

The NFL ran – and still runs – supreme in the American Sports ecosystem. But the cracks and the flaws and the competition are like wolves at the door. Not today, not tomorrow, but in the not-too-distance future, the NFL will become like baseball, an interesting and sometime compelling also-ran. 

Worse yet, it may end up become boxing.

True Bipartisan Disgust

I get it. It’s stunningly easy as a college-educated, life-long democrat to wallow in schadenfreude over President Donald Trump and the current state of his administration. The ineptitude, the lack of any substantive legislative progress, the Russia investigation, the revolving door of staffers, the Russia investigation, the historic unpopularity, the Russia investigation, the incompetence of his family members, the Russia investigation.

It’s almost too much to take. As much as most of the country hates him and wants his failure to be truly unprecedented, we are actually looking forward to a break where at least a week goes by without another never-before-seen embarrassment. 

I also get it. If you voted for Trump, you are currently trying to double-down on your support, lest you admit your vote on November 8, was one of the biggest mistakes of your life. Look, if the dems had run a werewolf and I voted for him/her/it I too would feel a deep sense of regret and a profound sense of needing a shower.

But forget all the big news items that have come out about the president. Forget about Russia, forget about healthcare, forget about Spicer/Flynn/Scaramucci et al.  Forget about leaving the Paris Climate Accord, forget about the lack of progress toward the boarder wall.

Instead, let’s just focus on two statements the president made this week. Just two. There have been many, but let’s just concentrate on the following:

He told reporters that the president of Mexico called him recently to praise his action on board security.

He told the Wall Street Journal that the head of the Boy Scouts called him to praise his recent speech before that organization.

Just those two. Nothing else. These two pronouncements tell anyone everything they would ever need to know about the most unqualified president and perhaps most unqualified world leader in history.

Here are the facts.

1.       He said both of these things to reporters – on the record.

2.       They were not true. Representatives from both the president of Mexico and the Boy Scouts denied that any such calls were made to the president.

3.       The alleged statements were 100 percent verifiable. Any reporter could have called the pertinent organizations (as they did) and received confirmation or denial.

4.       The president either doesn’t know or doesn’t care that anything he says or does can be verified.

5.       The vast majority of sentient people in the US and around the world, when faced with a choice of whom to believe – the president, or any other party – will choose any other party.

6.       In just six months, we have reached such a low point that it is now accepted as unassailable fact that the President of the United States possesses the integrity and intellect of an infomercial salesman.

I know it is a fool’s errand to make the pronouncement (when faced with Trump’s behavior) that Republicans would lose their minds if Clinton had been elected and acted the same way. For many R’s, Clinton is the bête noire of politics that somehow can never be eclipsed.

So let’s just take the last five Republican presidents. Can anyone imagine presidents Bush, Bush Sr., Reagan, Ford or Nixon acting this way? As bad as George W. Bush was on so many fronts, can anyone really imagine him making up an easily verifiable call from say, the Mayor of New Orleans praising his handling of the federal response to Hurricane Katrina? Can anyone imagine Reagan – in the early onset of dementia, even – making up a call from the director of SF General Hospital praising his efforts to combat HIV? Can anyone imagine Nixon making up a call from a group of anti-war activists supporting his escalation in Vietnam?

No. You can’t.  I can’t either.

It is a fact. Donald Trump is a 70-year-old man, but also a 12-year-old boy. For that is what happened this week. A 12-year-old boy, needing affirmation and approval, made up out of whole cloth a couple of stories to try and make himself appear better than he really was.

That, at the end of the day, is the worst thing about Trump. He wields incredible power, with none of the necessary intelligence, integrity and simple maturity to handle it.

YES, BUT...

On Thursday, June 9, the president of the United States took to twitter and told the world that the testimony of his former FBI director was a complete lie - yet also a total exoneration of him related to the Russia investigation.

That’s a pretty neat trick. 

I think all of us would like to have that superpower: to be able to completely dispute something AND use it as a legitimate excuse.

Kind of like this:

“Absolutely not honey.  I was absolutely not with a prostitute in that hotel room in Vegas, believe me. That woman is totally lying.  She is completely unbelievable and should not be trusted at all. Further, the fact that the time and date stamp on my credit card receipt in her possession completely proves that I wasn’t with your best friend in a hotel room in Miami.  See?”

Or,

“Teacher, Jenny is lying. I didn’t put a frog on her head, I would never do that. However, her scream right after a green long -legged amphibian dropped from my open hands onto her skull totally proves that I was nowhere near the fire alarm when it went off. I’m glad we were able to clear that up.”

Or,

Boss, come on!  You know I didn’t fake being sick yesterday in order to join with other members of the sales force on a trip to the horse track. I’m too loyal an employee to ever fake an illness to skip out on work. I’m the biggest cheerleader for this company and currently lead our culture committee.  In fact, if you look closely at the local news footage of the track grandstand that you’ve been interrogating me about, you can clearly see me high-fiving our entire team in an effort to boost morale.

This is who we have as a president. A man so removed from the basic rules of language and logic, that his aforementioned tweet actually makes sense to him.

Worse, he is so inoculated from reality that such statements comport to his worldview. This is where we are: a 70-year-old, Ivy League educated billionaire and the most powerful man in the world possessing the rhetorical skills of a slow-witted nine-year old.

What’s the over/under on Donald Trump looking seriously into a camera and saying without a hint of irony, “I’m rubber and your glue!!!” about four weeks?

THE FORK IN THE ROAD

Really, it’s down to just two choices: take the road on the left or take the road on the right.

The road on the left leads here:

Donald Trump is a master manipulator and is drawing everyone’s fire toward him, while quiet zealots like Paul Ryan and Mike Pence, methodically undo the social contract and create a two tiered America of Rich and white vs. minority and poor. That Trump made a grand bargain with the grand old party to create the most amazing distraction while the true leaders set about creating massive tax cuts for the wealthy and completely undoing Roosevelt’s New Deal, Johnson’s Civil Rights Act, Nixon’s Environmental Protection and Obama’s Healthcare.

Or,

The road on the right takes us to a place where all is exactly as it appears. The President of the United States is the same Donald Trump we’ve all come to know over the years. A huckster, a lazy, incurious, un-read, schemer who’s desperation to be loved and admired is only surpassed by his infantile need to be seen as great and powerful. He is without question, the least qualified person in history to become a national leader.

There is no third path. The path, we all thought might be true, that he would be a poor president but at least not an historic grease fire, is no longer operational.

It can only be one of these two options.

Yes, if I were handicapping this, I’d say there is a 99% likelihood that option 2 is the truth. To believe in the first option, one would have to also believe that Trump is a world-class actor and a true master of personality subterfuge. One would have to literally accept that Trump is some swirling combination of James Bond, Keyser Soze and Voldemort.

I’m unprepared to believe that. However….

I leave one percent chance open to hedge my bets. And - probably because I’ve read too much science fiction and seen to many plot-twisting movies - I can’t shake this feeling that Trump’s incompetence and ineptitude are almost too perfect. During every single crisis and right after every single mind-numbing interview and every single ridiculous tweet I roll my eyes and ask myself: “can anyone really be that stupid!?” Further there is this tine corner of my brain that lives in isolated terror that the orange-haired commander-in-chief is playing us all for fools.

What’s worse, I think to myself. Seeing Trump wreck the country due to his corrupt and stupid ways, or finding out that we were all played for suckers by the brilliant Mr. Trump? I guess it doesn’t matter. Either way leads to pain and mayhem.

A sign at the fork in the road we all find before us should have arrows pointing at both paths and should read: “madness that way lies!”

ON TRUMP AND RUSSIA AND THE STOMACH-CHURNING, PULSE-POUNDING STRESS OF IT ALL

Right now, if you had to bet $1,000 on which option is more likely to happen, which would you choose?

1. Aliens land on earth next Monday

2.  A thorough, fair and independent investigation into the Trump/Russia affair finds no collusion or wrongdoing.

It’s a toughie isn’t it?

I mean, I really, really feel confident that little green men are not going to show up in five days somewhere on the planet, but…….?

Seriously. The absolute biggest and most blockbuster story in the world over the next year would be that Trump and his administration were completely innocent of working with Russia to throw the election. The second biggest story would be proof that he and they did. 

That is where we are right now. The smoke is so think and powerful right now that a conflagration threatening to outstrip Watergate is building and building. We are all in at this point. It really is the political embodiment of the transitive property of math – If A equals B and B equals C, than A equals C.

A Trump needed help to win because god knows he’s not smart enough to do it alone

B Russia wanted a stooge in the White House;

C November 9^th brought us the previously unthinkable.

And it’s only been a little over 100 days!!!! Seriously republican defenders of the president…do you really have the stamina for another 3 and 2/3 years of this?!

One of my favorite football quotes comes from defensive guru Wade Philips who once said about playing football: “it’s an incredibly hard game because every play is a crisis.” And that’s fine for a contest that lasts about three hours. Then everyone can take a break until next Sunday.

Can we really handle a presidency where every day is a crisis – a self-made crisis?  My god! He hasn’t even been tested yet. No terrorist attacks, no economic shocks, no killer storms, no incursions abroad…relatively speaking, nothing.

Others have said this, but it bears repeating: we are at the point where we fear picking up our smartphones and checking social media platforms for the latest news on the administration. Every buzz of a twitter alert, illumination from an RSS feed or jingle of a text sends us all into panic.

“What now!?”we all reflexively think, “What has he done now!!!!”

Yes, I held lofty dreams of Clinton presidency, a democratically controlled congress and a 5-4 liberal tilt in the Supreme Court – only to have those velvety aspirations slapped down like a fly on one’s shoulder.

So yes, my wondrous visions of fairness, equality, environmental stewardship and economic justice have been bludgeoned to death.  But at this point, I’d just settle for a stretch of days where I didn’t actually fear Trump calling a nuclear strike against some third-rate state senator from Minnesota daring to tweet critically about healthcare premiums.

In the famous words of every A through D list actor over 50 in far too many movies to even count: “I’m too old for this shit.”

THE NECESSARY EYE IN THE SKY

Quick question: what is the one absolutely indispensable item every passenger must have when they board a commercial flight today? No, it’s not a neck pillow, no it’s not a credit card to buy outrageously priced snacks and no it’s not a pain reliever to help cope with cramped spaces and uncomfortable seats.

The one thing that every passenger simply must have when they board a plane today is a camera phone.

For a camera phone has now become a passenger’s last line of defense against an industry that has completely devolved into a dystopian hell-scape of customer disservice and outright abuse. A camera phone now plays the critical dual role of eyewitness and possible deterrent to the open hostility and civil rights-trampling that has become almost routine in the “Friendly Skies.”

And in case you think I’m exaggerating, please allow me to refer you to exhibit A, the Game of Thrones-esque behavior of United Airlines employees and complicit law enforcement personnel who bloodied a man and dragged him off a plane.

Of course you’ve all seen the video tape, and you’ve probably viewed it more times than you’ve viewed footage of the recent US bombing of Syria. According to Goggle, that piece of passenger-recorded video has been viewed more than 100 million times in less than three days.

But imagine if that reprehensible and potentially criminal behavior had occurred away from the prying lens of a smartphone? What would be the fall-out for United if there was no recorded evidence of its actions?

Indeed, if “The Great Airplane Dragging of 2017” had occurred without video confirmation, the entire episode would be a one or two day story that quickly fades into oblivion. United would make loud and numerous pronouncements of innocence and thinly veiled threats against the passenger’s “false accusation.” Ultimately it would be a contest where the word of one man would have to stand against a global juggernaut with billions of dollars and thousands of lawyers and consultants at its disposal. I think we all know how that would turn out.

However, this in-plane mugging was diligently recorded by several passengers with their phones. A few clicks later, mere seconds of upload time and suddenly, the global juggernaut is staggering back on its heels and frantically searching for cover. In one day, United lost $1 billion in value; its ridiculously tone deaf CEO is on the ropes; and cable news and the internet are skewering the hapless company like a winged pin cushion.

The other thing this particular camera phone footage has done is to rally most of the world against a common enemy – the airlines. Because this industry has sunk to such levels of outright customer hatred, it has fomented conditions which not only allowed this terrible incident to happen, but also to lower our incredulity toward it. As such, we are all appalled by the video, yet not too surprised that the act itself was conducted by an airline and an industry we’ve learned to despise. Not so much in a physical sense, but in a figurative sense, all of us have been dragged around by the airlines more than any of us care to remember.

And that won’t change anytime soon. With deregulation, terrible business models and a host of other problems, flying isn’t going to get better and certainly the airlines aren’t going to suddenly become even merely bad at customer service.

Therefore, I urge everyone to protect themselves as best they can.

Later this summer, my family and I are taking a big vacation to Europe and to my great horror, we are flying United. We have to as our choices are severely limited.

And so, when I get my kids ready for the flight I will instruct them as follows: pack only one carry-on so we don’t run the risk of the incompetent carrier losing our luggage; stretch your legs and back vigorously in the boarding area so you can prep for the crappy seats and ever-decreasing leg room on our long flight and finally - make sure your phones are charged and accessible.

If we’re lucky our phones will only record the splendor of the Eiffel Tower and the Louvre and not the heavy hands of a United flight attendant, but we’ll be ready all the same.

The "Barbed" Wire

Illicit drugs running rampant. Crime and violence out of control. Families torn apart. Whole communities scarred by the drug trade and the criminals who profit from its prevalence. 

Pretty typical narrative in America today, isn’t it? But if you read that first paragraph again and imagine the landscape it portrays, do we all not go immediately to inner-city Chicago or Detroit? And don’t we all envision the actors in this tragedy to be black and brown-skinned?

But we are wrong. This is the scene in Appalachia, and rural Mississippi, and the suburbs around Sacramento and the farm towns of Nebraska. This is the heartland in America today. Sarah Palin’s “Real America.” And the actors are mostly white, mostly economically disadvantaged, poorly educated people who long for the days when the farms and the factories and the mills and the plants were humming.

When hearing about the opioid problem in the nation today, I am always reminded of that great Richard Pryor line from decades ago: “The drug problem today is an epidemic. That means white people have it!”

If we were honest with ourselves – if Hollywood were honest with itself – the next wave of great TV shows would all feature stories about the opioid crisis in rural America. They would tell the tale of woe and drama of how white people in the heartland failed themselves and their communities and became a wasteland of drug-addled schemers. Instead of burnout city blocks and urban decay, the tracking shots would be of abandoned grain silos, rusted combines and meth dealers cooking their product in ramshackle trailers.

That is where the great drug crisis – and great drama – of the 21^st century America exists.

Instead of a black drug kingpin rolling through the streets of Watts or Oakland in a slick Cadillac Escalade with a glove box full of crack, we open with a white dude in a souped-up Ford F-150 splashing along a muddy two-track, checking in on his mules distributing Oxycontin to high schoolers.

Instead of the counter narrative of the one good black kid who is using his basketball prowess to escape the mean streets, we hone in on the white kid who is tops in his wrestling weight class fighting the good fight to get a scholarship and help his meth-addicted mother.

“Making America Great Again,” in part means returning to the era when they drug problem was confined to the urban core.

The narrative of how the “bad dudes” and weak-minded minorities destroying themselves and their communities is so easy today to transport to the “bad hicks” and weak-minded white trash who are destroying themselves and their communities.

In this dramatic series, would it be the ultimate irony to showcase a lead character who is a gruff, but big-hearted black sheriff chasing down the hillbilly drug dealers, but also helping the poor white kids say no to the drug trade?