NFL: Greedy, Woke, and Stupid

“Fat, drunk, and stupid is no way to go through life, son.” 

Such were the immortal words of wisdom of the grim Dean Wormer to Kent “Flounder” Dorfman, the — well — fat, drunk, and stupid frat boy in the iconic 1978 National Lampoon film Animal House.

Those aren’t the exact three adjectives I’d invoke to describe the National Football League, but they sort of rhyme with my quaint description of the league as greedy, woke, and stupid. Or maybe I’m just looking for an excuse to quote from Animal House. But let’s move on, starting with “woke.” 

That the NFL has become woke is beyond dispute. Pick your politically correct absurdity. Perhaps “Pride Month.” Of course, the NFL season is non-existent in June, the high holy month of American liberalism — Pride Month. There are no NFL games nor even training camp. The NFL draft is in the past (April). Being effectively inactive (football lingo there), there’s no reason for NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell and boys to pause every June to celebrate transgenderism, other than spinelessly submitting to an annual shakedown by bullying LGBTQ activists. Whatever the reason, the NFL submits. And, hence, guys who hunt deer and drunk beer and watch football get gagged with NFL rainbow flags in June. They’re treated to the bizarre “Football is gay” ads that the NFL’s Manhattan offices came up with. (Note to progressives: “Football” can’t be homosexual. You folks could use a good lesson on the birds and the bees.)

Likewise annoying is the “END RACISM” campaign, whereby every NFL endzone displays those giant letters. What could be more absurd than preaching END RACISM to a stadium of 70,000 white people paying $500 tickets to cheer fanatically for multi-million-dollar black athletes? Whilst wearing the jerseys of those athletes?

Picture my Steelers household on any given gameday: There are three boys and one girl and myself wearing black-and-gold jerseys. My youngest son, who’s black, wears a Najee Harris or Ben Roethlisberger jersey. Another wears T.J. Watt or Chase Claypool. My daughter? Kenny Pickett. Another son wears James Conner or George Pickens. Me, I’m old school — the 1970s Steelers — so I’m wearing Jack Lambert or my Franco Harris “Immaculate Reception” shirt.

As some readers will recognize, some of these players are black and some white. We don’t care. The point is that my NFL-watching household, like all of them, is hardly a coven of white supremacists. With the END RACISM motto pushed so incessantly, you’d think NFL stadiums were filled with closet neo-Nazis wearing white hoods.

I could go on about the wokeness. I shall proceed with the greed, which connects to my claim of stupidity.

The NFL has nearly ruined its product with excessive advertising. Games are effectively unwatchable thanks to the obscene amount of commercials. It’s a shame. Rather than broadcasting astute analysis or showing something that has to do with football on the field, the TV networks immediately jump straight to commercials at any opportunity (many of the ads are insufferably idiotic and themselves woke, clearly not catered to the typical football-watching guy). At my house, we actually record games or start them late to skip through commercials. (READ MORE from Paul Kengor: The American Spectator’s Conservative Counterculture)

Ironically, the commercials can be intolerable even when you’re watching the game in person, because you’re forced to endure lengthy, mindless TV timeouts that leave the stadium in a stupor — often a drunk stupor for about half the stadium, given all the fans boozing it up at tailgate parties before kickoff. The TV timeouts suck the life out of the crowd.

Of course, the NFL does so damn much advertising because it can’t get enough damned money. Quarterbacks are signing nine-figure contracts. Yes, that’s nine-figures, as in, say, like $250 million. How do you generate that kind of money? One method is egregious advertising — nearly enough to push your audience away.

Now the NFL has come up with a new novelty to make yet more money: It has moved to a 17-game schedule. And that brings me to the point about NFL stupidity, which we all shall witness this weekend.

Seventeen games are way too many. Sixteen had been too many. For many years it was 14, which was optimal.

We’re seeing two crucial ways in which the longer season is stupidly counterproductive.

First, injuries. Football is a brutal sport. Only the rarest athletes survive even a 14-game schedule unscathed, whether through torn ACLs, Achilles, groins, or multiple concussions hazardous not only to the health but brain. My Steelers will be playing the Buffalo Bills this Sunday morning without the best defensive player in football, T.J. Watt, who suffered a bad knee injury in the third quarter of the 17th game of the season last weekend. 

That Steelers–Bills game brings me to another reason why the 14-game schedule was far more optimal: weather.

It’s quite possible that the Steelers–Bills game this Sunday will be played in a blizzard. To be sure, nothing beats football in the snow. I went to the University of Pittsburgh in the late 1980s (an era of great football there). My roommates and I would march to the lawn of the Cathedral of Learning during late-night snowstorms to engage in gridiron battles. We loved it.

But the weather this weekend isn’t about a not unusual snowstorm during a Buffalo Bills game. The weather will be horribly, menacingly dangerous at other venues. The forecast for the suntanned Miami Dolphins hiking to Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City is downright frightening. It’s so severe that, frankly, the NFL ought to consider cancelling the game for the safety of not only the players but the fans.

Then again, if the greedy NFL were to cancel the game (an unacceptable loss in TV revenue, eh, boys?), when would it reschedule? The options aren’t good because this is the first of multiple weeks of NFL playoffs that will not end until mid-February. This year, the Super Bowl will be played on Feb. 11. I should add that the 17-game season is extended even longer by the fact that the NFL permits 14 teams (almost half the 32 teams in the league) to make the playoffs.

This article is posted on Jan. 13, 2024, the first day of the start of the playoffs. The first Super Bowl in which my Steelers played, Super Bowl IX, occurred on Jan. 12, 1975, in warmer New Orleans, Louisiana (it was actually cold at Tulane Stadium that day; after all, it was January). Think about that: In 1975, the season ended on Jan. 12. In 2024, the playoffs start on Jan. 13.

Lesson to be learned: Playing NFL games deep into winter is highly ill-advised. Why does the NFL do it? Money. Money that it can’t get enough of.

Oh, by the way, these NFL geniuses want to move to an 18-game schedule. That’s not just stupidity but greedy stupidity.

Greedy, woke, and stupid. That’s no way to go through life, son.

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