MMBM: Kaepernick's Pointless Protest Accomplished Absolutely Nothing Besides Starting A National Dialogue On Race & The 1st Amendment

PFT Commenter8/29/2016 6:49 PM

Note: TL;DR.

Wellcome to the Monday Morning BM, just a word of warning your probably not prepared to handle the strong football takes and barrelfire NFL truths that you never knew your Mondays were missing. This column is written for and by a REAL fan of the NFL. Its designed to be read on your Monday Morning commode break after a long Sunday eating bad-for-you food and drinking beers. If you care more about SPELLING then you do about TELLING theres the door because this columns not for you.

Today is Christmas morning for sports takes. We’re coming off a huge NFL weekend filled with important injuries, political drama, and tremendous amounts of alcohol, but the biggest story of them all is Colin Kaepernick refusing to rise for the national anthem despite the fact that great American ball players like Ronnie Lott would of cut off his own feet to stand for the Star Spangled Banner.

Instead of accomplishing whatever it is he thinks hes accomplishing, all Kapernicks done is thrown our country into a national discussion about race, and opened himself up to criticism and forced many in the national media to break down exactly what hes protesting and weigh the pluses and minuses of taking such a stand. You talk about a all-time backfire. Ive wasted hours and hours reading dozens of articles and thousands of internet comments debating what he did and the merit behind his reasoning. So not only was his national anthem stunt completeley dumb, but it was also ineffective.

For example I did some research on many of his claims and dicsovered that its true when he says that in some places you need more training to be a hairdresser then a police officer and I agree its ludicrous that Big Goverment is so ridiculously involved in licensing beauticians. I also wasnt fully aware of the extent of Hillary Clintons history in dog-whistling racism in her past as first lady and the 2008 elections. This could be a great opportunty for comprimise since if we had smarter police then maybe they would of been able to do better detective work on Benghazi and maybe we could have someone who has actively participated in redlining as President instead of someone who tacitly approved of it. But the main takeaway I have from this is that Kapernicks little caper really served no purpose except to waste my time looking up a bunch of useless information and educating myself about the areas in which he and I agree or disagree and then writing about it here.

Alot of people are correctly pointing out that Colin Kapernick gets paid alot of money to play a sport and that therefore he shouldnt act on his conscious. What he’s doing is highly disrepsectful of season ticket holders , and owner Jed York needs to step in to prevent this rich jerk from taking advantage of fans who paid a $10,000 personal seat license and financed $500 million for a new stadium before his organization starts to give off the inpression that they think they’re customers are a bunch of rubes.

And the onus is on Roger Goodell on this one too folks. The NFL is an integrity first league and by disrepsecting the military, Colin Kapernick has potentially put the NFL in violation of their marketing agreement with the department of defense. Our troops didnt fight overseas so that a spoiled athlete could violate the defamation clause in their bosses lucrative public relations contract.

Lost in all this nonsense about free speech and the 1st amendment is the fact that we haven’t done a good enough job protecting the brand of the flag. We let anyone salute old glory these days. They should play the anthem after the games are over and only the winners should be aloud to stand at attention. The flag has become a participation trophy that you get for your parents having sex inside of a state instead of a reward you get for not protesting. Theres a old football saying that you have to earn the logo on the side of your helmet in training camp, so why isnt the same true in America. You should earn the privilage to stand at attention for the national anthem by participating actively in our democracy, not pulling some half-cocked stunt like protesting. Our brave men in uniform didnt storm the beach at Normandy just so you can peaceably assemble on the sidelines and not salute the flag. We have a tradition of exellence and winning in the country and it needs to stay that way. The banner was written by Fracis Scott Key, not Frances Scott Key.

Really makes you think

On to the awards:

Road Grader of the Week: Bryan Stork

The Former Patriot got cut, then not traded, then retired, then unretired, then failed a physical all within the span of a week. Thats the Brett Farve hat trick. Its not unusual for a former Patriot to move from Massachusettes to Washington DC and completely stop working altogether but hey enough about John Kerry. So now the trade is off and the Redskins are put in the historicaly problematic position of having to ask for there draft pick back after they already gave it away.

(h/t @Rexdangerseeker)

10 Things I Know I Know

1. The Dallas Cowboys cursed themselfs by stealing the New England Patriots motto without so much as a hat tip. To think this could of all been resolved if the Cowboys had just properly sourced their new motivational quote:

People are saying that Dak Prescott might take the starting job permanently but I’m not so sure. Romo’s just getting more effecient by getting hurt in week 3 of the preseason which tecnically means that Romo’s literally in midseason form.

2. Peter King thinks Arizona could be a team that could “weapon you to death” which sounds like a spur of the moment bombing campaign that Donald Rumsfeld launched on the same day his thesaurus was in the shop. Defining Cardinals as weapons is technically accurate given that CJ2YPC has a bullet in his shoulder and their best cornerback has the kind of diabetes you get from waterboarding yourself with mayonaise. Always need to watch your back when Arians get their hands on a cache of weapons out in the desert folks, but If John Browns body can keep up with Carson Palmers mind, this could be a electric offense.

3. Baltimore Ravens second year rookie Breshad Perriman lost 3 pounds from cutting his hair this offseason so that sound you hear is Eddie Lacy foolishly filling out his punch card at pretty kitty brazillian wax spa. If Im a NFL head coach I’m implementing a reverse-movember season long pubecember for all my players to get a extra edge in maintaining a low center of gravity. If players grow their curlies out and dred them up thats a bonus couple points of pad-level torque coming at you downhill when it matters most.

4. Bae: Come over

Me: I cant Im busy

Bae: I just got T9

Me:

5. Ezekiel Elliot was spotted window shopping at a marjuana store hours before the Cowboys played the Seahawks in Seattle and it truly makes me wonder what kind of locker room Dallas is cultivating where there star first round draft pick has to purchase pot from complete strangers. Day one Michael Irvin or Dez needs to pull Elliot aside and hook them up with their guy. The fact that Cole Beasely hasnt been pushing schwag on Elliot from day 1 is a big red flag for Dallas who is obvously missing Greg Hardy’s leadership.

6. Danny Woodhead is going into this year as a lame duck but he’s playing like hes cock of the walk. In yet another shrewd negotiating technique, the Chargers have failed to offer a extension to their best offensive player with a number lower than 85 and higher than 17. Woodheads in a prove-it year but his whole life has been a prove-it year. Some players would bitch and moan, but what does Danny do? He takes it out on a defensive end:

Hi, I’m Danny Woodhead…Take a seat #94! @PFTCommenter pic.twitter.com/z8x1hYFmjR
— Tim Pederson (@Timdpederson) August 28, 2016

7. Peyton Manning brought the fire to the Rob Lowe roast thats going to premere on Comedy Central next week saying “Im not the only athlete up here. As you know earlier this year Ann Coulter won the Kentucky Derby.”

I would of personally gone with “Hell Ann, your so insane that Fox News wont have you on. Your so far right I always figured you got kicked as a child by Mike Vanderjagt.” Also it marks a important return to form for Manning since its the first time that hes been paid to make a horse look like a fool on national TV since Elway demanded that he take over for Osweiler in week 15.

8. A.J. Green has been reading his own sonogram clippings and is allready planning on taking off a game for the birth of his son, if it happens to fall on a Sunday. First of all, the kids not going to remember whether or not your there he’s gonna be too busy screaming and looking like a little tube of slimy responsibility. Secondly, maybe he’s been slamming too much rockin refuel and built up a surplus of protein in his body which created super sperms that can survive weeks at a time inside a fallopian tube. Thirdly, the timing of the baby tells me it was literally conceved after the Bengals heartbreaking loss to the Steelers in the playoffs. This tells me that AJ is all about the Green and less about the glory. No player on that Bengals team should of been able to achieve a erection for 4 weeks after that type of defeat. Maybe AJ needs to focus more on achieving completions in the red zone then the pink zone.

9. The Broncos have named smart,intelligent, heady, cognizant, bright, brainy, well-informed, Trevor Siemian as their starting QB and are now looking to trade backup Mark Sanchez. There will likely be some mutual interest for Sanchez given the age-of-consent laws in the AFC South, but for my money I’m going to need to see Marky Mark head up to Buffalo and reunite with Rex. Without looking it up, Siemian is the first person named Trevor to ever play in the NFL or graduate from college so this is kind of a big deal. I call him Trevor S i.e.mian because hes a great example.

10. Huge Huge Huge week for Business Trips. People forget that week 3 of the preseason is a dress rehearsal for the teams and there social media managers, so its no suprise that team twitters accounts were in midseason form and letting everyone know that its business time.

We more then doubled our total number of league Business Trips this week bringing our season total to 11. I’m 75% sure that NFL social media interns are delibrately tweeting about businesstrips just to be featured in the MMBM and that’s ok. Life is a business trip and you gotta close the deal any way you can. Only 22 left to go.