Forfeit.

Language warning.

Investor Peter Lynch famously said, "Go for a business that any idiot can run -- because sooner or later, any idiot probably is going to run it." That would appear to be the current state of play for the National Football League, an organization that has decided its best strategy going forward is to not only alienate but attack its biggest fans.

Call me crazy, but that would not seem to me to be the best move of an intelligent organization.

For some reason, the National Football League, a group that has spent the last forty years trying to prove they are so gosh-darn all-American that you can't turn on the Super Bowl for five minutes without seeing U.S. soldiers in a tent in some horrible blood blister of a nation waiting to watch the game, which schleps out the biggest flags in the world before games to show how much they love love love the US of A -- for some reason they have decided to tell us all that they are just fine with their most prominent employees taking a dump on the flag before the game and expecting us to then go on to root for these same jackwipes for the next three hours.

The NFL, its players, its idiot-in-chief Roger Goodell, and many of its apparently brain-damaged veterans like Terry Bradshaw are trying to make this into a free speech issue. As if any of us could go to our job or to our clients, parade around tooting our little special horn to demand attention to our pet social or political concerns, and expect to receive anything in response other than a guided tour to the door.

So since the various persons I have mentioned can't seem to get this through their iron-clad skulls, let me offer a slightly different scenario and see if they can understand what I'm driving at.

Say I'm a big-time movie producer, known for my sports films. I always tell people how much respect I have for our pro athletes. I make my biggest film ever, billed as a stirring gridiron saga, and invite all my pro football buddies to the premiere. They come to the elegant event in limos and helicopters, all high class, treated like kings. I say a few words of thanks to them at the beginning, how great they are and what they mean to me, and introduce the movie to thunderous applause.

The film is an endless parade of pro football idiocy. Every football player shown is a nose-picking moron, a drooling wife-beater, a drug addict who slaps little kids around, a mutton-headed, ugly, mean, retarded, creepy, violent, greedy, pants-crapping rapist. Their coaches are drunken whoremongers, the higher-ups vicious exploitators of human pain. Every character connected to the game of football is shown as the lowest piece of shit to ever appear on film.

The players and other NFL types get mad. Many of them leave. I protest: Hey! This is America! I'm just exercising my freedom of speech! And, clearly, I am.

Now, here's the pop quiz (take all the time you need, Terry):

Was I an asshole?

The correct answer is: Yes.

(It's okay, Terry, good try.)

Did I mention that last Sunday's disgusting spectacle of players, coaches, owners, and other assorted nincompoops fell on the day set to honor Gold Star Mothers?

(Those are moms who lost children fighting for our country, Terry.)

Unforced errors abound.

The NFL has an operations manual that requires players show respect during the national anthem (operations manuals are not rule books, but they're not suggestions either), so it's not like they never conceived of this Colin Kaepernick hijinks coming up. But like little precious pansies they wouldn't dare do anything about player misbehavior. Why? So people who hate the NFL anyway won't get mad at them? Because they also hate America and the flag for which it stands?

What astonishes me most is that these NFL people are angry that we're not pleased as punch that they're shitting on America. We express our feelings of betrayal and they act as if we ought to be ashamed of ourselves. Which makes me think they really are all brain damaged.

Hey, NFL: Do you know us at all? The America-lovers? The flag-respecters? We're the ones who still believe in the manly virtues that you supposedly exemplify -- we're not the ones who cringe at the thought of football, the ones who would never dream of letting little Egon play such a horrible game. We're not the Tom Robbinses, weenies who think American football is nothing but a miniature apocalypse and second only to country music as a guidepost to hell. We were the ones that defended American football as a game of nuance and strategy as well as strength and toughness. WE WERE YOUR FRIENDS AND YOU ATTACKED OUR PROFOUNDLY HELD BELIEFS. And we're supposed to like this? 

It's nothing but an ego trip and you know it. That little knee thing may not seem like much to you, but we're not as stupid as you seem to think; we know what it means.

And right now, it means you're in trouble. Because brother, you need us more than we need you. And I, for one, am done with your politically correct bullshit. Go to hell.