The shoe is on the other football?

A friend asks if I'm continuing my boycott of the National Football League, begun last year. It went all year. I did not watch the Super Bowl for the first time since 1984. So would I do it again this season?

Hmm. Well, I guess I should consult my decision tree.

I am reminded of the lines from Benjamin Franklin in the play and film 1776 (not from the actual Benjamin Franklin, I imagine, but he wrote so much, who knows?): "Never was such a valuable possession so stupidly and so recklessly managed than this entire continent by the British Crown."

It's not hard to find some examples of stupid management ruining valuable properties -- Coke in the 1980s, the Big Three car manufacturers in the 1970s, Kodak in the 1980s and 1990s, Kmart/Sears now -- and these were only examples of things that were not quite brought to complete destruction. I suspect Roger Goodell could have destroyed any of these companies to the point where they'd be sad memories at this point, like A&P, Enron, Trans World Corporation, Wedtech, and so on. Hell, I think the man could destroy an entire continent if he wore the British Crown.

Roger Goodell kicking football
(artist's interpretation)

So what's been going on since my blog entry on this topic last year? Well, under Goodell's crack leadership, the NFL instituted a namby-pamby policy to deal with the knee issue, a policy unlike that of any company on the planet (which is: Protest On Your Own Time, Stupid), a policy that was rescinded at the first sign of pushback. NFL sponsor and notorious sweatshop runner and sexual harassment playground Nike decided to name washed-up crybully Colin Kaepernick its man of the year or something, a thumb in the eye to football fans.

At least Hank Hill went on to sell propane
and propane accessories.

That's the thing I want to point out here: NFL fans who love their country and respect law enforcement have done nothing wrong and are the only ones being punished. No one seems to understand this.

And the NFL continues to hope we'll keep talking about all this instead of its function as a brain-injury machine.

Throughout all this, Roger Goodell has shown the guts, the leadership, and the keen intellect normally associated with a headless chicken, so the NFL voted to extend his contract for five years, another thumb in the eye to football fans.

So I'm sorry, NFL; there's no way I can watch football with all these thumbs in my eye. You may gain my support again when you throw this clueless moron Goodell into the pit of shame where he belongs, deal with your concussion issue, and stop acting like terrified sheep with employees who bring disgrace onto the your product. Until then, I have much better things to do with my time and money. Like, anything else.