None of the NFL's communities have applied for federal disaster funding yet, but progressive lion Dave Zirin, sports editor for The Nation, claims the refusal to sign Colin Kaepernick to a pro football contract has brought these cities to economic ruin. He blames Kaepernick's lost season on right-wing, billionaire team owners who bank-rolled Donald Trump into the Oval Office.
Lashing out in one of his characteristic tirades, Zirin vents that a number of NFL teams “chose to flush their seasons, screw their fan bases, and gut the local economies that had lavished them with taxpayer dollars rather than sign free-agent quarterback Colin Kaepernick.” Zirin adores Kaepernick for "fully embracing community service, local organizing, and the tactics of political resistance, famously protesting police violence during the anthem." His rant continues:
Despite a desperate need for his services, these multibillion dollar corporate entities made the decision to tank rather than sign him to a contract. People have already lost their jobs as head coaches and general managers because they chose—or were ordered—to put awful or unprepared quarterbacks under center rather than field the best possible team.
Zirin rips into several teams that suffered quarterback injuries and chose not to sign the free agent Kaepernick.
The Houston Texans lost their starter, Deshaun Watson, to a torn ACL, and this would have been a prime landing spot for Kaepernick, Zirin writes. Instead of hiring Kaepernick and blazing to the NFL championship, though, the Texan's legacy for 2017 came "when team owner and right-wing billionaire Bob McNair described protesting players as 'inmates running the prison.'"
Green Bay's Aaron Rodgers lost most of his season to injury, dooming the Packers to a 7-9 season. "Kaepernick was someone who could have come onto that team and kept them competitive. ... The Packers chose to lose with a painfully overmatched Brett Hundley at quarterback rather than sign Kaepernick. Their general manager and several assistant coaches have now been fired." They were fired for years of defensive failures.
Zirin doesn't want anyone to think it's mere coincidence that the Houston and Green Bay coaches will be deposed during proceedings for Kaepernick's collusion lawsuit against the NFL.
Continuing on the theme that when a team doesn't sign Kaepernick things spiral out of control. The Miami Dolphins lost starting QB Ryan Tannehill with a season-ending injury, and without Kaepernick they finished 6-10. The Arizona Cardinals lost starter Carson Palmer to injury, and without the addition of Kaepernick, the finished 8-8 and out of the playoffs and then Head Coach Bruce Arians retired.
"Most egregious were the Denver Broncos, who chose to have three people named Trevor Siemien, Brock Osweiler, and Paxton Lynch play quarterback, wasting a year of star defensive player Von Miller’s prime," Zirin wails. The Broncos sputtered to 5-11 without you know who ... and by the way team president John Elway (photographed above) "wrote a letter on team stationary in support of Neil Gorsuch’s nomination to the Supreme Court. Sports and politics were fine for Elway, but not for his quarterback."
Zirin wrote, "NFL owners chose to put an inferior product on the field and spit in the faces of their fans rather than sign someone who could have done something he had done in the past: take a team to the Super Bowl." Super Colin, the miracle worker who had not practiced with an NFL team all year, could have taken any team to the promised land of football? But all these foolish teams passed on his greatness.
Zirin turned his scorn back to the league for its "moral rot" evidenced by signing "abusers of women before people who have given time and money to organizations that empower women" and said the NFL "lives in fear of the tweets of a racist autocrat with a 32 percent approval rating." Oh, yeah, one of those beneficiaries of St. Colin's incredible generosity empowers women by killing their unborn children. And President Trump is the real mover and shaker dictating NFL player personnel moves!
Trying to find some argument that actually sticks, Zirin plays the corporate welfare card. Many football stadiums are partly paid for by taxes and you're subsidizing these cretins who colluded against Kap. "By fielding an inferior product, that means fewer fans in the seats, fewer people in the bars and restaurants, fewer rooms filled at the hotels. It means that the always exaggerated bang-for-your-buck that comes from subsidizing a stadium was muted just so NFL owners could send a shot across the bow to other players that political talk would not be tolerated. Of course, all they did was spur more resistance."
This diatribe ends as it began -- dripping with venom. Zirin writes Kaepernick's collusion lawsuit is as simple as showing video of the 2017 NFL season and asking why multiple teams with playoff hopes willingly chose to tank rather than sign No. 7. He again lashes out at Denver and Houston:
The Bob McNairs and John Elways of the world hate the idea of a freethinking, openly anti-racist player more than they love the idea of winning a Super Bowl. That damns this league as much as hiding concussion data and ignoring instances of violence against women. It’s more evidence that the league’s moral compass points in one direction: It’s not toward money and it’s not toward winning. It’s toward remaking this country in their political image: An image where billionaires make the decisions and the rest of us just shut up, work, and salute on demand.
If the whole point of the 2017 NFL season was about remaking America's political image it's no wonder busy billionaires and team presidents didn't have time to place a phone call to a quarterback in decline with a losing career record, following a "brilliant" 2-10 season in liberal San Francisco.
