There must be heavy London fog obscuring one Brit blogger's view of the ways things are in the National Football League. James Moore, a blogger for the UK's Independent, views the NFL as "Not For Liberals." That's news to us Yanks, who've just seen the league shell out $89 million for social justice causes and watched this liberal league headed by a very liberal commissioner threaten to withdraw the Super Bowl from states legislating for stronger religious freedom laws.
During the past two seasons, the NFL also stood passively by and watched protesting football players drive business away by disrespecting America during pre-game ceremonies featuring the national anthem. Yet Moore points to the treatment of three radical liberals -- Colin Kaepernick, Eric Reid and Josh Rosen -- as proof that it's a conservative league:
"NFL: Not For Liberals? Let’s see. Let’s see if Reid gets signed and where Rosen gets drafted. Let’s see if someone finally has the courage to give Kaepernick another shot."
Starting in on Kaepernick, Moore says NFL teams employ players who abuse women and substances, along with other criminals. "But a man who simply exerted his rights under the First Amendment of the US Constitution to highlight an issue that should bother anyone with a scintilla of decency and who broke no league rule in so doing? Too rich for our blood. Think of the fan reaction. Sorry, the conservative fan reaction. Liberals have less of a problem with divergent views."
A former knee-taking teammate of Kaepernick's with San Francisco, Reid (above photograph) is now a free agent safety who's hearing chirping crickets instead of phone calls with contract offers. Here's Moore's take on Reid:
"Plenty of older, lower ranked safeties have found themselves new teams (or have re-signed with their old ones) during the current offseason.
"So what makes Reid, who is 26 and in his prime, different?
"It is that he was the first player to join Kaepernick, and spoke loudly in support of him.
"The fact that he has, like the quarterback, said he will not protest this year, doesn’t seem to matter. He appears to have been blacklisted."
Rosen (photograph at left), another football player who inappropriately throws his liberal views in our faces and who played college football at UCLA, will be one of the first quarterbacks taken in this year's NFL draft. But Moore says he's also being punished by those phantom conservatives calling the shots for the NFL:
"Rosen has had to put up with an absurd amount of rubbish when compared to the quiet, conservative kid, who hunts in his spare time and has a Make America Great Again headband in his locker."
"Rosen’s sins have included wearing a F*** Trump headband while out playing golf (which he Instagrammed) and vocally speaking up about a college football system that makes millionaires of coaches and administrators while denying its players any opportunity to make money off their sport or even their names ... ."
Moore also cites a throw-away quote by former Cleveland general manager and current NFL analyst, Mike Lombardi, to try to make a case that there is an element of people who think Rosen should not even play football. Lombardi mentioned that Rosen "might like humanitarian work more than football," drawing criticism from Houston Texans' superstar J.J. Watt, who said it was like Laura Ingraham telling LeBron James to shut up and dribble. This is the same Mike Lombardi who suggested Doug Pederson, coach of the Super Bowl champion Eagles, is not qualified to coach that team. Lombardi is in no one's list of 100 influential conservatives either.
All three lib football players considered, it's three-and-out for the Brit Moore, whose fogged-over view is that conservatives are pulling the NFL's strings.
