I have some feelings to work through before I move on with my Wednesday

 

I am upset with the NFL.

I feel betrayed. I feel like all the work the Institution of the NFL has done over the past decade has taken a major step backward.

That's not right.

It feels like Jon Gruden flew a plane right into the Twin Towers of progress: Right Thoughts and Right Speech.

I feel like an asshole for believing that the owners unanimously agreed on the positions their Institutions were taking.

I have been so up on the NFL the last decade. So proud of them for so many things – player safety, racial issues, gender issues, sexual preference issues. And then Gruden and his emails just soars into my life and ruins all of that. I can't exaggerate how I feel about this. I feel like millions, perhaps as many as a thousand-million people will be impacted by this.

No. Maybe it's not actual deaths.

But Jon Gruden is dead to us, now. If this were the ancient world, he would not have resigned – he would have fallen on his sword. Literally. Adam Schefter should be dead to us, now. Every owner is questionable. Every single one. I don't care what they have said or done in public anymore.

There is a quote, by William James, famed American philosopher and early thinker in the field of psychology: “If you wish to upset the law that all crows are black, you mustn't seek to show that no crows are; it is enough if you prove one single crow to be white.”

Well, what if I'm trying to prove that all owners are black? There there is no exception to the rule that they are, all of them, villainous and evil, black-hearted men? And women. We forget to often that these men have wives who are involved in the teams – and, indeed, that women still own the Lions and the Bears (but not the Bengals, oh my.)

I am sickened. I feel like my fandom, my appreciation – my vociferous praise – of the NFL the past decade has been betrayed. I feel like I have defending a liar. I feel like Mike Tirico and Tony Dungy must feel. And God help their souls, they must feel like the biggest idiots in the world.

How can you publicly defend a man like that?

How could I have publicly defended the NFL like this?

I need some time. I really do.

But – I'm just starting to get some momentum going, so I'm going to have to compartmentalize like the professionals do, and just do the work, regardless of who makes the money. It sucks, but it is the way of the world.

I have said that I love the NFL because it's a Microcosm of our world.

I just preferred believing it was a Microcosm where positive change could be experimented with on a petri dish.

And it still is. The players are still all college-educated young men. They are still beacons of change and positivity in this world. The existence of men like Richie Incognito should not surprise or deflate me. I should not feel so defeated by this.

And that's why I can't stop thinking of it as an act of terrorism. A surprise punch. A betrayal.

Treason.

I'm glad Jon is gone.

I guess all we have left to do is boo everyone else that gets caught up in this and hope there are billionaires in the world who aren't shitbags – and who are also interested in buying up all the teams which are currently owned by shitbags.

Eat the rich.