It’ll Take More Than Halftime Shows to Bring Me Back to the NFL
Almost every move they make reaffirms my decision to boycott the NFL
I stopped watching NFL football six or seven years ago. The one exception to my boycott is the Super Bowl. If we’re being honest, we have to admit the NFL’s signature clash is more an event than a game. My decision to watch is driven not by the teams but by the halftime entertainment.
The fact is that watching or not watching the Super Bowl isn’t my sole decision. If the league books a good enough performer, then the other occupants in my household exercise what amounts to an unspoken option to override my self-imposed NFL blackout, even though they have no intention of watching the entire game. So when I read a few months back that Dr. Dre, Eminem, Mary J. Blige, Kendrick Lamar, 50 Cent, and Snoop Dogg would headline this season’s halftime show, I knew that someone in my family would exercise their option.
Don’t get me wrong; I enjoyed the performances. That said, my stomach dropped at the sight of Eminem, the only white performer, taking a knee (allegedly against the NFL’s wishes) to honor Colin Kaepernick while the icons of hip-hop abstained from joining him. To me, it felt like these one-time firebrands finally succumbed to the power of the corporatocracy.
My NFL habit was out of control.
Boycotting the NFL was the closest thing to going through withdrawal I’ve ever experienced. It was more challenging than the day I put down cigarettes for good. You see, I wasn’t a casual observer of the sport.
How bad was my NFL habit? It was so obnoxiously bad that when my daughter first learned to speak, she referred to our television’s remote control as “the football button.” During preseason, I bought fantasy football magazines to research potential breakout players. By the time the regular season arrived, I’d have as many as twelve fantasy teams ready to roll.
Despite its spotty service during stormy weather, I subscribed to DirecTV just for their NFL Sunday Ticket football package. On Sundays, I was up at 7 am gathering intelligence for the first round of games. I watched every touchdown and big play until the final seconds of the last game, usually around midnight.
But as much as I loved the sport, my relationship with football was always complicated. A couple of years ago, I wrote about how I became aware of the anti-Black racism embedded in what was once my favorite sport:
I discovered the imperfection of the game at a family gathering one day in the 1960s. After our meal, the adults gathered around the television to watch as our Arkansas Razorbacks played LSU. Although I was too young to know all the rules, I knew enough to recognize that our team, the Razorbacks, had just scored. I cheered at the top of my voice, as any loyal fan would. Everyone in the room stared at me in stony silence. That is when it dawned on me that everyone, my mom and dad, my aunts and uncles, was cheering against our home team. An uncle took me aside to explain. Arkansas was one of the last major college football teams without a single Black player. That is why my relatives cheered for the other side that day.
Although I fully supported Colin Kaepernick’s protest, the league lost me long before the former San Francisco quarterback protested police violence against African Americans by taking a knee during the national anthem. I’d had my fill of the NFL long before then.
The reasons behind my decision to boycott the NFL might surprise you.
Oddly, my decision to stop watching NFL football wasn’t because of the league’s racism — at least not initially. Embarrassing as it feels now, I have to acknowledge my acceptance of the racism in the NFL. I ignored how similar its annual draft, with its display of mostly Black bodies, was to a chattel market. I overlooked the racist team nicknames even though I knew they were wrong.
I was complicit in the league’s racist behavior for years, making all the popular excuses for the NFL: “It’s not as though the owners force the athletes to play,” I thought to myself. “How bad can it be? The athletes still make millions!” I rationalized. I was willing to make those and other moral trade-offs in return for my entertainment.
Despite my recognition of the racism built into the NFL’s infrastructure, initially, other things drove me away. First among them was the league’s years of denial regarding traumatic brain injury, which the NFL did not officially acknowledge until 2016. Next was its willingness to overlook its players’ domestic violence and criminal behavior, all in service to winning.
In the years after I quit the NFL, the racism in the league kept me away.
I’ve held out hope that the NFL would do better. But instead of making legitimate change, they engaged in a strategy of performative activism. Case in point: the NFL’s 2019 partnership deal with rapper Jay-Z’s Roc Nation. As The Atlantic’s Jemele Hill correctly pointed out at the time, what the NFL marketed as newfound wokeness was a poorly concealed attempt to paper over the domino effects of its Colin Kaepernick problem:
NFL officials must have been bothered by how much Kaepernick was discussed during Super Bowl week earlier this year. Not only did Goodell have to answer more questions about why Kaepernick still isn’t receiving any interest from NFL teams, but there had also been a number of reports that the league was having a hard time finding performers for its halftime show. Some stars, including Rihanna and Cardi B, reportedly turned down the opportunity to appear at the event show out of allegiance to Kaepernick…
This alliance plays right into the NFL’s hands, because the league seems determined to banish any memory of Kaepernick with its recent social-justice efforts — even though it’s likely that Jay-Z and the NFL wouldn’t even be entering into this arrangement if Kaepernick hadn’t taken a knee in 2016.
It’s easy to see why Kaepernick would be upset now. The partnership with Jay-Z is part of the NFL’s larger strategy to continue to absolve itself of what happened to the quarterback and throw enough money at social-justice causes so that the players will no longer feel the need to protest — or, at the very least, keep their opinions about racial injustice far away from the football field.
As much as I hoped things could be different, the NFL doesn’t surprise me. What else could I expect from an organization in which, despite its owner’s pronouncements after the death of George Floyd, overwhelming supported Donald Trump — and by extension — everything he stands for?
Last Sunday, I realized I’m over my NFL habit. I’ve gone from NFL SuperFan to a disinterested bystander, an onlooker unfamiliar with all but the league’s marquee players. In the end, my decision to move on from professional football probably was for the best. The NFL has made it clear, at least to me, that it has no intention of changing.
But I have to give my former favorite sports league credit for one thing. The NFL sure can put on a great halftime show.
I'm a long-time football fan, pro and college, but limit myself to the playoff games. I did watch the Super Bowl... I agree with your points for sure and each one alone is worthy of a boycott. I am thrilled that Flores is suing—it's about time
Good one Marlon.