Are You Ready for Some Political Football?

This year the NFL will penalize itself for past unnecessary roughness against Colin Kaepernick with a social-justice blitz

By Jason L. Riley.  Excerpts:

"Football is America’s favorite spectator sport, and the NFL has determined that many fans are tuning in for the political theater, not just the touchdowns. If Mr. Goodell is wrong about that, he’ll find out soon enough. Average television viewership for regular season games fell to fewer than 15 million in 2017 from 18.7 million two years earlier, and the initial player protests led by Colin Kaepernick were cited as a factor in the dip. The audience has since increased, but the average number of viewers last year was still 2.2 million fewer than it was in 2015."

"“The NFL stands with the black community,” Mr. Goodell said in defense of the new policies. But Black Lives Matter activists don’t represent the black community any more than white nationalists represent the white community. The black community wants more police officers in high-crime neighborhoods for protection. Black Lives Matter activists turn criminals into martyrs and lead rallies that call for defunding law enforcement. Mr. Goodell is indulging an extremely divisive group of activists who have a political agenda that is well to the left of most Americans, including most black Americans. Moreover, he’s decided that football fans should not be allowed to watch NFL games without having left-wing propaganda rubbed in their faces for three hours.

To the extent that the antipolice rhetoric has no basis in any empirical reality, Mr. Goodell and the NFL are also playing the role of the useful idiots. It is criminals who threaten black lives, not police officers, and focusing on police behavior instead of criminal behavior does nothing to help low-income blacks, who are the likeliest victims of violent crime."

"Mr. Moskos provides facts and context, while the media specializes in anecdotes and unrepresentative viral videos. It’s no wonder so many people believe police shootings are commonplace when in fact they are a tiny percentage of all shootings and have fallen steadily over the past 40 years. In the name of helping blacks, the NFL is helping activists spread misinformation."