The NFL'S PR Nightmare A Symptom Of A Decaying US Empire?

[The following post is by TDV Chief Editor, Jeff Berwick]

A PR disaster for the National Football League (NFL) has overshadowed the start of the 2014 football season in the United States. Player-after-player has been arrested for violent offenses. In fact, since Ray Rice was arrested in February, 33 players overall have been arrested for various offensive from domestic abuse to plant possession. When you stretch that timeline back further, an astonishing history of arrests by NFL players develops. Just look at this looong list.

The NFL is a microcosm of the US itself. A main incubator for militaristic thought, it seems the private not-for-profit organization is falling apart at the seams just like the US. While many players – who have suffered brutal hits throughout most of their lives – were arrested for violent infringements, others were arrested for minor things, meaning that some of the NFL’s problems has to do with adapting to incorporation in a police state. 

The media loves a good story, and so they covered the Ray Rice scandal when he beat up his wife in an elevator, but now it seems it has taken on a life of its own.  The NFL suspended him for two games. Ray Lewis murdered two people and his suspension was initially similar to Rice’s. Remember Ricky Williams? The talented football player who smoked marijuana and other herbs? He was banned for entire seasons for smoking those plants. But initiate violence? The NFL will slap you on the wrist. Similar to how many victimless offenders are sitting in US jails for their entire lives for drugs while people there for murder oftentimes get off after but a few years. At any rate, just like the US itself, the NFL is now a parade of people being put into cages.

Condoleeza Rice has expressed interest over the football commissioner job, and many on the Right believe she is the right fix for the NFL. It makes sense how the military establishment would want one of their own in the NFL considering how important the NFL is to supporting the war agenda.  The NFL is the bread and circuses of the US, the Berlin Olympics of Nazi Germany. Football is all day on Sunday, taking on religious tones in a nation built on the puritan work ethic, which still maintains is subconscious hold.  Just like in Communism,  religions and spirituality in the US are being downplayed. Football replaces religion as a sort of new religion or obsession for many people in the US. 

The NFL is now the American Past-time. It used to be baseball, which is a much more mellow game and less war-like. The US wasn’t nearly as bad as it is now when baseball was its favorite sport. George Carlin expresses this well.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t dislike the sport of football.  My biggest issue is with the NFL, itself, and its blatant militarism, patriotism and that it seems like there are more commercials than action. The sponsors are pulling away considering all of the arrests of NFL football players this season.

Sports sure have changed over time. Obviously there is much more emphasis on physicality and sports medicine. It was just forty years ago when smoking cigarettes on the sports field was commonplace.

Overall, these scandals are a good thing. The NFL might be losing some face, but really this is another sign that the US’s Empire is decaying. 

Plus, when you are trying to run countless wars and occupations around the world it doesn’t hurt if people spend all week talking about how an NFL player hit his wife or kid.

The power going out during the Super Bowl in New Orleans also seemed like a strange harbinger of times to come which seem to continue on to this day.  As I joked at the time, “That is bound to happen if you are going to host the Super Bowl in a third world country”.

Perhaps its all planned as part of the big show… or perhaps it is just happening naturally as the NFL reflects many of the issues inside the USA itself today.  In either case it is fascinating to watch the NFL going through serious problems just as it is to watch the US as a whole nearing its near complete and total destruction.

I, for one, am glad that I’ll likely watch it all from my flat screen TV on the beach in Anarchapulco rather than outside my front window.

Questions or comments on the NFL? Comment here.