Sports is a reflection of life. It is a very tired cliché, but these things don’t spring from nothingness. Much of what is important to know about life can be picked from the events on the sports field. The reason is two-fold. Once is the nation’s sports are a part of its culture – an expression of it culture. The other reason is life is not all that complicated. Sports, being simple, is an easy way to encapsulate the immutable truths of life, not matter the complexity of the culture.
The NFL is currently the dominant sport in America. They held their annual cattle call last week, where the respective teams select college players in a draft. ESPN provided wall-to-wall coverage over three days, documenting every pick in real time. The sports media spent the three prior months covering every team and every player in preparation for the extravaganza. Like most of America, the NFL Draft is a overhyped and overly choreographed spectacle.
At its core, the draft is a lot like life. Despite all the happy talk about character and citizenship, NFL teams will take an ax murderer if he will help them win. If the character flaw is unlikely to keep the player off the field, it will have no impact on his draft status. Andrew Luck could be a secret Nazi and the Colts would have taken him with the first pick. He would have been told to keep the Nazi stuff quiet.
In that regard, the NFL is most like modern America. Our public life is littered with happy talk and fads from the left-liberal political religion that dominates American culture. None of it matters beyond its utility. The PC police use these fads to silence critics and destroy enemies of the cause. If you are a man of the left, however, you don’t have to worry about these things. Bill Clinton gets to rape interns and Barak Obama gets to smoke Newports.
The PC nuttiness was on full display this year in the coverage of Robert Griffin III. He was the consolation prize of the draft, but was treated like the greatest thing since the forward pass. For the three months leading to the draft, all the talk was about this young man and his prospects in the NFL. The best player in the draft, Andrew Luck, was treated as an afterthought. The reason, of course, is race. Luck is white and Griffin is black.
In modern America nothing is more sacred than an articulate black man with a clean criminal record. Every white liberal dreams of the day they can have one of their own to display on their charm bracelet. As a result the liberal fanatics at ESPN were scratching each other’s eyes out trying to prove they were the most pious in their worship of the IWSB. if you did not know better, you would have come away thinking Robert Griffin III was the second coming.
To the liberal lunatic, he probably is, at least they hope so. As we routinely see in other areas of life, the left-liberal is convinced it is 1968 and blacks are routinely assaulted by bands of racists whites as they struggle though life. Despite the presence of many black quarterbacks in the NFL, the left-liberal remains convinced a kid like Griffin is an anomaly in need of protection by white liberals. In their self-delusion, the existence of such a person is validation.
On a more humorous side of the draft, we see the modern habit of avoiding judgments. The players with criminal records are called “kids” and excused for what used to be considered character flaws. The ESPN guys are so afraid to be deemed judgmental they will explain away just about any horrible behavior. It used to be that a tough upbringing was what the successful overcame to reach their goals. Today it is an excuse for failure to do the minimum.
Then there are the vast number of players that have a below average IQ. Every year a number of SEC players score in single digits on the Wonderlic test. This year Morris Claiborne proved to be the dumbest player in the draft, scoring a five out of fifty. Even adjusting for his stated lack of interest, Claiborne is an imbecile. As in life, however, IQ in the NFL is an artificial construct created by the pale penis people and dismissed as unimportant.
That’s the NFL. The life of a player is nasty, brutish and short. A few have the intellectual wherewithal to rise above it all and be remembered by those who comes later. The great bulk will run through their careers, having done nothing more than be average. A certain percentage are maniacs, imbeciles and lunatics. Perhaps they will be so notorious as to be remember after they are gone.
