A Tale of Two Professional Football Players

One of the more enjoyable rituals from summers long past was an annual vacation that involved renting a house in Dewey Beach, Delaware for a week each year with a few friends.  Part of the week naturally included house members and our guest consuming enough alcohol over the course of our stay to kill an elephant. Naturally, this would lead to quite a few empty bottles, most of which could be recycled. While I don’t know if this system is still in place, Delaware used to have multi colored recycling igloos at various drop off stations around the state. The color of the igloo denoted what went inside, whether paper, batteries, clear glass, brown glass, green glass, etc. Being one of the more responsible members of the house (Translate: Conservative), I’d gather the bottles to make a recycling run or two during our stay (others did as well, though). To minimize my time in the hot parking lot where the igloos were housed, I’d sort them out beforehand in our air conditioned kitchen. My friends, almost entirely Leftists, snorted at me one day “Why is the Republican recycling? We thought you guys hated the environment!” To which I calmly replied, “We conservatives care about the environment too. You guys show you care by chuckling about how evil Bush and Cheney are while sipping your Chardonnay. I show I care by doing something constructive!” Of course, I said it with a smart-arse smile, and they went noticeably silent on the subject after that.

Even if you’re not a pro football fan, you’ve probably heard about the recent controversy over San Francisco 49ers Quarterback Colin Kaepernick’s (CK) refusal to stand during the National Anthem. Wordsmith had a post on the subject a few days ago. And while the Radical Leftist sports media has been purring over CK’s tantrum, they missed a key point. Look closer, and you’ll see that CK’s recent gestures to not honor the American flag reek more of personal opportunism than principle.

For those of you unfamiliar with his story, CK had been the starting quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers for a few years. His star quickly rose a few years ago under a new, gimmicky offense that made great use of Kaepernick’s excellent running ability.  This star even rose high enough to get him to within a few yards of winning a Super Bowl. Unfortunately, his star also quickly fell as teams adjusted to this offense and the other skills needed to be a successful quarterback are lacking in CK. There is no bigger testament to this than the 49ers’ new head coach, the (thankfully) former Philadelphia Eagles’ coach Chip Kelly, whose offensive schemes would seemingly be a perfect match for CK’s abilities, and he isn’t even close to winning the starting job over a journeyman QB. (Side note: as an Philadelphia Eagles fan, the team that just fired Kelly, the fan base seemed overwhelmingly in agreement about CK’s lack of talent and that our team should make no effort to trade for CK).  Waiting until it looks like his lucrative career that has made CK a millionaire is about to end makes his gestures looks more like an attempt to generate buzz and hopefully score some media job once he’s out of football for good rather than some brave stand. Or maybe it had something to do with his radical girlfriend.

Contrast CK with somebody like retired NFL running back Warrick Dunn, whose charity has quietly helped 150 families obtain home ownership through his charity over the years. Dunn’s efforts have gotten some press over time,  but nowhere near the scale of what CK has seen. This is my biggest problem with the Radical Leftists that have taken over the Democratic Party, the biggest media players, and our university system. It’s easy to sit around and complain about things and self righteously “raise awareness” of how other people need to change their lives. Actually making change takes effort by individuals, not calling for somebody else to do it. We see this in how the Radical Left approaches almost any issue. For all of the BLM’s rage, how many of them are calling for members of the community to form neighborhood groups to help lessen the need for police to get crime out of their neighborhoods? Or volunteer in schools or mentoring programs to help prevent at risk kids from becoming criminals? And how about the refugee crisis? Leftists have been very generous and open about bringing refugee camps into America – just not in their neighborhoods, of course.  Maybe it’s time that we Conservatives started loudly pressuring them to do so.

And maybe if journalists wanted to make this country a better place they’d call for more constructive action, not childish protests.

On a side note, I wanted to write another post on the irritating politicization of sports, one of the last refuges from people who want some down time away from current events. Unfortunately, I fell victim to my rule of not writing on a topic that somebody smarter than me has already weighed in on. Jim Geraghty did that earlier this week, and it’s well worth five minutes of your time.

And I don’t know about you, but I’m ready for some football!

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Cross posted from Brother Bob’s Blog

Brother Bob

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