If Athletes Disdain The Public This Much Why Should Fans Return?
It appears that the 2020 Major League Baseball season is about to re-start. Or not. In the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic owners and players are bickering over the percentage of billions the two will share during the course of a 50, 60 or 70-game schedule and postseason. Their online posturing and battling press releases reveal an epic level of tone deafness.
Leading ESPN baseball writer Don van Notta to tweet, “It’s impossible to tell what MLB owners like less: the game of baseball or paying players to play baseball.” They certainly don’t seem to like their devoted fans. That’s for sure.
The NHL is also on track to revive its 2019-2020 season with a postseason festival happening in two “pod cities”. Just who those cities are is still up in the air. So is the response of consumers and TV networks to playing hockey while so many remain mortified of Covid. To say nothing of the assumption that players and their families will risk their health by being cloistered for up to almost three months in a hotel.
Hockey players have also joined the chorus claiming systemic racism, with over 100 players led by Sidney Crosby decrying what they describe as their white privilege in a league that is 95 percent white.
In the NBA, Brooklyn Nets star Kyrie Irving thinks that resuming the NBA season at Disney World doesn’t work for him in the wake of the George Floyd episode. He told over 80 NBA reps on a conference call, ”I don't support going into Orlando. I'm not with the systematic racism and the (expletive). Something smells a little fishy. I'm willing to give up everything I have (for social reform).”
In Irving’s case, everything is US $32,742,000 a year. If he’s been smart with his money he’s probably got more than enough to become a social justice warrior full-time. Otherwise that’s a lot of money to leave on the court.
In the NFL, which seems likely to play its 2020 season in its entirety come September, white players are lining up with their black teammates to decry the #BLM theory of “systemic racism” of the league. New York Giants QB Daniel Jones says he proudly stands “beside my brothers and the entire black community in support of the Black Lives Matter movement to end systemic racism.”
When a Houston Texans fan tweeted, "Pretty sure you won't see @JJWatt taking a knee”, the former NFL MVP replied “don’t speak for me” and ""If you still think it's about disrespecting the flag or our military, you clearly haven't been listening.”
The question is not whether these athletes are entitled to their opinions on this inflammatory situation— especially in leagues like the NBA and NFL where players are over 70 percent black. If anything, the chaos of the past month since Floyd’s death has been about that fundamental right.
(Although the sincerity of the NBA’s SJWs on freedom and rights is flexible, as we saw when LeBron James and the league cravenly capitulated to China over a few inflammatory comments about Hong Kong threatened their running-shoe Golden Goose.
The question is how do you return to play when, however sincere you are on the issue, you’ve insinuated that a large percentage of your consumers are stone-cold racist? The people who pay the bills? Hello? What will be the inevitable blowback?
When the Colin Kaepernick kneeling episode occurred in the Obama era, TV viewership of the NFL dropped 20 percent. How will those same viewers, ticket buyers and merchandise purchasers respond after a steady dose of portraying them as villains out of Uncle Tom’s Cabin?
So far, players in the NBA think they can have their opinions and their millions at the same time. As one unnamed player told ESPN's Adrian Wojnarowski, "Once we start playing basketball again, the news will turn from systemic racism to who did what in the game last night. It's a crucial time for us to be able to play and blend that and impact what's happening in our communities.”
Glad you think so, Anonymous Guy.
Funny thing about what’s happening in those aforementioned communities. So far the upset over police killing unarmed blacks hasn’t transcended to the issue of blacks killing other blacks in their communities. In 2019 the FBI reported 7,240 blacks murdered, hundreds of them unarmed or bystanders. Over 90 percent were murdered by other blacks.
In all the commotion from players marching and producing videos there hasn’t been a peep about this real systemic blight on black families. The sole concern has been police killings. And the white population of America and Canada.
Has Pandora’s Box been opened in all these sports over racism and Covid? Will the public forgive and forget being vilified? Can sports get back to its profitable ways? We’re about to find out.
Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster . The best-selling author of Cap In Hand is also a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada's top television sports broadcaster, his next book Personal Account with Tony Comper will be available on BruceDowbigginBooks.ca this fall.