Some Unamazing Thoughts on the Beginning of the National Football League Season, Though I Do Manage to Mention Sophocles' Oedipus at Colonus

The National Football League regular season gets underway today. Well, it actually started Thursday when New England's offense got the better of a confused looking Steelers D.

The talk coming out of the game was about Pittsburgh's sideline having the Patriots radio broadcast in the coaching staff's headsets. More allegations of New England's dirty tricks. Apparently it is a common occurrence for the visiting team at Gillette Stadium.

For a diehard Seahawks fan it was a tough way to begin the season: all the flashbacks of Malcolm Butler's Super Bowl interception; the repulsive Bob Kraft in hipster footwear hoisting the Lombardi trophy to the rapturous Foxborough masses; the tight camera shots of handsome Tom Brady; Julian Edelman making catch after catch. It was like sitting down to a several-course meal, and all the plates and bowls set before me were filled with steaming piles of shit.

But this morning hopefully things will turn out to be more appetizing. As a devotee of the Sunday ritual of television gazing, I usual begin each new season with trepidation. The thought is, "Oh, no. Here we go again." Seventeen weeks, plus the playoffs, from the end of summer to the beginning of winter, usually on my mattress on the floor, a newspaper or printout in hand, filled with stress and moments of ecstasy.

Sadly, it is what qualifies as communal activity in our digital age, a time when our political structures have been zombified by neoliberalism; it also connects us to the roots of our Western "civilization." Let us then call it essential activity.

I read a newspaper that features the writings of superb football reporter, Ken Belson; I get Dave Zirin's blog posts in my email inbox; and while I let my sub to Sports Illustrated lapse, I'll still pick up one now and then at the magazine rack of my local grocery store. That being said, I enter this season unprepared. I have followed very little the off-season and preseason developments, for instance, the huge loss of status of commissioner Goodell as a result of Tom Brady's Deflategate triumph in federal court. (I know enough to conclude that it is good for the players; the league office can no longer capriciously discipline individuals.)

The reason for my lack of preparation is the painful way the season ended. The Seahawks should be repeat champions with Marshawn Lynch the MVP of the last Super Bowl. The fact that they are not and the despised, corrupt Patriots are the world champions is a wound that has not healed.

But it makes this season one of incredible drama for Seahawks fans. This is most likely Marshawn Lynch's last year in Seattle. Once Beast Mode goes, the Seahawks will have a completely different personality; it will be a different team. So this is the year that the wound has to be healed. I liken it to Oedipus at Colonus. Can we come to terms with our past failures and be absolved by Zeus?

We'll find out. The morning is appropriately overcast and rainy. I am going to shelve plans for an eight-mile pre-game run and bunker in for the first NFL Sunday.

In Praise of Marshawn Lynch: Dave Zirin Contrasts Beast Mode with NFL Commissioner Goodell

I have always felt a connection to Marshawn Lynch. It probably has something to do with the fact that we both went to Berkeley. Fortunately, the year or two I was in the habit of watching college football on Saturdays (usually hung over) corresponded to the time when Lynch was running for the Golden Bears. What impressed me about Lynch in those Cal games was his speed, his power -- yes, absolutely -- but more than anything it was his ability to absorb huge hits and keep on going. Remarkable, noteworthy, unusual.

I loathed the Holmgren/Hasselbeck Seahawks. So when Pete Carroll made a trade with Buffalo to bring Lynch to town my opinion of the team did a 180. I was quickly made a believer in the franchise.

Make no mistake. Marshawn Lynch turned the franchise around, helped remake it into something entirely unique. That's why it is nice to see Beast Mode getting the superstar treatment in the run up to Super Bowl Sunday. So powerful is his starshine that it has nearly erased everything else this week -- Tom Brady, Deflategate, Bob Kraft's Patriots, you name it. It has been all Marshawn.

It will be interesting to see if the baleful brainiac Belichik will bite down on the hook and structure his defensive game plan around stopping Lynch. This is what most teams do. And this is the brier patch which Seattle loves to lead opponents; it is how Seattle wins games. With defenses keying on Lynch, Russell Wilson makes the big moves. Russell Wilson might not be your classic drop-back passer, but he is brilliant running an offense where he is not the main attraction.

Speaking of main attraction, Dave Zirin latest piece, Marshawn Lynch and Roger Goodell: Compare and Contrast, is a brilliant exploration of the relative merits to the National Football League offered by its chief executive and one of its star players. I quote it in its entirety.

 Go Seahawks! To Victory!

Marshawn Lynch and Roger Goodell: Compare and Contrast 

Dave Zirin on January 27, 2015 - 8:43 PM ET

Seattle Seahawks running back Marshawn Lynch and NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell have something glaringly obvious in common. They both struggle mightily speaking on camera. That, however, is where the similarities end.

Marshawn Lynch, who thousands of people pay to watch play on Sundays, earned a base salary of $6 million last year.* Roger Goodell, who no fan would put down money to do anything other than perhaps be hooked up to a lie detector, made $44 million.

Marshawn Lynch is financially forced by the league to talk to the media, ideally to mouth the same clichés every other player is hardwired to repeat. He spoke at the Super Bowl Media Day this week and twenty-nine times repeated seven words that speak the truth of a league that demands players to double as corporate pitchmen: “I’m here so I won’t get fined.” If Lynch hadn’t made an appearance, he would have faced a gobsmacking $500,000 fine.

Roger Goodell is under no obligation to talk to the public, even though he oversees a league that has received billions in corporate welfare and whose central office is designated by the federal government as a tax-free nonprofit. As Richard Sherman, Marshawn Lynch’s teammate who has never been uncomfortable in front of a microphone, said, Lynch should not be obligated to speak “any more than the commissioner is obligated to speak.”

Marshawn Lynch has also been fined $20,000 by the NFL for grabbing his crotch, which is Lynch’s customary move when he scores a particularly explosive touchdown. Roger Goodell’s league sells a framed collage that includes the very image of Lynch tugging his testicles for $149.95. While Lynch writes checks, Goodell profits on both ends, while also perhaps grabbing his junk.

Marshawn Lynch, who it’s been theorized by friends has a social anxiety disorder, is mocked mercilessly by the media for his lack of desire to speak to them and his inability to sound like Peyton Manning. Roger Goodell, whose only disorder is inordinate blushing when challenged, receives no such casual barbs. He has actually felt some media heat this year over his years of covering up cases of domestic violence. Yet despite every misstep, he was still praised by on a primetime NFL playoff broadcast by announcers Al Michaels and Cris Collinsworth for his “integrity” and making domestic violence “part of the national conversation.” (This is, as I’ve written elsewhere, like praising Goldman Sachs for making corporate greed “part of the national conversation.”)

Richard Sherman put it perfectly in a piece he wrote this week for Sports Illustrated. “Under Goodell the league continues to put players like Marshawn Lynch in a position to be mocked by the media, which seems to get a kick out of seeing people struggle on camera. As teammates we’re angry because we know what certain people do well and we know what they struggle with. Marshawn’s talking to the press is the equivalent of putting a reporter on a football field and telling him to tackle Adrian Peterson.”

Sherman also pointed out exactly why so many players—particularly black players—hold a hostility toward an older contemptuous sports media, writing, “Some of the same people slamming Marshawn for not talking are just as likely to condemn the Browns’ Andrew Hawkins and Johnson Bademosi for protesting police brutality with T-shirts. They want to hear us speak, but only if we’re saying something they want to hear.”

There is one last similarity between both men: they both generate gobs of money for the thirty-one billionaires that run the league. The difference however is that Marshawn Lynch will be thrown on the scrapheap as soon as he no longer has the ability to perform. Roger Goodell continues to be paid long after he has proven in practice that he is a liability to players, their families, and the future of the league. I would love to be able to pull off a “Lucy and Ricky” scenario and for one week, start Roger Goodell at running back for the Seahawks and put Marshawn Lynch in the Commissioner’s chair. Seattle would surely suffer. The league, however, would register an immediate improvement. If nothing else, on game day, we’d all get a whole lotta Skittles.

NFL Week 22: Super Bowl XLIX

Sunday's Super Bowl in Arizona is about as classic a match-up as anyone could hope for. On one side you have the apotheosis of the corporate machine led by the evil genius Bill Belichik and his telegenic, super-model-marrying, duplicitous matinee idol quarterback Tom Brady. On the other side you have the young, fresh, beautiful, black free men led by the sprightly Pete Carroll and his acerbic, cerebral cornerback Richard Sherman.

Sherman made news when he accused National Football League commissioner Roger Goodell of a conflict of interest. Answering a question about Deflategate (also referred to as "Ballghazi"), Sherman said don't expect any punishment to be forthcoming when Goodell is hanging out socially with Patriots owner Robert Kraft. According to ESPN's Jeff Legwold ("Carroll: Sherman expressing opinion"):

Sunday, shortly after the Seahawks' arrival in Arizona, Sherman said he didn't believe the Patriots would be punished if they were found to have adjusted the air pressure in 11 footballs prior to last Sunday's AFC Championship Game.

Sherman cited a photograph that included Goodell and Kraft from a party at Kraft's house the night before the AFC Championship Game, a photo that was then posted to the Patriots' official Twitter account: 

"Will they be punished? Probably not," Sherman said. "Not as long as Robert Kraft and Roger Goodell are still taking pictures at their respective homes. You talk about conflict of interest. As long as that happens, it won't affect them at all. Nothing will stop them."

Dave Zirin picked up on Sherman's comment in a blog post yesterday, "Patriots Balls and Christopher Hitchens":

This conflict of interest is very real. As GQ’s Gabriel Sherman wrote in a damning long read that dropped this week about Goodell, Kraft is apparently known among NFL execs as “the assistant commissioner.” Even this description is charitable. It’s less the relationship between an assistant and a commissioner as much as it is one between a hand and the bottom aperture of a puppet. Bob Kraft, in addition to being just a “friend of Goodell,” has been the great defender of Goodell’s stunning $44 million salary. He was Goodell’s first defender during the release of information that showed that the NFL cared very little about domestic violence until tape went public of Ray Rice striking his wife Janay. He also, according to GQ, orchestrated Goodell’s disastrous defense of the NFL’s domestic violence policies, in conjunction with CBS network who was about to start airing its lucrative Thursday night NFL telecasts. Kraft ordered Goodell to speak to CBS and grant an interview to, in Kraft’s insistence “a woman,” who ended up being Norah O’Donnell. Goodell complied.

Drew Magary wrote, in analyzing the league’s deep concern with the optics of this, “[Y]ou can see that NFL higher-ups were far more concerned with LOOKING like they were handling domestic violence appropriately than actually doing so (cut to Eli Manning in a No More ad looking like you just told him that we’ve run out of cupcakes).

This relationship with Bob Kraft and the mere appearance of impropriety that marks how Goodell handles every issue that crosses his desk, tells its own story about why he must go. A reckless incompetence now defines everything he touches, whether it is his enforcing of the rules, the health and safety of players, or his dealings with the union. Instead of acting—like his predecessor Paul Tagliabue—as even the mildest of checks on the grasping of the bosses, he is their id unleashed. Instead of listening to players, Goodell is so comically distanced from the reality of his own ineptitude that he has become the sports version of Yertle the Turtle.

Zirin hopes that Deflategate proves to be Goodell's undoing. I think Sherman's comments will prove to be on the mark. Nothing will happen. Already the media has moved on to former Seahawks now Patriots cornerback Brandon Browner  and his statement that New England should go after the less-than-100%-healthy Sherman and free safety Earl Thomas and try to knock them out of the game.

And I'm sure this is what the Patriots will do. I was a die-hard 49ers fan in the Bill Walsh era. In the 1980s a premiere rivalry in the National Football League was between the San Francisco 49ers and the New Giants. Bill Parcells coached the Giants; his defensive coordinator was Bill Belichik. Belichik's tenure as chief architect of those defenses led by Lawrence Taylor, Leonard Marshall, Harry Carson and Carl Banks established him in the league. Belichik had a reputation among the 49ers for encouraging cheap shots, dirty play.

Of course I never forgot this. And subsequently I always considered Belichik teams to be the foulest and most conniving.

Who could root for a Belichik team particularly with his philosophy that all players are expendable? Isn't the point about giving your allegiance to a team is that there is something special, unique, transcendent about the players? Not according to Belichik. To Belichik players are just so many interchangeable widgets; that is why free agency bulks so large on his teams (think Randy Moss).

Consider it this way: Russell Wilson would never start on a Belichik team. Too small. Maybe, if Brady went down, Wilson might see some time in relief, but never would he be given run of the offense. Also consider Belichik's disdain for star running backs. Belichik believes running backs are a dime a dozen, easily replaced and largely indistinguishable. He never would allow a free, package-grabbing man like Marshawn Lynch the all-important role he has on the Seahawks offense.

What makes Pete Carroll the polar opposite of Bill Belichik is that rather than scheming and cheating and searching for any and every advantage in the X's and O's Carroll is sensitive to the intangibles, the spirit world. Carroll sees and knows that athletics are about the organic unity of team play, positive energy, a will to win and the human spirit. Belichik's corporate slavery is the exact opposite.

Then there is the issue of race. The Seahawks are a black team full of young black men who are incredible leaders. I speak here of Kam Chancellor, Richard Sherman, Earl Thomas, Marshawn Lynch, Russell Wilson. Free men. Black men. The Patriots are team with more whites than most. Tom Brady, Rob Gronkowski, Danny Amendola, Julian Edelman, Rob Ninkovich.

Carroll has complained in the past that the Seahawks are singled out by the league, and that is why they are called for so many penalties. I think it is because the Seahawks represent a threat to the institutional racism of corporate America.

So for the future, for free men, for Black Lives Matter, for athleticism over trickery, for human spirit over corporate dominance, for Carroll over Belichik, for Richard Sherman over Tom Brady -- take the Seahawks!

Present-Day Politics as Seen Through the Prism of the NFL Conference Championship Games

A few quick hits this morning. First, from yesterday's Water Cooler by Lambert Strether:

From the Department of How Stupid Do They Think We Are? As Matt Stoller has shown, the growth of income inequality under Obama is greater than that under Bush. And only now, when there’s not a snowball’s chance in hell of their “proposals” passing — very unlike 2008-2009, when the Democrats had the House, the Senate, the greatest orator of our time in the White House, a mandate for “hope and change,” and their boot on the thoroughly discredited Republican neck — the Democrats are 
closing the barn door after the horse is gonecoming all over populist, while simultaneously trying to fast track TPP with Republican help. Help me.

Well said. Second, from Dave Zirin's blog post yesterday, "Deflated Balls for Some, Miniature American Flags for Others!":

Contrast the faith people project onto sports with the utter absence of credulity we give politics. Why were people talking more about deflated balls than President Obama’s State of the Union address? I imagine it’s because unless you are someone who sees Beltway politics as a form of entertainment, or a DC insider consuming and analyzing every last optic, you would have to be Shirley Temple to feel like anything said by the president, no matter how artfully articulated, connects with your life. We were told the economy is booming, yet household income for the middle and working classes is still far below pre-2008 crisis levels because of stagnant wages. We were told that a tax on the 1 percent and free childcare was on the agenda, yet a hostile Congress makes those promises about as realistic as hoverboards for all. We were told that the US involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan are over, yet the facts—and boots—on the ground tell a different story. We were told that it was time to come together and see both sides on questions of police violence, yet protesters were being targeted in Ferguson while the president was speaking.

Meanwhile, we saw the Patriots kick the snot out of the Colts and we saw the Seahawks have as wild a fourth-quarter comeback as I’ve ever seen to beat the Green Bay Packers. We want to believe that this—if nothing else—represents a tangible truth. Frightening as it is to consider, sports might be our last collective tether to a recognizable reality. If people feel like Bill Belichick has taken that away, it will affect his legacy and this sport, more than a thousand instances of Roger Goodell looking like he has the moral compass of a feral raccoon. It’s sad. It’s pathetic. But it’s also understandable. We can only work with the world we’re given, and it’s a place where the trust in institutions of power is more deflated that any damn balls. 

Absolutely.

Since the return to work from the holiday weekend talk has centered on the improbable, historic NFC Championship comeback of the home-team Seahawks. Coworkers come up and tell me their experiences. I listen. One guy I work with told me the story about how he and his wife were watching the game and finally the wife had had enough; she couldn't take it anymore; Green Bay's domination seemed unbreakable; so she left to run errands. When she was out and about she heard shouts and wails of ecstasy coming from homes. Finally, she picked a random door, knocked and asked what was happening. A couple drinking Champagne told her to get inside quick. The Seahawks had just won in overtime.

The guy who heads the union where I work was back East for a conference with members of the local's executive board. They were in Atlanta waiting for a flight back to Seattle, watching the game at an airport bar when the Seahawks began their 4th quarter comeback. He said that they turned into a bunch of "little girls," crying, shrieking, jumping up and down.

A lot of different stories. One guy, a lineman, was working a call-out for a storm that was going on while the NFC Championship was being played. He ended up working a couple days straight, but he returned home for three hours to watch the game with his son, an authentic Seahawks helmet on the coffee table in front of the television.

Zirin is right, "Frightening as it is to consider, sports might be our last collective tether to a recognizable reality." It is frightening because all that collective passion that ties us together in community is part of a privately-held corporate behemoth (except for the Green Bay Packers), which, if I'm not mistaken, fits the definition of fascism.

But as another National Football League season draws to a close and Super Bowl XLIX beckons, I don't feel diminished by my part -- the many hours in front of the television being force fed wireless plans, Toyotas and Taco Bell -- because it is our primary reference, one that spans race and class and gender, in present-day society. The elemental effort of a Marshawn Lynch carrying half-a-dozen tacklers down the middle of the field or a Richard Sherman playing with one arm tucked against his ribs wiggling his fingers to try to get the sensation back while he continues to make tackles -- that seems real to me and to millions of others, a humanity that cannot be denied and buried beneath the enormous weight of a bloated, tottering, corrupt capitalist system.

As Zirin says, "We can only work with the world we’re given, and it’s a place where the trust in institutions of power is more deflated that any damn balls." U.S special forces are running black ops in over 100 countries, and the Obama administration is considering expansion of another sectarian Middle East war, which will lead to another failed state and more military expenditures. Eventually these chickens will come home to roost.

The political class is increasingly disconnected -- free floating -- from the people, the governed. The people have football, which is still honest. So your average person at least has a commitment to honesty, which is more than can be said about the political class. One can hope that when the masses decide to glance up from the television and cast their gaze upon the political class they will reject its dishonesty and bellicosity. But what is it going to take? And when is it going to happen?

I think we're going to find out in the next few years.

NFL Week 13: Goodell Caught Lying

Every year I travel down to California to spend Thanksgiving with my father. We run a local turkey trot at the community college and then spend the rest of the day snacking on chips and watching the NFL games.

This year was a treat because of the Seahawks-49ers match-up. Last season's NFC Championship game caused a brief "family feud" between the two of us -- my father thought Richard Sherman's post-game assertion of his superiority thuggish; I accused my father of being racist. The Thanksgiving evening rematch on national television provided an opportunity for me and my father to relive those events and approach the divisional rivalry with more reserve.

As it turned out, the game itself, as one-sided as it was, didn't generate much heat. It was a bitter, bilious Thanksgiving meal served cold to the San Francisco faithful. Seattle dominated in all aspects of play: the defense smothered Frank Gore and the impressive lineup of 49ers receivers, and Kaepernick never found a rhythm; while on offense, the great Marshawn Lynch piled up 100 yards on the ground and Russell Wilson scrambled and connected with receivers for over 200 yards.

All in all it was statement game and that statement was twofold: one, the Seattle defense is back to playoff form; and two, San Francisco is a franchise that has a lot of problems. A Raiders victory next week is not unthinkable.

Next week the shutdown Seattle D will be tested by Chip Kelly's hurry-up offense. Mark Sanchez repeatedly led the Eagles down the field to paydirt at the beginning of the game in Dallas against the Cowboys.

The Dallas D did not have an answer. Sanchez was never harried and LeSean McCoy cracked off huge runs. On offense the Cowboys were never able to establish a passing attack off the strong running of DeMarco Murray. That's how the Cowboys win: they pound the ball with Murray, and then Romo goes to the play-action pass. Murray was able to run effectively in the first half. But Romo was unable to connect to Witten or Dez Bryant. Then in the second half Dallas was too far behind to stick with its run-first offense. Romo is not the player he was; his bad back is a real limitation.

Given what I saw on Thanksgiving, it is not hard to imagine the Eagles in the NFC Championship game.

Somehow Rob Ryan's Saints defense shut them down in the playoffs last season. McCoy was held in check. If I remember correctly, the game-time temperature was in the low 20s;  I think it bothered Philadelphia, even though the Eagles had home field, more than New Orleans. So that is the ticket to stopping Chip Kelly's hurry-up: Stop LeSean McCoy and Darren Sproles and let Mark Sanchez try to beat you. I think Seattle should match up pretty well.

The bombshell of NFL Week 13 is not any victory on the gridiron but the reinstatement, announced yesterday, of Ray Rice by arbitrator Barbara S. Jones, a former federal district court judge.

The basis of Judge Jones' decision to reinstate Rice, as Ken Belson makes clear in an excellent frontpage account in today's paper, "Ray Rice Wins Reinstatement to N.F.L. in Arbitration," is that NFL commissioner Goodell punished Rice twice for the same incident. Initially, Goodell ruled Rice would have to serve a two-game suspension for knocking out his fiance, now wife, Janay in a hotel elevator. Then after video of the assault went viral, Goodell went back and ruled that Rice would be suspended indefinitely. The Baltimore Ravens followed suit by releasing him.

In order to make the indefinite suspension seem credible and not merely a capricious reaction to public outrage Goodell made two contentions: 1) that he never saw the video of Rice knocking out his honeybunch prior to his initial ruling, and 2) Rice misrepresented the incident in his disciplinarian hearing, calling it a slap.

Well, now we know, thanks to Judge Jones's decision, that Goodell lied in characterizing Rice's testimony as misleading. As Belson says,

In the Rice case, after his initial two-game ban drew the ire of fans and women’s groups who thought it minimized what had occurred, Mr. Goodell acknowledged a month later that he had “got it wrong.” He then announced a new policy in which first-time offenders in domestic violence cases would miss at least six games. Judge Jones, in her decision, noted that Mr. Goodell called Mr. Rice then to let him know that the six-game rule would not affect him because he had already been penalized. 

That promise was scrapped two weeks later, on Sept. 8., after the video of Mr. Rice punching Janay Palmer, who is now his wife, became public. That, in turn, led to the appeal by Mr. Rice. 

In her ruling, Judge Jones devoted considerable attention to what Mr. Rice actually said at the June 16 meeting with Mr. Goodell. She said that the commissioner, in his testimony at the arbitration hearing, recalled Mr. Rice telling him in June that he “slapped” Ms. Palmer. Other N.F.L. executives had similar recollections. 

Judge Jones noted that Mr. Goodell’s actual notes of the June 16 meeting were not detailed and did not contain the word “slap” but did contain the word “struck.” More persuasive, Judge Jones added, were the “detailed and careful notes” that Heather McPhee, a players union lawyer, took at the meeting. Those notes include Mr. Rice stating, in quotation marks: “And then I hit her.” 

Judge Jones noted that Ms. McPhee testified she used the quotation marks because those were Rice’s exact words.

If Goodell lied about what Rice said in his disciplinary hearing he's probably lying about when he saw the knockout video. As Belson notes, Goodell has problems:

Judge Jones’s ruling is hardly the last word in the Rice matter. Mr. Goodell’s handling of the suspension is also being investigated by Robert S. Mueller III, the former F.B.I. director, who was hired by the N.F.L. to find out what, among other things, the league knew about the graphic video of Mr. Rice and when. Mr. Goodell has insisted that he did not see that video before his initial meeting with Mr. Rice last June. If that turns out not to be true, the league’s owners, who have thus far stood behind Mr. Goodell, may take a dimmer view of his leadership.

At the very least, the Ray Rice and Adrian Peterson imbroglios have forced the NFL to relinquish its privileged status as the final arbiter on discipline. Judge Jones' ruling should put an end to that. As Juliet Macur points out in "Ray Rice Ruling Highlights Roger Goodell’s Missteps," the league office no longer has any credibility:

He threw out Rice’s two-game ban, and made it possibly for good. Yet what he might have thought was a good idea to appease the public has just left the league without ballast. Instead of a strong leader when the league needs it most, he has been an inconsistent and weak one. 

Goodell has made so many mistakes in the case that it is hard to keep track of them. He has been breaking the rules that he has been making up as he goes along. The owners either see that and don’t care because Goodell has made them so much money, or they continue to wear blinders.

*** 

The league is now at the mercy of arbitrators to clean up its messes. Another one next week will hear the case of Adrian Peterson, who was suspended at least until April 15 for hitting his 4-year-old son with a stick and leaving wounds. It is another chance for Goodell to fall even deeper into a hole that has now turned into a canyon.

Earlier in the month Dave Zirin, "Beyond the Drug Raids: Why the Feds Are Fed Up With the NFL," saw evidence that the vast criminal conspiracy that is the National Football League is no longer the sacred cow it once was in Washington D.C.:

Let’s be clear: the recent raid on five NFL teams by the Drug Enforcement Agency to see if teams were doubling as illegal painkiller dispensaries has little to do with concerns about how our nation’s Sunday heroes Novocain themselves for gridiron glory. The fact that the NFL and their teams of doctors and nurses give out prescription pills like Halloween candy and break out syringes to top off sessions of physical therapy has been public knowledge for over forty years. Player memoirs like the 1970s Out of their League, by Cardinal linebacker Dave Meggyesy, and Dallas Cowboys wide receiver Peter Gent’s semi-autobiographical bestseller North Dallas Forty, addressed such things with a nonchalant frankness bordering on the blasé. These practices are also discussed by former players with a shrug as just the price they pay for keeping the trains—those same trains carrying billions of dollars in revenue—running on schedule. Players tend to come from poverty and play an average of just three and a half years on largely non-guaranteed contracts. They will do what they have to do to get out there on Sunday, and teams will be only too happy to oblige. 

The real story here is that these raids happened at all. The NFL employs twenty-six full-time lobbyists and spends about $1.5 million per election cycle to make sure that the feds leave the league alone and no one looks too closely at how the sausages are made. Pro football is supposed to be an entity that operates in a magical constitution-free zone of antitrust exemptions and tax breaks, with numbing opiates in every locker. But those days appear to be as dead as playoff hopes in Oakland. 

A combination of the bumbling Clouseau-esque stewardship of NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, public pressure and a never-ending cascade of scandals has created a relationship between the NFL and the federal government described to me by a hill lobbyist as “something south of toxic.” In September they hired democratic operative Cynthia Hogan to head their lobbying operation in an effort at making their relationship with this administration at least better than poisonous, but this is beyond Cynthia Hogan. Hell, this is beyond Olivia Pope. The federal government is out for a chunk of Roger Goodell’s flesh and the evidence of this is there for anyone who cares to look. 

Over the last three months, we have seen the Federal Communications Commission—a body appointed by the Obama administration—both rescind the decades-old NFL blackout rule and threaten to ban the dictionary-defined slur that brands the Washington football team from being uttered over broadcast television. We have seen rage by public officials over how the NFL and especially Roger Goodell has ignored or even covered up issues of violence against women. We have seen Goodell again and again, whether in the Ray Rice domestic violence case or in his recent ruling on Adrian Peterson’s season-long suspension for hitting his child with a stick, careening from one crisis to the next, absent of a moral compass while thumbing his nose at the Players Association, public pressure or common sense. We have seen the open questioning on Capitol Hill of the NFL corporate office’s tax-free status, something estimated to save the league $10 million dollars a year—a move championed by now-retired Republican senator from Oklahoma Tom Coburn. We have also seen the unthinkable: senators asking the “Emperor has no clothes” question of why the NFL gets any special treatment at all. 

When politicians see the once bullet-proof NFL shield, with all of its cultural capital, as a target for scoring easy political points, it speaks volumes all by itself. This humiliating DEA raid is really just a dash a salt on an already simmering stew. Goodell’s league has long carried itself like the sporting equivalent of Goldman-Sachs; simply too big to fail. Those days of anti-accountability are over. Roger Goodell and the collection of owners that pull his string are failing at the most fundamental task of a league built on the broken bodies of its players: keeping people’s attention firmly focused on the field. Now people—and politicians—are looking at what is behind the curtain and scrutiny does them no favors. It is perfectly understandable why many would see conflict between the federal government and the powers that be in the world of football as the Kang vs. Kodos of political battles. But this is a sport that is being victimized less by big government than by their own arrogance and negligence. Whether we are talking about the covered-up dangers of youth football, the plantation economy of the NCAA, or the corporate culture of the NFL, the feds are not done with the people who run this sport. Not by a longshot.

I am doubtful that Goodell is in a death spiral. The Mueller report will likely be a skillful graywash. The power of the league office will be curtailed but not so much that the owners will force Goodell onto his sword.

As for Ray Rice, I will be surprised if any team signs him this season. He is too toxic. There is the "No More" ad campaign, which strikes me as fresh and effective. We are still -- thanks to the popularity of the NFL -- a TV nation. Ray Rice will have to bide his time.

In the "Super Bowl preview" match-up tomorrow between the Patriots and the Packers at Lambeau Field, I like Green Bay. Revis and Browner have been touted as the best cornerback tandem in the league this year. My sense is that Jordy Nelson and Randall Cobb will beat them, allowing Aaron Rodgers to connect over the top. Plus, there are the screens to Eddy Lacy. The Packers defense is good enough to slow down Brady. In a scoring contest between Rodgers and Brady, take Rodgers.

The Best

Briefly, a few words on the dust-up created by Richard Sherman's post-game interview with Fox Sports Erin Andrews.

Sherman won the game for the Seahawks with less than a minute to play when he batted Kaepernick's pass away from Crabtree in the end zone and into the awaiting arms of Malcolm Smith. It was an amazing, athletic play. (I anticipated that Sherman would have a large role in beating San Francisco.)

For people to be outraged at Sherman, adrenalin rushing after sewing up the NFC Championship Game, calling out Crabtree as a punk and then proclaiming in full throat that he is the best reminds us of something that most of us are already well aware -- shallow, idiotic, race-based snobbery is alive and kicking in "The Greatest Nation on Earth."™

Read Tommy Tomlinson's "22 Thoughts About That Richard Sherman Interview." He's on the money. And then, for a more culturally nuanced critique, check out Dave Zirin's "Richard Sherman, Racial Coding and Bombastic Brainiacs," which appeared on his Edge of Sports blog for The Nation.

One commentator, Javier, on Zirin's blog hit it when he said, 

I’ve never seen the word thug be used to describe Brady’s behavior. In this season, he literally chased down league officials, yelled and cursed calling their decision BS, imagine if at this moment Erin Andrews seeks the interview? Brady is allowed to intimidate the officials, but his character isn’t questioned.

White privilege, baby. The big American bugaboo. That's why I love the Seahawks so much. In this lily white corporate nirvana -- Boeing, Starbucks, Microsoft, Amazon -- that is the Emerald City, Seattle's transcendent professional football team is young and overwhelmingly black.

There is nothing but love for Richard Sherman in this town. We know who is he. We know he is smart, honest, tough -- sensitive, too; a great competitor. He is the personification of what makes the Seahawks new, different.

NFL Season 2012

Dave Zirin has a good blog post today about the irredeemable aspects of the NFL in light of what Martin Luther King Jr. called "the giant triplets of racism, militarism, and economic injustice." Zirin is particularly enlightening on the failure of the League's Rooney Rule:

Finally, there is the issue most closely tied to Dr. King's legacy: the "dream" of living in a colorblind world where people are judged by the content of their character. To say that the NFL's deeply conservative all-white ownership doesn't exercise racial prejudice is like saying Florida doesn't suffer from sunshine. This past off-season, the league had eight head coaching positions to fill. All eight were filled by white hires. Despite the NFL's much-celebrated Rooney Rule, which requires the interviewing of “minority head coaching candidates”, the league is down to four head coaches of color including Latino Ron Rivera. That means only 9% of coaches are African American in a league where 70% of players are African American: the greatest disparity in a decade.

The 2012 NFL regular season opened September 5 with the Cowboys beating the Giants in the Meadowlands. From that point forward until last night when Baltimore beat New England in the AFC Championship Game I calculate that I watched approximately 219 hours of televised NFL action, or over nine days (which will be nine-and-a-half days after the Super Bowl). For the most part all I use my 13-inch TV for anymore is to watch the NFL. I saw almost every snap of every Seahawks game. But the pitiful part of the story is that it could have been worse. I don't have cable. So I didn't have access, unless I wanted to go to a bar, to Monday Night or Thursday Night Football. Minus the two Seahawks games this season played on those nights, and available on broadcast TV to me as a viewer in the home market, this would have added an additional 96 hours, or four more days in front of the idiot box.

What kind of idolatry is this? We spend two weeks of solid worship from the end of summer to the beginning of winter soaking up images of athletes moving quickly in colorful uniforms; images sandwiched between images of smart phones and fried chicken and Mercedes. Do we feel better? I don't know. Sometimes I do. But a lot of the time I feel stressed-out. Mostly I am passive: reclining on my mattress on the floor, a pillow under my head; maybe reading a TomDispatch article I've printed off the web; a solitary figure; a bachelor, alone, staying true to boyhood ghosts.

NFL Televisual Ecstasy

One note has to be struck in today's Seahawk victory song.  After his defense allowed the Bears into overtime, Russell Wilson methodically, skillfully rammed the ball down Chicago's throat.  It was something to behold a gassed Brian Urlacher.  The celebrated (but aging) Bears defense had nothing left.  Wilson's passing on the move and rushing yards, along with some fine receiving by Sidney Rice and Golden Tate, won the game.  I went from the slough of despond to, if not the pinnacle, the third floor of ecstasy.  And this is what makes the NFL unique; it regularly delivers a range of emotions.  For a mediated-saturated culture -- I look out my window now and can see a neighbor's big screen lit up with the afternoon Pittsburgh-Baltimore game -- that's saying something.

NBC opened coverage of Sunday Night Football with yesterday's murder-suicide: Kansas City Chief linebacker Javon Belcher murdered his wife and then drove to the Chiefs facility and shot himself in the head in front of Romeo Crennel.  Dave Zirin wrote that the NFL should have suspended play for the day.  At halftime Bob Costas said we need to think about why we have all these guns around.  I am so inured to this kind of violence that though I saw the headlines online I ignored them.  Repetition will do this.  (See Jill Lepore's New Yorker piece on the Trayvon Martin homicide from last spring.)