Tag Archives: NFL

Kirk Cousins Failed His Character Test, But the NFL Gives Him Its Highest Award for Character Anyway

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Vikings quarterback Kirk Cousins has been awarded the Bart Starr Award.  The award is sponsored by the NFL and the Christian group Athletes in Action and honors “active NFL players who demonstrate outstanding character, integrity and leadership in their football careers and personal lives.”

What an utterly absurd choice.

Source: Vikings.com

Yes indeed, Kirk Cousins is “clean-cut.” He doesn’t swear much. He stays out of jail. He goes to church, and talks about his faith a lot. Good for him. If that is all there was to “character” and “integrity,” the Bart Starr award would make perfect sense. 

But Cousins has also revealed a very selfish side, and that side can’t be ignored.

First, when COVID-19 was most dangerous because no vaccine or effective treatments had yet been developed, Cousins refused to mask and isolate. “If I die, I die,” the tough guy crowed. He thought it was all about him. Protecting vulnerable people all around him wasn’t on his radar.

Then, in the face of the worst pandemic in a century, a virus that has killed 6.86 million people worldwide, enough to fill the Vikings’ stadium about 94 times, Cousins refused to get a simple, safe, and effective COVID vaccine to protect his teammates, fans, and community from the deadly disease. 

About 77% of Minnesotans got the life-protecting vaccine. About 95% of Cousins’ fellow NFL players did too. Nearly 100% of “NFL personnel” got it. But not the selfish, self-righteous Cousins.

The results were predictable. Cousins ultimately got infected, needlessly endangered others around him in the process, and wasn’t there for his team when it needed him. What a “team-first,” “high-character” guy.

Source: USA Today’s For the Win

The NFL didn’t seriously punish Cousins for his dangerous self-centeredness. Instead, it gave him its highest award for “character, integrity, and leadership.”

Keep in mind, players who use cannabis, an action that hurts no one, routinely get suspended and scolded by the NFL. Players who peacefully and silently protest racism and brutality during the National Anthem, which hurts no one and brings visibility to an important issue, get punished and scolded by the NFL. But players who knowingly put their teammates, fans, and community in grave danger get showered with praise for their character. 

In his award acceptance speech Cousins said:

“To the degree of how one responds to the tragedies of life and what one does to make a positive difference in the lives of others serves as a true measure of character and achievement.”

Cousins recently lived through one of the most profound “tragedies of life” any of us have encountered. He lived through nearly seven million people suffocating to death because they got infected with a highly contagious virus. Once the COVID vaccine was developed, Cousins had his chance to “make a positive difference in the lives of others.” About 95% of NFL players passed their character test. Cousins failed his.

Did the Vikings and NFL Just Blacklist Another Left-Leaning Player?

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I’m not a great NFL offensive line talent evaluator, but I’m told a player named J.C. Tretter has had himself a fine eight-year career as an NFL center. 

At the same time, the center position just happens to be a chronic weakness of the Vikings.  First round draft choice Garrett Bradbury has been a huge disappointment, which particularly limits their passing game and endangers their skittish franchise quarterback. The Vikings don’t appear to have a good Plan B to replace Bradbury.  

The good news, it seemed, was that Mr. Tretter had interest in coming to Minnesota. But alas, according to Sports Illustrated (SI) the interest was not reciprocated by the Vikings’ front office:

The former Browns center, one of the best, most durable players at his position over the past five seasons, had interest in playing football in 2022. After being released by Cleveland in the spring, Tretter and his representation looked around to see if they could find him a new team in free agency. He told Sports Illustrated’s Alex Prewitt that his list of ideal destinations included the Panthers, Cowboys, and Vikings. Tretter cheered for the Vikings as a kid and felt that playing for them would “put a bow on (his) childhood.”

Despite having a major need at center due to Garrett Bradbury’s struggles, the Vikings apparently never returned his call. They declined to comment for the SI story. Minnesota wasn’t the only one, though; per the story, “none of the seven teams that his camp contacted reciprocated his interest.”

So Tretter, feeling at peace with his career, announced his retirement on Thursday.


Now, I’m certainly open to the possibility that Tretter was too beat up to play any more, though he denies that. But why wouldn’t the Vikings, or any other NFL team, at least conduct a physical and do some diagnostic scans? That refusal to even investigate his health just doesn’t pass the smell test.

I’m also open to the possibility that Tretter, at the ripe old age of 31, had no more gas in the tank. But offensive lineman frequently pay well into their thirties, and just last year Tretter still had plenty of game left in him, according to statistics compiled by Cleveland Browns blogger Barry Shuck.

With the 2021 season, Tretter played 1,038 snaps and allowed only one sack. His Pro Football Focus grade this past year was 78.7 and was ranked the #6 center out of 39 candidates.

So what could have caused an accomplished veteran like Tretter to get the cold shoulder from the Vikings and every other NFL team’s front office?  Some, such as Tretter’s former teammate Joel Bitonio, make a very convincing case that Tretter, an Ivy League (Cornell) graduate, has been effectively blackballed by the NFL because he was an outspoken two-term President of the NFL Players Association (NFLPA), the labor union that represents players in negotiations with the NFL’s billionaire owners on issues such as pay, benefits, workplace conditions, racial equity, health, and safety.

“When you have a guy that’s top-five, top-10 at center in the league and he’s not on a roster, you know, and he’s the NFLPA president and maybe some of the owners don’t appreciate what he brings to the table on certain topics when he’s trying to protect player safety and things of that nature, it seems a little suspicious to me,” Bitonio said, via Mary Kay Cabot of the Cleveland Plain Dealer. “But, again, I don’t know what’s going on behind closed doors. I don’t know what his conversations have been with teams and stuff, but just from an outside perspective usually players that are close to the top of their game get picked up. Teams want to win in this league. So it’s an interesting topic, for sure.”

Mike Florio, an attorney and NFL analyst for NBC, profootballtalk.com, and KFAN radio in Minnesota, agrees that it is very possible:

Would it be crazy to think that owners are shying away from Tretter because he has become an agitator to the oligarchs? Nope. That’s another reason why high-profile (and highly-compensated) quarterbacks should be more involved in union leadership. They’re far less likely to be blackballed, and they’re far more likely to take command of the rank and file if/when a line must be drawn in the sand — even if it means a work stoppage.

For now, it makes sense to pay attention to what happens with Tretter. If the goal is to keep him out of the league because he helps run the union, ignoring it makes it easier for the owners to pull it off.

kluwe_censored

Keep in mind, the NFL and the Vikings have a history here.  As I have written on this blog, there are strong arguments that both the Vikings and the NFL engaged in blacklisting others — racial equity champion quarterback Colin Kaepernick and gay rights champion punter Chris Kluwe — who dared to speak their minds about what the NFL considers to be “political issues.”

Interestingly, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell had no concerns with former Vikings center Matt Birk, who was an outspoken advocate of banning abortion long before he started his gaffe-filled run in Minnesota politics. Birk’s position could have been considered by the NFL to be “controversial,” given that surveys show that two-thirds of the nation opposes banning abortion.

But the NFL not only didn’t blacklist Birk, it hired him as a top executive, Director of Player Development, after his playing career was done. The NFL owners’ political leanings are in full view here.

Again, keep in mind, when the analytics publication Pro Football Focus (PFF) ranked the top half of centers in the NFL, they put Tretter near the very top, at number five. PFF didn’t even list the Vikings current starter Garrett Bradbury in the top half of options.

Yet Bradbury, who Vikings Head Coach Kevin O’Connell continues to question, will be the Vikings starter again this year, and Tretter apparently can’t even get his phone call returned by the Vikings front office.

The Vikings’ billionaire owners Mark and Zygi Wilf love to assure long-suffering fans that they will do whatever it takes to bring a Super Bowl Championship to Minnesota, the state that paid half a billion dollars for a sports palace that has caused the value of the Wilf’s NFL franchise to skyrocket by over a billion dollars.

Unless, apparently, that means employing players who advocate for racial, gay, and worker rights.

We Have Every Reason To Expect a Lot More from the NFL

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There’s at least one more level to the Jon Gruden disaster that NFL fans should consider about the league’s remarkable influence. Like many other enormous corporations the NFL, selling a slick, bristling mix of testosterone and patriotism, ducks away from anything with a whiff of political conflict.

I concede, as others who know him personally have, that I’m stunned that a guy like Gruden who has been a high-profile media/cultural presence for over 20 years, regularly giving live interviews, chewing up air time as a TV analyst and obliging all the other requests for personal contact that go with being a football celebritry … could conceal his essential meat-headedness so long and so well. I suspect he had help. His is another example of how well powerful systems, in this case, the almighty NFL, can throw a PR cocoon around people and project to the public only the parts of its culture that serve its business interests … until they don’t.

Las Vegas Raiders: Jon Gruden faked coronavirus to players, report

Two Gruden compadres, ex-Gophers star and former NFL coach Tony Dungy and his ESPN partner Mike Tirico, both black, are in a bad spot for defending Gruden about his “michellin [sic] tires” description of another black guy’s lips. That coming the day before the New York Times dropped the bomb(s) about Gruden calling the NFL commissioner a “faggot”, ripping the league’s concussion protocols, (in other words, Gruden’s pro-concussion) and trading nudie pictures of cheerleaders. All of which is, y’know, really classy stuff.

My suspicion is that while Dungy and Tirico and dozens if not hundreds of other NFL “leaders” may have been surprised by Gruden’s racist imagery, they aren’t as unfamiliar with his other boy’s club stupidity.

So that’s Gruden. A reckless high-profile meathead, now out the $60 million remaining on his contract.

But it’s the NFL itself that should be held to greater account and responsibility than it ever is. Given its footprint, we have good rights to expect a lot more from this monolith.

The Gruden e-mails were leaked from a (way too) long-running investigation of the toxic (i.e. meathead) culture inside the team formerly known as the Washington Redskins. A company where we already know from law suits the team’s executives treated its cheerleaders like Vegas escorts and, yup, traded nudie pictures of them changing outfits.

Redskins Cheerleaders In Town for Calendar Shoot • VRAC's Costa Rica Blog

The trouble is that the NFL is not coming clean on that investigation. It is making no promises that it will reveal everything it has found out about the Redskins and others who had contact with the team. (“Confidentiality”, you know.) It is in effect protecting the team’s owner, a guy regularly reviled by sportswriters, players and fans as a (very wealthy) toxic idiot.

To anyone interested in a deeper dive into NFL culture I strongly recommend, “Big Game” by New York Times Magazine writer Mark Leibovich for an inside-the-suites sense of who says what to who when it’s more or less just them — peer billionaires — talking. (To his enormous credit, Leibovich burned up all the access his name and the Times brand afforded him to tell a story the average sports writer only dares hint at.) The NFL owners club is a remarkable collection of avaricious gargoyles. One where guys like the Vikings’ Mark and Zygi Wilf and Arthur (Home Depot) Blank of the Atlanta Falcons come off as comparatively rational.

But the level where this Gruden idiocy touches the country’s perilous moment is where the NFL — arguably one of the most popular and therefore influential organizations/corporations in the country — could and should use Gruden’s buffoonish racism and sexism to make unambiguous statements to its fans, which is to say just about everyone in the country.

The NFL could and should be a leader among other giant corporations in taking stark stands against belligerent stupidity like racism (which it is sort of good at in a lipservice/signage kind of way, considering 70% of its players are black) and sexism (where it has a long ways to go, despite promoting Breast Cancer Awareness Month with pink shoes), but also right now … for … wait for it … COVID vaccinations.

The league has recently been running in-game PSAs pushing cancer and mental health awareness screenings, etc. Players and coaches appear giving quick testimonials. That’s great.

But what, I ask, would be the effect of a dozen or so top current and former stars, coaches and league executives stepping up to a camera and telling pro football’s millions (and millions) of fans to get vaccinated … for the sake of other people — like the season ticket holders sitting next to them — if not themselves? In order to put this grinding pandemic behind us once and for all?

I seriously doubt the league’s TV ratings or ad revenue would suffer an iota.

The problem for the big, powerful, macho NFL, as it is for every other giant public entity, is that racism and cancer are kind of the easy stuff. They have no serious public, political advocates. (And I’m not forgetting Colin Kaepernick’s protests against police violence, and how the league effectively blackballed him before paying him off to avoid a certain-to-be-nightmarish public trial.)

But COVID vaccination, as a consequence of being made “political” by belligerent partisans, many of whom love football more than life itself, is terrifying territory for the NFL. (Airlines resisting vaccination mandates for passengers are another prime example of failure of true “leadership”.) It’s appalling how heavily-to-tightly-managed entities, especially those controlled by a small cluster of well-heeled egos turn into shuddering eunuchs at the thought of riling just an ugly faction of its consumer base.

How best to put it? Shrinking from conflict over something as valid, real and life-protecting as a vaccine is not what I’d call, manly, brave, courageous or patriotic. It’s more like cowardly, and meatheaded.

Unvaccinated Athletes Are “Team First?”

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Two of the things that are most celebrated about our elite athlete heroes are “always puts team first” and “always respects the fans.”  How often have we heard such gushing clichés in sports journalism and chatter?  It seems nothing is more celebrated and revered than proving loyalty to fans and team.

Yet when it comes to COVID-19 vaccinations, a small but significant group of NFL players are refusing to say whether they’re vaccinated, which presumably means that most of them are not vaccinated. 

Three of the most important members of the Minnesota Vikings fall into that category — quarterback Kirk Cousins, wide receiver Adam Thielen, and safety Harrison Smith.  These are not just any players.  This is the Vikings’ highest paid player, their beloved over-achieving homie, and their longest serving player who has been selected for five Pro Bowls.

Last September, when asked about COVID-19, Cousins was cavalier about a disease that has killed an estimated 3 million people worldwide.  Here is what Cousins told podcaster Kyle Brandt, when Brandt asked an impressively difficult to evade question: “On a spectrum of one – masks are stupid and you’re all a bunch of lemmings – and ten is ‘I’m not leaving my master bathroom for the next 10 years. Where do you land?”

“I’m not going to call anybody stupid for the trouble it could get me in,” Cousins responded. “But I’m about a .0001.”


In the local sports news coverage and talk I’m consuming, I’m mostly hearing defense of athletes making the decision to forgo getting vaccinations, which have proven remarkably safe and effective after over 3 billion doses worldwide. I’m paraphrasing, but I’m hearing a lot of this kind of thing from fans, analysts, and journalists about unvaccinated NFL players, even from people who have vaccinated themselves:

“It’s their body, so how dare anyone question their personal decision!” 

“They’re young and in prime condition, so I competely understand why they wouldn’t bother.” 

“How can the NFL suits punish them for their personal or religious decision?” 

Explanatory Note: The alleged “punishment” is that the NFL has some pretty basic public health restrictions for unvaccinated players.  As I understand them, they can’t eat with the rest of the vaccinated team, don’t have as much freedom to be in crowds when traveling, need to wear masks in many situations, and can be fined for violating the public health protocols.  Quite responsibly, the NFL is trying to limit spread from these unvaccinated players, but many players and fans view this as punishment.


Team First?

But hold on, what about that all-important “always puts team first” standard that we constantly spotlight when it comes to our pedestaled athletes? 

To be clear, putting yourself at risk of getting sick or quarantined means putting yourself at risk of not being there for your team. Would we be forgiving if an athlete insisted on engaging in other types o risky behaviors that threatens their ability to be present for their teammates at practices or game day, such as bull-riding, motor cross racing, free solo climbing, or chronic binge-drinking?

And remember, this is an infectious disease that often spreads asymptomatically, unbeknownst to the spreader.  So when tough talkin’ Kirk “If I Die, I Die” Cousins risks infection, remember that means that he also is selfishly putting unvaccinated teammates at significant risk.  If any of those players miss a game or games, or get harmed, it will very likely hurt their team. If all three of them miss games, the problem for the team could quickly become catastrophic.

So much for “team first.”



Respecting The Fans?

And then what about that “always respects the fans” standard.  Even if the athlete is ignorant enough to feel safe being unvaccinated, what about the tens of thousands of adoring fans per week with whom they are sharing the buildings?  You know, the elated fans, many with their risk-regulating amygdala pickled, desperate to get as close to them as possible? You know, the people who make your extravagant salary and lifestyle possible? Is knowingly putting them at risk of being maimed or killed by the deadliest virus in a century really “respecting the fans?”

“Yeah, but players shouldn’t be forced to be vaccinated,” say the athlete worshipping journalists, analysts, and fans.  I hear this one a lot. That goes without saying. It’s a “straw man,” an extreme argument that virtually no one is making, but is trotted out because it’s easy and popular to knock down.

But I’m not talking about mandating vaccinations, and neither is anybody at the NFL or Centers for Disease Control (CDC). I’m just talking about doing the right thing for yourself, your loved ones, your community, your team, and your fans.

I don’t care how well they play this year, I don’t want to hear any more of the cliches about these unvaccinated athletes always putting their team and fans first.  Because right now, we’re seeing what they’re really made of.  Their selfish actions are speaking much more loudly than their sports cliché words.

A Few Mostly Kind Words About Pat Reusse

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I don’t usually bother writing anything about sports, or sports writing. That’s because as marketplaces for hot takes and punditry go sports is at least as glutted as politics … but without the saving grace of relevancy to something more important than mere entertainment and distraction.

That said, I do like sports. And follow them. Always have. Baseball in particular. (The play-off series between the Red Sox and Astros should be the best of all of them this year.) And, I like pro football, something I say somewhat ashamedly, given everything we all know about the NFL. On the other hand, I know next to nothing about hockey and only kick into basketball gear in March when the Kansas Jayhawks, recipients of thousands of dollars of Lambert tuition cash, make a run at a title.

All that said, for many years I have been a regular reader and fan of Star Tribune sports writer Pat Reusse. Especially the cranky, pissed-off, had-it-up-to-here Reusse we can read this morning as he rakes Timberwolves superstar Jimmy Butler and coach Tom Thibodeau over the coals for Butler’s pre-meditated, maximum media exploitation tantrum at a recent practice session. (Bottom line to that little drama: Butler doesn’t want to play for the Wolves anymore.) What I (and many others) like is that Reusse both has and regularly deploys a license few other columnists on any beat enjoy in this town.

For the record, Reusse and I have crossed paths over the years, but that’s it.

He came to mind often as I inhaled the latest book by New York Times writer, Mark Leibovich. Normally encamped in DC reporting and commenting (acidly) on the vanities, delusions and perfidy of our ruling class (both government and media), Leibovich cadged a book deal to check out the NFL at the highest levels. The result, “Big Game: The NFL in Dangerous Times” is a unique, delicious and frequently hilarious vivisection of a class of bizarre-to-dysfunctional characters, namely NFL owners and NFL management, constantly obsessed over and “reported” on by literally thousands of professional writers. (There are a lot of good reasons why “Big Game” has not been mentioned on any NFL telecast.)

Journalism has long been divided into two camps. 1: Beat writers who rely on regular access to sources in order to feed news (or “nuggets” as Leibovich likes to call breathless sports minutiae) to their editors and readers. And 2: Columnists who are charged with applying something like accountability to pretty much the same stories, usually by writing cranky, dyspeptic things about failing coaches and athletes. The twain does not often meet, and truth be told, most mainstream publications, print or on-line, are still highly reluctant to print everything a writer knows for damn certain about the characters they cover. It’s a game of mutual benefit, you see.

Truth be told, most sports and just about all business writing can be filed under the heading of “Service Journalism”, where the intended effect is to sustained a comfortable, symbiotic relationship between source and publication.

Reusse’s decades of service to the local sports scene and his deep entrenchment in the culture, from obscure utility infielders to high-profile owners gives him unusual sway over nervous editors. He can say things no one else can. That relative lack of managerial fetters is essential to his standing with intensely skeptical readers who know — from first-hand experience how watered down, neutered and homogenized most “coverage” — in sports, business and media — really is.

As my old pal David Carr used to say when I asked him about the new world of access that opened for him when he signed on with The New York Times, “Shit, everyone returns your call when your last name is ‘New York Times’.”

So it was with Leibovich, who not only has his calls/e-mails to NFL commissioner Roger Goodell, superstar quarterback Tom Brady and dozens of owners returned, but goes on to spend significant time with them. On the sidelines, in (one of) their multi-million dollar mansions and occasionally even while they’re in the company of their latest 14 year-old girlfriend, they talk to Leibovich. (“Fourteen” is not an accurate number when describing Patriots owner and major Trump supporter Robert Kraft, but you get the idea.)

The great, satisfying beauty of Leibovich’s writing is how he fully exploits the rare access he’s been allowed and doesn’t hesitate to drop the accountability hammer. Hell, he relishes it. (Garden variety writers and editors accept the neutered, half-a-story-is-better-than-none access protocol, because they’d be shut out of executive suites and clubhouses — and all those revealing post-game interviews — if they actually told the public what an asshole, fool or drunk so-and-so really is.) But then Leibovich doesn’t have to worry about coming back to cover jock world probably ever again.

Not that Reusse has had unimpeded free reign, mind you. His most fully-formed perspective of Zygi Wilf and the NFL’s shakedown of Minnesota politicians during the run-up to building our billion-dollar sports temple (U.S. Bank Stadium) didn’t appear in the Star Tribune, which, notoriously, was constantly boosting the project/taxpayer giveaway through every channel available to it. Reusse’s most, uh, “acute” commentary was quarantined over on his KSTP radio blog.

To let Reusse, arguably the paper’s most influential columnist in terms of shaping public opinion, rail on, Leibovich-like, right there in the Star Tribune’s own pages was unthinkable. Fully informing the public and lacerating the NFL for its ham-fisted extortion threats, local politicians for their comical, beyond parody, star-struck jowl-rubbing with Goodell when he made a rajah’s visit to Minnesota would have seriously undercut the paper’s Prime Directive. Namely, to build a stadium at whatever the cost and thereby guarantee the presence of a team — the Vikings — that drives the sale of millions of copies of the Star Tribune each and every year. (Reusse may have concurred with the quarantine, I don’t know.)

We can all live with the standard, fawning, half-the-story access reporting when the issue at hand is just some ego-crazed ballplayer ranting at teammates. But it sets (really) serious when that kind of coverage assists in sucking millions of taxpayer dollars away from other far, far more relevant services to build a stadium for, as Leibovich says, a sports league as rich and unchecked as any international cartel.

 

 

 

 

 

 

It’s Good To Be Zygi

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In 2011, taxpayers gave billionaire Minnesota Vikings owner Zygmunt “Zygi” Wilf quite a gift, an even bigger gift than some realized at the time.

Taxpayers invested about half a billion public dollars to help Mr. Wilf construct his $1.1 billion business headquarters, U.S. Bank Stadium.  The State contributed $348 million, and another $150 million came from a Minneapolis hospitality tax. (While it’s often reported that Mr. Wilf paid the remainder, much of the remainder was paid by private interests — the NFL, personal seat license holders, and U.S. Bank.)

This was an extraordinary taxpayer subsidy for any business owner, much less a controversial one worth $5.3 billion who has been found liable by a New Jersey court for breaking civil state racketeering laws.

But Mr. Wilf’s gift from taxpayers went well beyond that $498 million.  State leaders also allowed the billionaire to keep 100% of the increased business value that he has realized since his publicly subsidized business headquarters was authorized.  It turns out, that’s quite an increase.  According to a Forbes magazine estimate, in 2011, the year before the approval of the stadium, Wilf’s business was worth $796 million.  The most recent Forbes estimate puts the value at a breathtaking $2.2 billion.

That’s a tidy little increase of about $1.4 billion, with a “b,” over just six years.

Not all of that $1.4 billion gain is due to the new $1.1 billion stadium and its income-generating capacity, but much of it is.  It’s now clear that if the billionaire owner had financed his business’s building the old fashioned way — without taxpayers footing half of his bill — he would easily have recouped the full amount of his business investment, and then some.  Clearly, Mr. Wilf did not need us.

In 2011, many predicted that Minnesota taxpayers would be making a very rich man substantially richer.  But it’s still breathtaking to watch the money flooding in.  Skol Zygi.

If Vikings Pick Punters “Strictly Based On Performance,” They Should Bring Back Kluwe

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kluwe_censoredIn the wake of Minnesota Vikings punter Chris Kluwe’s advocacy of gay marriage, Vikings Special Teams Coach Mike Priefer publicly said he was tired of Kluwe-related distractions, privately told Kluwe that the gays should be rounded up and nuked, and fired Kluwe and replaced him with an untested rookie.

Despite the timing of all these events, the Vikings vehemently denied that Kluwe was fired due to his activism. The Vikings released a statement assuring Minnesotans:

“Chris was released strictly based on his football performance.”

There you have it.  Not salary. Not age (he was 31, relatively young for punters). Not activism. “Strictly based his football performance.” The Vikings assured us that they run a pure meritocracy, and Kluwe’s performance just wasn’t up to snuff.

But that was always a head-scratcher. After all, the statistics show that Kluwe was the best punter in Vikings history. For instance, Kluwe is at the top of the heap in Vikings history in career punt average, at 44.4 yards per punt. Of course, punting is also about placement, but Kluwe is also number one in Vikings history in punts placed inside the 20-yard line.

Despite Kluwe’s impressive performace-based records, Kluwe was fired and replaced by Jeff Locke, a rookie who was completely untested in the NFL. Priefer assured Vikings fans that Locke had bested Kluwe during a brief closed-door punt-off at the Vikings’ practice facility. So, while Kluwe was statistically the best punter in Vikings history, Locke was, Coach Priefer assured us, going to be even better. Kluwe wasn’t even get a chance to compete for his job at training camp.  One closed-door punt-off supervised by Priefer, and the most accomplished punter in Vikings history was shown the door.

How is that working out for Priefer and the Vikings? Kluwe’s replacement Jeff Locke was named by the wonky analysts at Pro Football Focus as the single worst punter in the NFL. Bleacher Report elaborates:

While Kluwe may have been outspoken and a hassle at times, he certainly was able to get the job done from a punting perspective, something Locke has not been able to do through nearly two seasons.

According to Pro Football Focus (subscription required), Locke has received a combined rating of negative-20.8 since he entered the league in 2013, which is far and away the worst rating of any punter during this time fame. His negative-10.2 rating this season ranks dead last among 33 analyzed punters.

If it’s really true that Kluwe was replaced by Locke “strictly based on his football performance,” maybe Coach Priefer, or Priefer’s replacement, should be bringing back Kluwe for the 2015 season.

– Loveland

Note:  This post was also published by MinnPost.

Where the Commissioner Meets the Archbishop

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Lambert_to_the_SlaughterJust as every crisis presents opportunities for change, every scandal is a moment ripe for reconsidering conventional wisdom.

The NFL’s off-field domestic violence mess has inspired quite a lot of fascinating, long-overdue reflection on the role of a shrewdly marketed business enterprise that has truly made itself a major pillar of our culture, a bona fide secular religion as faith-based in its own way as any church.

Watching the Ray Rice-to-Adrian Peterson et al debacle unfold, with all the pathetic prevaricating of Commissioner Roger Goodell and the league’s sycophantic apologists has reminded me over and over again of the sex-abuse ridden Catholic Church, particularly here in Minnesota, as it is led by another wholly disreputable, discredited leader, Archbishop John Nienstedt. Both entities have wrapped themselves in vestments of impregnable propriety. Both have enabled abuse and both are now conducting “sham investigations”. Here’s Madeleine Baran at MPR on the Archdiocese, and our old friend Keith Olbermann at ESPN.

Likewise, the appalling behavior(s) of their respective employees followed by arrogant, tone-deaf official response now has both institutions in a similar situation, where the faithful — not all, but an influential minority capable of critical thought — are actively reexamining the faith and money they’ve invested in each. A reassessment long, long overdue IMHO.

A couple weeks back I read a terrific piece on the psychological appeal of the NFL for American men. I thought it was posted at Grantland, but damned if I can find it there any now. So, my apologies to the author, who took the power and profanity of the NFL to a higher, significantly more illusion-rattling level, by exploring just what exactly the league is selling.

The bottom-line of a very thoughtful piece is that the NFL, and really football everywhere in modern America, is one of the final, protected realms of unfettered masculinity, where men (and boys aspiring to be “men”) are encouraged and rewarded for performing as men “must” and “should” to achieve success. Obviously, since football is an entertainment this heretofore manly safe room is passed on/marketed as a fantasy for those who can’t play, but embrace it vicariously, feeling and asserting male privilege by adjacency.

Clearly, this line of thinking is way too touchy-feely and psycho-babbly for mass consumption. But the writer continued on to the make the salient point that the contact high men get off football, the wildly successful NFL in particular, isn’t just confined the sad yobs in their Vikings jerseys scraping and bowing to a beaming Zygi Wilf as he leaves the Capitol with a sweetheart deal that stick the rubes with over $800 million in debt by the time the next stadium is paid off.

No. The psychological power of the league’s message also resonates deeply with the smart guys, the suits and politicians who crave the glow of power and success emitted by the league. Recall again local legislators cramming to get in the photo op with Commissioner Roger Goodell when he came to town to deliver his ultimatum to pick up the tab for the Vikings/NFL … or else.

The (very) monied class is no more immune to the adjacency-buzz given off by the NFL than blue collar couch potatoes. The only difference is that the wealthy experience a special tumescence and dampness over the NFL’s vise grip command of its message, market and balance sheet. Association with the NFL, via corporate suites and/or ludicrously over-priced ticket prices and personal seat licenses being a display of status so vital as to be irresistible to any “player” in the game of commerce.

As a matter of status and survival human nature is all about keeping score, and the NFL, until now at least, has asserted and sold unapologetic dominance like very few other cultural institutions … other than organized religions.

The third leg of the league’s marketing magic is of course the sports media, who daily, hourly, minute-by-get-a-life-minute provide free marketing lift for 32 of the wealthiest men in America. The completely routine whoring of some of the most “credible” names in the country and local communities is taking a corrosive beating.

Here’s Stefan Fatsis on the worst offenders. Here’s another, from Dave Edwards at Deadspin. Fatsis makes the always pertinent appointment about the difference between “access reporting”, where one never pisses off the subject at hand and “accountability reporting” which, well, which is something other than PR work. Day-to-day business reporting could do well with a heavy injection of the latter.

As with the Catholic church (and several other ossified religious organizations) this kind of truth-telling and public-shaming is both long overdue and healthy. For cultures to evolve, no institution should be allowed immunity from accountability.

And I say this as a fan of football, pro football in particular. Before the domestic abuse mess I was telling my cousin, a 20-year college football coach, that I was ashamed of how much pro football I watched last season. Not because I felt guilty about getting whipped up over a bunch of steroidal wife beaters and child abusers, but because the game is so entertaining to watch I wasted way too much time watching instead of tending to the weekend honey-do list.

As a television entertainment pro football has pro soccer beat ten ways to one, even with the NFL’s ridiculous glut of commercials. (Soccer will never cut it in the US if a championship game amounts to 90 minutes of tapping the ball back and forth at midfield, “strategizing” for essentially a home-run hitting contest in a vaguely comprehended overtime.)

The primary appeal being the precision and balletic beauty of the passing game, not the “bone crushing” attempted decapitation of receivers stupid enough to run a crossing pattern.

The credulous faithful of both organized religion and pro football may be having a tough time accepting the criminality and gross arrogance of institutions so vital to their sense of personal value, but as the NFL tells a player reeling from yet another concussion, “You’re going to have man up, pal.”

 

Why Doesn’t Chris Kluwe Just Shut Up?

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Kluwe allegations?  Meh.  Why doesn’t former Minnesota Vikings punter Chris Kluwe just quit all of his blathering about Special Teams Coach Mike Priefer and the gays? Kluwe had his time in the limielight, and it’s time for him to let it go already.  With training camp just around the corner, it’s time to let the home team have a fresh start. The last thing the world needs is another lawsuit.

If you listen to sports talk radio, that’s the dominant vibe from  diehard Vikings fans. Kluwe’s allegations are just a tiresome buzz-kill for them. They’re indifferent about the issue.  For them, it’s all about “let’s play!”

If Kluwe is lying about Priefer, then the fans are right. Kluwe not only should shut up, he probably should get the Jesse Ventura treatment from Priefer.

Truth_to_PowerBut if Kluwe’s boss did ridicule and threaten Kluwe for championing civil rights, and wish genocide on a whole category of human beings, then Kluwe has a moral obligation to sue the Vikings to get the truth out.

At first blush, a Kluwe lawsuit may seem like a money grab.  But Kluwe has said he will donate any lawsuit proceeds to LGBT rights groups.

At second blush, a lawsuit may seem punitive and petulant. But at this point, a lawsuit is really the only way the truth can be revealed. A lawsuit is the only way Kluwe can put former teammates under oath.  It’s the only way he can compel them to tell “nothing but the truth” about what they heard Priefer say. That looks to be necessary, because these are people who would surely be scared to speak out about their current boss.  After all, Priefer could release those players Kluwe-style, costing them millions of dollars. Talk about your inconvenient truths.

What’s the Big Deal?

So before an indifferent Vikings Nation rushes to cry “shut up and let’s play,” let’s step back and reflect for a moment. Here is what Kluwe alleges Priefer said:

Coach Frazier immediately told me that I “needed to be quiet, and stop speaking out on this stuff” (referring to my support for same-sex marriage rights). I told Coach Frazier that I felt it was the right thing to do (what with supporting equality and all), and I also told him that one of his main coaching points to us was to be “good men” and to “do the right thing.” He reiterated his fervent desire for me to cease speaking on the subject, stating that “a wise coach once told me there are two things you don’t talk about in the NFL, politics and religion.” I repeated my stance that this was the right thing to do, that equality is not something to be denied anyone, and that I would not promise to cease speaking out. At that point, Coach Frazier told me in a flat voice, “If that’s what you feel you have to do,” and the meeting ended. The atmosphere was tense as I left the room.

Throughout the months of September, October, and November, Minnesota Vikings special-teams coordinator Mike Priefer would use homophobic language in my presence. He would ask me if I had written any letters defending “the gays” recently and denounce as disgusting the idea that two men would kiss, and he would constantly belittle or demean any idea of acceptance or tolerance.

Mike Priefer also said on multiple occasions that I would wind up burning in hell with the gays, and that the only truth was Jesus Christ and the Bible. He said all this in a semi-joking tone, and I responded in kind, as I felt a yelling match with my coach over human rights would greatly diminish my chances of remaining employed. I felt uncomfortable each time Mike Priefer said these things. After all, he was directly responsible for reviewing my job performance, but I hoped that after the vote concluded in Minnesota his behavior would taper off and eventually stop.

Near the end of November, several teammates and I were walking into a specialist meeting with Coach Priefer. We were laughing over one of the recent articles I had written supporting same-sex marriage rights, and one of my teammates made a joking remark about me leading the Pride parade. As we sat down in our chairs, Mike Priefer, in one of the meanest voices I can ever recall hearing, said: “We should round up all the gays, send them to an island, and then nuke it until it glows.” The room grew intensely quiet, and none of the players said a word for the rest of the meeting. The atmosphere was decidedly tense. I had never had an interaction that hostile with any of my teammates on this issue—some didn’t agree with me, but our conversations were always civil and respectful. Afterward, several told me that what Mike Priefer had said was “messed up.”

After this point, Mike Priefer began saying less and less to me, and our interactions were stilted. I grew increasingly concerned that my job would be in jeopardy.

If that’s true, that’s not just rude or insensitive. It’s dehumanizing, abusive and bigoted.  It’s unbecoming of a team representing Minnesota. More importantly, it’s the kind of verbal violence that, intended or not, feeds and rationalizes actual violence against gays and lesbians.

Double Standard

What if Priefer had ridiculed and threatened an employee who marched to champion equal rights for African Americans, women or Jews?  Society wouldn’t tolerate that.

Imagine Priefer had said we should round up all the African Americans, women or Jews to be nuked.  Again, that would not be met by shrugs from an indifferent news media, NFL and  Vikings organization.

So why are so many seemingly indifferent about these allegations?  We should be standing up against this bigotry, just as most of us would if African Americans, women or Jews were the target.  As Hitler death camp survivor Elie Wiesel observed: “The opposite of hate is not love.  It’s indifference.”

I’m not blind to the possibility that Kluwe could be lying. But if he is lying, I can’t believe he would sue, as he has promised he will do if the Vikings don’t release their internal investigation report.   If Kluwe is lying, I would think he would quietly slink away.   If Kluwe moves forward with a lawsuit, I’m much more inclined to believe he is probably telling the truth about Priefer’s outrageous behavior.  After all, why would he put his former teammates on the stand if he knew the truth they would be compelled to tell — under threat of perjury charges — would show Kluwe to be a liar?

Viking Nation, I want to move on to football too.  I want to see if Teddy can throw, Captain can cover the slot and Mike and Norv can coach.  But as difficult as it may be for the face-painting crowd to grasp, some things are bigger than the game. Getting closure on these extremely ugly allegations is bigger than the game.

– Loveland

For the Moment, Aereo Will Not Loosen TV’s “Sports Tax”

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Lambert_to_the_SlaughterI’m of the belief that far fewer people understood the implications of Aereo, the tech company smacked down by the Supreme Court yesterday, than understand their own health insurance. In others, almost no one is conversant in what Aereo, with its tiny little antennas, might have done to the way you and I consume, and more importantly, pay for television entertainment.

Most of the large, national papers, (and here), break down the legal arguments in the case, decided by a 6-3 vote with the Court’s resident trolls — Scalia, Thomas and Alito — actually dissenting in favor of Aereo’s “disruptive” technology. (So yes, let the record show I’m actually aligned with those three … on this one.)

Aereo’s case was always a hard sell. It smells pretty densely of someone making a buck off someone’s else’s investment, and god knows we can’t allow that kind of thing to happen here in the US of A. But the concept of paying one company maybe $80 a year to deliver network programming … instead of handing $50-$120/month to some cable or satellite giant like Comcast or DirecTV … has a lot of appeal, and, more to the larger point, seems an utter inevitability in the age of streaming media … (which I think is going to last a while.)

The Court was careful to assert that it wasn’t going all Luddite with this case. It says it has no quarrel with new technologies, just that this one was pretending to be an antenna company when in fact it was a “retransmitter” like Comcast and the satellites, and therefore should pay ABC, NBC, PBS etc. … like cable and satellites do.

But with Aereo’s defeat goes another opportunity to loosen the grip professional sports has on our wallets. Had Aereo won, the betting was that millions of people would have begun dumping Comcast, et al, since viewers wouldn’t have needed them to get “Two Broke Girls” and “America’s Got Talent” and all the other high-quality, advertising-glutted programming the networks are “providing” for their viewers.

Moreover it would have been, some argued persuasively, an evolutionary moment in the war-on-bundling, the preposterous practice whereby Grandma Millie pays $100 a month for 300 channels of cable/satellite service even though she only watches six shows, none of which are the NFL or local pro sports teams like the Twins and Timberwolves. (I find it odd that our legions of raging, anti-tax zealots never complain too loudly about this kind of flagrant, no-freedom-of-choice scam.)

Pro sports have had a fine, long run at the trough of bundling, via the way cable and satellite operators cover the fantastically large costs of paying the NFL, MLB, NBA and NHL for game rights by requiring sports fans to buy packages of 40 other channels to watch them, or in sweet Grandma Millie’s case, in order for her to watch HGTV and the Food Channel.

The bet is that very soon someone will invent a way to grab live streaming of sports broadcasts via the internet and stick a dagger in the heart of the cable/satellite business plan. It may not be free, but it’ll be tough to duplicate the $50-$75 a month bundling up-charge most of us pay to have “free access” to any Twins game when we want it.

Beyond all that though is the threat to the standard, laughably ossified TV advertising model. Even as a geezer, the appeal of the DVR/Apple TV/”cloud” experience is simple: Better picture, no commercials. Watching hackneyed pitches for pickups, beer and Cialis is not a quality use of my time, and who in their right mind, especially younger consumers, will ever accept it any other way? I, for example, had no problem paying $2.99 an episode for “Fargo” sans the interminable three and four minute commercial blocks. (Also, as I say, the streaming picture is far superior to the compressed signal coming in via Dish satellite. The picture quality difference was particularly noticeable with “Breaking Bad’, a virtuoso moment in small screen cinematography.)

So let’s get real. Pay-per-view is the natural future for everything. It’s what we do with everything else. Buy only what you really want. Especially when post-bundle, you’ll find you have plenty of jing leftover at the end of the month for programming that you actually watch. Someone, maybe even a re-considered Aereo, will eventually construct a business model that provides exactly that service to every corner, holler and mountain top of the country.

But it won’t be happening right now.

– Brian Lambert

From Redskins to Warriors?

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The professional football team in Washington, D.C. has an offensive mascot, the Redskins. There have been endless debates about the historic use of the name.  Some argue the name “redskins” was used as a slur and to refer to bounties on Native American scalps, while others say the usage has been more benign.  But historic usage aside, if the name is offensive to the Americans it depicts, it is offensive to keep using it.

Because of a recent court ruling removing trademark protection for “redskins,” the name may finally change in the fairly near future. That’s a good thing.  But according to a survey by the Huffington Post, the favorite to replace Washington Redskins is Washington Warriors (57% support).  That’s a bad thing.

Washington_Warriors_logos“Warriors” has long been pushed heavily in social media.  The suggestion is often accompanied by a logo depicting the Pentagon, the headquarters of the U.S. Department of Defense. Other options show  soldiers in video game style art.

We’re all eager for this debate to be over, but I have to say I hate this idea.

If the U.S. only entered necessary wars, such as World War II, I would be slightly more comfortable with this. But the fact is, over the last half century, the military industrial complex that Republican President Dwight Eisenhower warned us about, has made a habit of regularly leading us into a series of  unnecessary wars that have had tragic consequences for brave American soldiers and the entire nation.

Part of the way the neoconservatives and defense contractors promote profit-generating military interventions is to glorify wars and warriors with cartoonish depictions like those used in the Washington Warriors logos.   Haliburton’s version of “support our troops” is to send young kids to unnecessary wars, and then salute them at sporting events. My version of “support our troops” is to keep our troops the hell out of unnecessary wars. Haliburton’s version is carrying the day, and that needs to stop.

There are 15 cabinet level departments in the federal government. Others promote learning, economic security, scientific discovery,  natural resource management,  environmental protection, justice, law enforcement, and health improvement. Those are heroic pursuits in their own right, so why does the department responsible for getting us mired in Vietnam and Iraq get singled out for glorification?  Of all the things we want our nation’s capitol to be known for, we choose it’s checkered record of war-making?

Relax, I wouldn’t advocate naming the football team after any of those departments or their work. There are hundreds of possibilities, so digging into the bureaucracy for the name isn’t necessary.

But the last thing America needs is more glorification of the military industrial complex’s war-making machine.   We have had enough of making bloody wars look like a cartoon video game back home.  We have had enough of wars that are rarely fought by the sons and daughters of those getting us into the wars.  We have enough American men and women unnecessarily maimed and killed. We’ve had enough of federal debt driven by trillions of dollars in unnecessary wars.

Starting with the name of Washington’s football team, let’s stop glorifying all of that. Just stop.

– Loveland

Is Chris Kluwe Getting A Same-Sex Divorce?

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Statistically speaking, Chris Kluwe is the best punter in Minnesota Vikings history, according to KFAN Vikings analyst Paul Allen.

Yet this weekend, the Vikings used a high draft pick — high for a punter anyway, a fifth rounder — to potentially replace Kluwe. The Vikings say this move is strictly about Mr. Kluwe’s on-the-field performance, and has nothing to do with any off-the-field issues.

As noted, Kluwe’s punting career statistics just don’t warrant a firing.  Moreover, Kluwe is not trending downward.  He is coming off his best statistical year of his eight year NFL career, averaging a net 39.7 yards per punt.

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