RUSH: The NFL kicks off tonight in Foxborough, Massachusetts, the Kansas City Chiefs and the New England Patriots. And in all my life I have never… I don’t recall. Maybe a strike year? No, not even that. Folks, I don’t recall a year where I can’t find any interest in it. The hurricanes and everything else that’s happening, at least down here where we live, but even me. You know, before I was a golfer, I was a huge NFL fan. The Stick-to-the-Issues Crowd got mad at me talking about the NFL before they started getting mad at me talking about golf.
That’s why I came up with the environmentalist wacko football picks every Friday to calm the Stick-to-the-Issues Crowd. There’s even a piece today at the — actually September 5th, I guess, couple days ago — Chicago Tribune by John Kass: “Death of the NFL Inevitable.” His theory is because the middle class is abandoning the game. Not corporate sponsors, not the wealthy who buy skyboxes and stuff like that, but the middle class which supplies the players.
His theory is that all of this talk and now a movie about concussion and brain damage from simply playing football… He’s done surveys, he’s done a little anecdotal research, and he’s found that more and more middle-class families aren’t letting their young boys play the game, and as that builds, there are going to be fewer and fewer players feeding the high school and college, junior college, and NFL football programs. It’s gonna take a while. I mean, not in imminent. But it is happening fast, and he thinks the NFL’s missing this.
He thinks the NFL is totally missing out on what’s happening because, like so many institutions now that have become so large, they actually have a… It’s not a disdain, but a lack of concern, interest, awareness, of what’s happening in Middle America. In fact, you could say that many people look at Middle America as the source of the problem. After all, where are the people who like statues? Where are the people who have the Stars and Bars? What kind of people hate illegal immigration?
It’s all middle-class people. Folks, the Democrat has written ’em off. The Democrat Party has written off the white, working-class voter. They hold ’em in contempt. And the middle class is still the largest and aggregately the wealthiest, not individually. Okay. We’ll have more discussion on that as the season unfolds and other things, but there’s so many things happening in the NFL that I don’t… I look at it and I tell myself, “They can’t be aware.
“They can’t be aware of the impact their own actions is having.” This league is becoming more and more a league dominated by lawyers and suspensions, and it’s constant. More and more of the news is about suspensions and lawsuits and spousal abuse and all these other things the players are supposedly engaging in, and it’s all chipping away at the aura, at the reputation, the image of the NFL, while I think they think they’re upholding it. It’s an amazing thing. It’s a breathtaking thing to behold. As I say, it’ll remain a subject/topic.
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RUSH: This is Walter in Lexington, South Carolina. Great to have you, sir. How are you doing?
CALLER: Hail to thee, Rush.
RUSH: Well, thank you very much, sir. I appreciate that.
CALLER: Rush, one thing. I’m in Lexington, South Carolina, and apparently this storm is gonna do very similarly to Hurricane Hugo back in the eighties and cut a swath through the middle of our state, so we’re bracing for that. But the reason I called primarily has to do with my daughter. She is a lieutenant in the United States Navy —
RUSH: Oh, yes.
CALLER: — and currently on a mission in undisclosed area where they are kicking some significant butt. But, anyway, I am sick and tired of the NFL allowing their venue to be violated with this anti-American venom, and I’ve just had it with professional football. I’m not gonna pay any more attention to it ever again, as far as I’m concerned. I’m sick of the political correctness and all this. I just want to watch a stupid football game. And this sideshow, they’re allowing it to happen —
RUSH: I hear you.
CALLER: — so the media can feed on it, and I’m just done with it.
RUSH: I hear you. I hear you. You just want to watch football. You like football. You want the announcers and the media people to talk about football, the game, the players, the plays, the strategy. You don’t want to hear what some guy making $10 million thinks of the flag. You don’t want to hear it, you don’t want to see the flag —
CALLER: — South Carolina Gamecocks.
RUSH: When you say this venom, this anti-American venom, what are you specifically referring to?
CALLER: The people who take a knee during the national anthem —
RUSH: Oh, yeah.
CALLER: — and refuse to allow our country to be praised and glorified for the goodness that it represents to the whole world.
RUSH: I hear you. I tell you some, you’re not alone. There was a story, and let me see if I can find it. It happened in Cleveland. The Cleveland cops — I know I’ve got it in the Stack. It’s too big for me to go through. I’m gonna try to construct this from memory. The Cleveland Browns at a preseason game earlier this year, some of the African-American players refused to stand for the anthem, or they made some gesture — here it is. Here it is. They made some gesture that was considered disrespectful, much like Kaepernick taking a knee and all that.
The story here from Breitbart “Cleveland Police, EMT’s, Boycott Season Opening Flag Ceremonies After Browns Kneel During National Anthem“. “As the Browns prepared to meet the New York Giants on Monday, August 21 –” This is an old story. The story itself is actually six days old. “– nearly a dozen members of the Browns took a knee during the playing of the national anthem at Cleveland’s FirstEnergy Stadium,” in downtown Cleveland, by the lake.
“The Cleveland Police Patrolmen’s Association and ILA Local 1975, which represents the city’s dispatchers, EMTs and paramedics, have announced that they won’t participate in a flag ceremony the team had planned to perform for the season opener. EMS union President Daniel Nemeth said the union is refusing to participate in the planned ceremony because of the players’ August 21 protest. ‘This hit home with me. I am a veteran, an 8-year veteran with the U.S. Marine Corps. So, to disrespect the flag by taking a knee is not something I was going to be a part of,’ Nemeth told the media.
“Police union President Steve Loomis agreed that the team’s protest was too much to take. ‘I’m here at a national police convention, and soon as they hear that I’m from Cleveland, the first question is “What about those stinking Browns?”‘ Loomis said. ‘So if the ownership of the Browns and the league are going to allow that type of stuff to happen, and then come to us and say, “We want you to help us with the flag,” that’s hypocritical.'”
So they basically are saying, we’re not gonna participate in the flag ceremony that’s gonna be disrespected. We respect the flag and we’re not gonna do it. So in Cleveland, there is push-back on this. But, as I mentioned earlier, too, there’s a column from the Chicago Tribune by a reporter named John Kass, who is convinced that the NFL is over, that they don’t know it, and it’s not over for the reasons that you think.
It’s over because the middle class, middle class parents are deciding this game’s too dangerous, there’s too many concussions. They’ve seen the movie, and they’re not letting their kids play football. So the feeder system is being affected.