While watching some NFL games Sunday to pass the time as I recover from illness, it struck me something was missing from the show.
No, I’m not talking offense on a level one might expect from professional teams. That’s nothing new. As analyst Troy Aikman observed during a recent broadcast, there are a lot of bad offenses in the NFL.
And certainly there was no absence of exaggerated celebration and self-congratulation over making a tackle (albeit 10 yards downfield) catching a pass (as if that were something special) or generally achieving minor success (even when the celebrating player’s team was getting creamed on the scoreboard).
But the Sunday prime time game between the Washington Commanders and the New York Giants transpired with neither team seeming to have social justice warrior slogans festooned on the white pads at the bottom rear of the helmets.
Washington’s players appeared merely to have “Washington” in that prime spot. New York’s helmets seemed to have blank white space.
How I missed the lecturing and virtue signalling of the NFL-approved decals.
To remind, those approved messages are: End Racism, Stop Hate, It Takes All of Us, Black Lives Matter, Inspire Change, Choose Love and Say Their Stories.
The field seemed to have the obligatory End Racism and It Takes All of Us stenciling, but the message-less helmets left a void.
Frequently during the broadcast it was noted that Washington running back Brian Robinson Jr. is playing mere months after having been shot in the knee a couple of times by a pair of D.C. area teenagers who were trying to rob him.
I’m thinking those gentle teens weren’t and won’t likely ever be moved to better behavior by some helmet stickers.
This raises the question of to whom these stickers are supposed to appeal, to mollify or even to prompt modification of bad behavior.
They are the 21st century version of Just Say No To Drugs, which we all know was something less than effective. But it sounded good and made for some orgies of self-congratulation among the elites akin to what NFL players unleash these days after making a first down.
These ridiculous helmet decals and field messages fall squarely under the category of don’t just stand there, do something. It doesn’t matter what is done, only that something is done that is demonstrative if not effective and can be pointed to with undeserved pride.
The wag in me awaits the day when a clever, politically incorrect equipment man with an X-Acto knife puts out some twisted helmet decal messaging.
Mixing and matching from approved text could produce such twists as End Black Lives Matter (now that the discredited organization has bought up enough prime real estate). How about Choose Hate, or Love Hate?
Inspire Love? Hate Change?
Hate Takes All of Us? Hate Love?
Love Their Stories?
Yes, such is absurd, but would it be any more absurd and insipid than the actual NFL-approved social justice messaging? I think not.
Sam Ross Jr's site 