04-29-2017, 11:30 AM
Is the NFL really just the modern equivalent of this?
Some people were suggesting as much decades ago and continue to today with essays and with books like this:
![[Image: 40-Million-Dollar-Slaves-196x300.jpg]](http://www.sportsinblackandwhite.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/40-Million-Dollar-Slaves-196x300.jpg)
Marge Schott famously referred to Eric Davis as her, "Million Dollar n - - - - r." (And if you think it is dumb that I wouldn't type a word everyone knows, well, yeah it is, but I am trying to stay on the right side of the authorities here about and I am really hoping for some serious dialogue about this. Yeah I know, I can wish in one hand and wizz in the other and see which one is filled first...) And, many players have more or less agreed with good ol' Mrs. Schott's assessment of the relationships between themselves and their owners.
Seriously though, even if one wants to divorce the racial element from the conversation, is football our version of this?
When you have so many men with checkered pasts as they enter the league (and often checkered futures in the league- see Adam Jones and Aaron Hernandez as obvious examples) and so many leaving the game with broken bodies and damaged brains... I really question the character of those who profit so immensely from the enterprise and how others so eagerly support it financially.
It just feels like we fans are the Roman citizenry in the Colosseum (our living rooms a proxy for it) or the citizens of the town that ringed Candyland in Django Unchained.
If nobody else ever asks themselves questions like this, fine. I am a weirdo. Not a state secret. Just wonder if others ever think about it, question financially supporting it, etc.
Some people were suggesting as much decades ago and continue to today with essays and with books like this:
Marge Schott famously referred to Eric Davis as her, "Million Dollar n - - - - r." (And if you think it is dumb that I wouldn't type a word everyone knows, well, yeah it is, but I am trying to stay on the right side of the authorities here about and I am really hoping for some serious dialogue about this. Yeah I know, I can wish in one hand and wizz in the other and see which one is filled first...) And, many players have more or less agreed with good ol' Mrs. Schott's assessment of the relationships between themselves and their owners.
Seriously though, even if one wants to divorce the racial element from the conversation, is football our version of this?
When you have so many men with checkered pasts as they enter the league (and often checkered futures in the league- see Adam Jones and Aaron Hernandez as obvious examples) and so many leaving the game with broken bodies and damaged brains... I really question the character of those who profit so immensely from the enterprise and how others so eagerly support it financially.
It just feels like we fans are the Roman citizenry in the Colosseum (our living rooms a proxy for it) or the citizens of the town that ringed Candyland in Django Unchained.
If nobody else ever asks themselves questions like this, fine. I am a weirdo. Not a state secret. Just wonder if others ever think about it, question financially supporting it, etc.
JOHN ROBERTS: From time to time in the years to come, I hope you will be treated unfairly so that you will come to know the value of justice... I wish you bad luck, again, from time to time so that you will be conscious of the role of chance in life and understand that your success is not completely deserved and that the failure of others is not completely deserved either.
