The Big Middle Finger

Sponsored by: Patriot Home Funding

On Sunday, the National Football League will stage a football game that we can't call by its real name on the air. We have to call it "the big game," which is quite ironic, because the left uses the same tactic, that is renaming things, to shape narratives and hide the truth from you, the voters and consumers of America.

Football long ago replaced baseball as our "national pastime." That didn't happen because Bad Bunny performed at halftime. It didn't happen because players kneeled for the criminal junkie George Floyd. It didn't happen because they painted liberal social justice slogans on the fields and helmets. It happened because the people of our nation love the game, buy tickets, and tune in to watch it on TV.

The commissioner of the NFL, Roger Goodell, a New York upper east side liberal who doesn't know or care what life is like outside that elitist bubble, said that all the social justice messaging and having controversial halftime entertainment is about "growing the game." Sorry, but promoting left wing Marxist tropes and trans-friendly rappers who perform in a foreign language isn't about the game of football. To that end, the Washington Post opined this morning about Bad Bunny, "Bad Bunny is expected to perform the 'Big Game' halftime show on Sunday entirely in Spanish- which has inspired fans to quickly learn the language." Ridiculous takes like that are why the Washington Post is bleeding money and just fired a third of its workforce.

How about the corporate sponsors, who buy the in-stadium advertising, who buy the luxury suites, who pay thousands of dollars for tickets to the Big Game that you and I can't obtain, and pay for the commercials on the broadcast? The following companies have purchased TV ad time for the Big Game and also donated to BLM in 2020 as they burned down our cities: Anheuser Busch, Amazon, Google, DraftKings, Squarespace, State Farm, Liquid IV, Novo Nordisk, Boehringer Ingelheim, Paramount Pictures, Levi's, Uber Eats, and Dove Skin Care. Does the political activism of those companies speak to your values, or are they using their profits and the money you spend with them to undermine your values? Is the Big Game really just a big middle finger?

None of this is surprising, of course. The ideology of the left and Marxism is like a virus. It inflects everything it comes in contact with, inures itself, forms a contagion, and eventually destroys the host- in this case our institutions and the things we love. The NFL and the "Big Game" are as much a cultural phenomenon as they are a business, and yes, sports are big business as you well know. One of the sponsors I mentioned above, Anheuser Busch, learned it firsthand in 2023 when they hired transgender Dylan Mulvaney to be the brand spokesperson for Bud Light. That idiotic act cost Bud Light its spot atop American beer sales, at least a billion dollars of lost sales impact, and Anheuser Busch/AmDev stock fell by 20%. Go woke, go broke is not just a pithy slogan, it is real.

Is the NFL so entrenched in our society, and is the love of the game of football itself so great, that the NFL is immune from the same fate that befell Anheuser Busch/AmDev?

Perhaps the NBA offers a cautionary tale. David Stern retired in 1994. He oversaw the NBA's growth from having game 6 of its finals series tape delayed on a Friday night in favor of the show "Dallas" in 1980, to becoming a worldwide brand by the 1990's. You may remember the quote by Michael Jordan, Stern's bell cow, that "Republicans buy sneakers too." The growth under Stern was global and it transcended culture, class, politics, and even nationality.

Stern was replaced by Adam Silver, who is an avowed far left liberal. Since that time, the league's TV viewership on nationally televised games including the playoffs has dropped by about 50%, and the league has relegated itself to a niche sport of urban minorities, liberal elites, and foreigners.

Can the same thing happen to the NFL? History suggests it can, logic suggests it will, but the question is how much social justice and virtue signaling can Joe Sixpack- who now drinks Modelo instead of Bud Light- take before he seeks entertainment and escape from the daily grind elsewhere?

What we do know is that pro sports in America are lacking top flight principled leadership and have fallen prey to the liberal mind rot. The current commissioners are not icons like Pete Rozelle, Lamar Hunt, and David Stern. My bet is that there will be a course correction or decline like the NBA.

By the way, there are alternatives to the Bad Bunny calamity. You can catch the Turning Point USA halftime show headlined by Kid Rock on Rumble and other streaming channels, and there's always the Puppy Bowl, who's star this year is a puppy from right here in Central Florida named "Barker Mayfield," who's looking for his forever home.

Make no mistake, when you try to sell Joe Sixpack a trans-friendly rapper in a foreign language and left wing social justice and virtue signaling when all he wants to do is watch a good football game and forget the day to day struggles of his life, there's eventually going to be a breaking point.

As for me, I long for a simpler, more innocent time, where the game whose name we can't use on the air, got its name from Lamar Hunt's daughter, Gracie, who was just innocently playing with her superball, and the name stuck.

And maybe, just maybe, our nation and our pro sports leagues, will soon break the liberal fever, recall and yearn for a return to the values, wholesomeness, and culture that made them, and us, great.

In the meantime... Hey NFL, just shut up and play ball.