Hypocrite- noun: a person who claims or pretends to have certain beliefs about what is right but who behaves in a way that disagrees with those beliefs.
I enjoy listening to sports talk radio and reading the sports section in other cities. All across the country (with the exception of Seattle and New England), many people were echoing the same sentiments:
“I’m not watching those cheaters. I can’t believe the NFL won’t step up and do something.”
“I don’t like either team. I don’t care who wins. I’m not watching.”
“I don’t want to watch a bunch of overpaid athletes!”
Guess what? Everyone lied to themselves.
We watched like we do every year. Super Bowl XLIX drew an average audience of 114.4 million viewers which makes this Super Bowl the most watched broadcast in U.S. history. For the 2014 season, NFL games rank as the 20 most-watched and 45 of the top 50 TV shows since Labor Day.
The NFL has us by the cojones and they know it.
Every year, some analysts predict the demise of the NFL. They say that people will stop going to the games because the in-home experience has become so enticing. Then, all of the legal issues occurred this past season and they began saying the NFL has lost its luster. Through it all, the NFL has not only survived, but flourished. Goodell might seem smug, arrogant, and incompetent at times, but from a business perspective, it’s hard to argue with the results.
The NFL is a money making machine.
As fans, it’s our fault. It’s our fault the players get away with nearly everything. It’s our fault that they make millions upon millions of dollars. It’s our fault that Goodell feels no urgency to make decisions. Why? Because at the end of the day, we’ll be there. We’ll come back season after season like we always do.
We’re all hypocrites for coming back.
We support the players who beat their wives/girlfriends and commit a myriad of other crimes. It’s easy to say publicly that we don’t support them and what they do because our conscience tells us that we shouldn’t. In reality, we give the league and its players an enormous amount of slack through our actions.
When the Ray Rice incident occurred, I was asked countless times, “Would you cheer for him again?” My answer was always, “Yes, I would if he played for the Ravens. I don’t cheer for individual players to succeed; I cheer for the Ravens as a whole.”
Many others said that they could never cheer for him again, but I find that hard to believe. If he had come back to play for the Ravens and played well, I feel like the vast majority of people who said they couldn’t cheer for him, would be right next to me standing and applauding.
Does that make me a hypocrite?
Yes it does. I don’t agree with what he did, yet I’d be supporting him with my hard earned money.
Maybe I have a different perspective than most, but my opinion is that I’m paying for entertainment when I go to the games. I’m paying to watch the Ravens play well. I honestly don’t care what these guys do in their personal lives because I pay for what they do on Sunday’s. I don’t believe it’s any of my business. Now, when their personal lives start interfering with their performance on the field that I’m paying for, that’s when I have a problem as a fan.
There are probably people out there who saw the incidents over this past season and really did completely tune out the NFL. I commend them for that. The vast majority of us can’t tune out. In fact, we’re tuning in, in record numbers.
We’ll continue to complain about rule changes, player arrests, and Goodell’s missteps which lead to interesting talking points. However, we’ll also continue to watch, buy merchandise, and enable the NFL to do as they please.
We are the cogs in the NFL money making machine. Goodell just drives it and tries not to crash.
He can take it wherever he wants because, at the end of the day, we’ll still be here buying into everything the NFL is selling.
