#Any nfl games on right now if so go to it full

Sports reporting is full of people yearning for deeper meaning than merely trying to come up with dramatic copy to be published in some magazine or newspaper about an easily forgettable NBA/NFL/MLB/NHL game where the Bucks beat the Goats. Sports reporters and sports broadcasters know they are viewed by ‘real’ news reporters as junior league, as those not quite good enough to write about ‘real news’ and so relegated to covering adults playing kid’s games. It has become incessant political lecturing briefly interrupted by sporting events. I am far from the only sports fan that has noticed that the nature of sports broadcasting has changed dramatically in just the last few years. I started watching the NBA in 1985 with the advent of Michael Jordan, and continued into the era of Kobe, Shaq, and Tim Duncan. That was followed in 1983 by the excitement of watching the Houston Cougars advance to NCAA Men’s Basketball Championship game only to lose at literally the last second on an ally-oop dunk at the buzzer. I’ve been a frequent consumer of sports programming for the past 40+ years, ever since I was first enthralled by an NFL playoff game in 1979 between the Dallas Cowboys and the Atlanta Falcons. How Sports Are Covered Has Changed Dramatically – And Often Not for The Better With the kneeling and the political lectures excised from the national broadcasts, the ratings for the NFL games ticked back upwards during the 2019 season and it looked like the league had learned a valuable lesson: stick to sports.Īnd then one comment from Drew Brees brought all this roaring back to the forefront. The broadcast audience never saw anyone kneeling on the sidelines, so out of sight, out of mind. The solution that the NFL worked out with the broadcast networks for the 2019 season was to simply go back to what had been the standard operating procedure before all this started: The players having the choice to stay in the locker room while the anthem was played, and the network’s cameras skipping the anthem altogether. Although there is some dispute about how much the kneeling protests affected the ratings, there’s no doubt there was an awful lot of chatter from fans about this new trend, and it was almost all negative. Many fans of the sport reacted negatively to this, and at the end of the season the NFL noticed a decline in viewers. The ritual quickly became a staple of most NFL regular season broadcasts: showing the anthem and then having the cameras find the kneeling players, coaches, and in some cases, owners, as the network sportscasters discussed police brutality, white supremacy and other racial topics, often up to the game’s opening kickoff. However, Kaepernick, and then other players around the league kneeling during the anthem became newsworthy, and so the networks began focusing attention on it. That was usually reserved for special games, such as the NFL’s Thanksgiving and Super Bowl broadcasts. Prior to San Francisco’s QB, Colin Kaepernick’s kneeling for the anthem beginning in 2017, the anthem was rarely shown on national telecasts.

The NFL had successfully navigated the anthem issue after seeing a viewership plunge in the 2017 season. He issued an apology and began criticizing President Donald Trump, saying “We must stop talking about the flag and shift our attention to the real issues of systemic racial injustice, economic oppression, police brutality, and judicial & prison reform.” Here We Go Again In less than 48 hours, after being deluged with fierce criticism for this statement, Brees did a complete and humiliating reversal. Brees drew immediate backlash for saying “I will never agree with anybody disrespecting the flag.” The NFL had the whole kneeling-for-the-national-anthem issue resurrected back in early June after Drew Brees, the popular quarterback for the New Orleans Saints made a comment during an interview.

It has not been reported that it is replacing the National Anthem, so apparently both songs are going to be played for all sixteen games. The NBA has announced that a very prominent “Black Lives Matters” logo will be displayed court-side at many NBA games this year.Īnd now the NFL has announced that before every game played on the season’s opening weekend, the “Black National Anthem”, “Lift Ev’ry Voice And Sing” will be played. And plenty of sports fans in this country are not liking what they are hearing as MLB, NBA and the NFL prepare to launch their upcoming seasons. The Wokification of American sports is now complete.