A. Hartmann
Research Argument
When you think of politics you think of the presidential debate or what’s going on in the world today, when you think of media you think of what’s going on in the gossip world or what actor is with what actress. What about politics and media in sports? How do you think players feel when they are being judged left and right for something they thought was right, they did it because they thought it could influence someone in a positive way and possibly inspire them? The media could flip their life’s upside-down if they found something with enough pull to take them out of the spotlight. They not only have to deal with being the best and fighting for a starting spot on the team, they have to worry about all of us looking at them and judging them off what they do on the field and off the field. How does politics and media effect football?
One of the longest protects in football history was caused by one football player, that man was Colin Kaepernick the former Quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers. Colin Kaepernick took a knee during the national anthem in a preseason game against the Green Bay Packers. The reasoning behind protest was that he was protesting police brutality and respect for minorities across the country. When the media first saw this protest the jumped the gun and started throwing out accusations about how he doesn’t respect our country and how he has disrespecting the soldiers and their families for not respecting the national anthem. Quote from Colin Kaepernick after the preseason game against the Green Bay Packers “I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color,” Kaepernick told NFL Media in an exclusive interview after the game. “To me, this is bigger than football and it would be selfish on my part to look the other way. There are bodies in the street and people getting paid leave and getting away with murder.” After this in a press conference with the 49ers they said that “The national anthem is and always will be a special part of the pre-game ceremony. It is an opportunity to honor our country and reflect on the great liberties we are afforded as its citizens. In respecting such American principles as freedom of religion and freedom of expression, we recognize the right of an individual to choose and participate, or not, in our celebration of the national anthem.”
Football wasn’t always one of the biggest sports in the United States, in the 1950’s the three biggest sports were Baseball, Boxing, and Horse Racing. After that football began to become more popular in in the early 1950’s, football was always popular at the college level. The best of best team would fill stadiums full of thousands of dedicated fans and students. After that football took of professionally like a wild fire. There was a game called “The Greatest Game Ever Played” This was the quote that the announcer said at the end of a championship game in 1958, The Baltimore Colts and the New York Giants were in the championship in overtime. This game was viewed by millions of people on the television, by this time a television was very common in a household. The sports itself made it so compelling and memorizing to watch because of all the violence and the strategy that came with the game. By the year 1965 Harris Poll found out that the favor sport for someone to watch at that time was football it was the “Fan Favorite”. Years later football became more popular it was all over television and people would never miss a game, the popularity increased so much that it clearly became America’s game and a very important part of culture.
In the previous several decades, another story structure for American football in the United States has been offered to standard shoppers. In various excitements, strikingly dream football, fans are welcome to appreciate National Football League (NFL) diversions through the perspective of cool, impartial examination. This article follows how this structure entered prevailing press scope of the NFL through the CBS pregame program The NFL Today, featuring the part of previous Las Vegas odds maker Jimmy “the Greek” Snyder as a studio investigator. The new system acquainted with standard scope compares with a developing nearness of dark players in the NFL and communicates the racial governmental issues of a rising neoliberal request.
In America football wasn’t fully integrated until one coach took it upon himself to make sure that black football players were on his team, that coach was Bear Bryant of the University of Alabama Crimson Tide Football. This put him up against a notorious segregationist, Alabama Governor George Wallace. The USC game was not one of the fist games he coaches where the team he played was integrated, this game didn’t start integrations at the University of Alabama or put waste to segregation as a whole in sports. Football has been one of the biggest multi-ethnic undertakings in history, Since the integration there has been one rule, football will become Americas game, but at a price. Any person is welcomed to play football but there would be predominantly African American teams. That would have happened but the politics got in the way and wouldn’t allow that to happen. As sports media, tied down and fed by the mushrooming net revenues of football, itself swelled into an independent biological system, the deal likewise extended. Games turned out to be just about another universe where a man could get away from the upsetting “politics” in plain view in an evolving world. Martin Luther King Jr. once revealed to Meet the Press that “the most isolated hour of Christian America is 11 o’clock on Sunday morning.” But with the approach of expert football, at 1 o’clock, America could imagine it was ideal world. That fiction mirrored the bigger dream constructed and kept up in the post-social liberties development United States that racial strife was a relic of days gone by, and that proceeding to propel crafted by those killed for the sake of balance gambled disquieting a precarious solidarity.
The Broncos coach John Elway believes that politics should be taken out of the National Football League. This was his comments on why this should happen,” I’m one that believes in standing for the National Anthem, and I’ve always believed that. I believe that this is the greatest country in the world. We are very fortunate to live here, but it’s obviously not perfect. There are a lot of things that need to be corrected, and we will continue to work on those things. I’m one that really believes in standing for the flag. I understand the players and the way they felt from the comments that were made earlier in the week. They felt they had to go down and kneel and that’s up to them. Hopefully as we go forward we can start concentrating on football a little bit more. Take the politics out of football. But I think last week was a good show of unity by the NFL and hopefully this week we can move forward.” The protest in the National Football League right now are being blown out of proportion, it doesn’t matter how you feel about the national anthem or the flag or about the politics and how they are mixing with sports. John Elway wants to strictly focus on football and try and keep politics out of football so him and his team can focus on winning football games. In real life that probably not going to happen though because of Sundays, Mondays, and Thursdays in stadiums and being broadcasts to millions of people across the country. It is hard to understand the ideals behind players in the general idea of them protesting but with John Elway he should know with his past experiences with mixing politics and sports.
When a standout amongst the most well-known players in the National Football League, Michael Vick’s prosperity reached a sudden end in 2007 when he was indicted a government lawful offense for his association in an illicit dogfighting ring which set his career into a downwards spiral. Subsequent to serving 19 months in jail, Vick came back to the NFL as a beginning quarterback and has since turned into a main campaigner for against dogfighting endeavors. After everything that he did the least he could do is that, but after people saw that he actual cared and didn’t want to know for that anymore he started to win his way back into people’s hearts. This article breaks down the social contention encompassing Vick through intersectional hostile to specialist and antiracist points of view. Initially, the work reveals this intersectional point of view from inside the more extensive vegetarian extremist group. It exhibits that such an approach has been to a great extent missing from prominent media dialogs of the case. The work contends that quite a bit of this quiet can be ascribed to the nonappearance of intersectional legislative issues at the core of a few key associations that have formed the moral verbal confrontation around the Vick adventure.
Media and politics in sports effects not only the player but his surroundings. The media made football one of the most watched sports in history, politics make Colin Kaepernick lose his job even though he was protesting for police brutality and minorities. It could go both ways when it comes down to it but the question is how does media and politics really effect football players and their image.