NFL Commissioner Admitted to Being Wrong, Now it is Time to Make Changes

Roger Goodell has been trying to navigate between the NFL owners’ racist ways and the players’ demands for years. The racism in this league is deep. From coaching to vendor partners, you can see in plain sight radical change is needed. Colin Kaepernick started kneeling in protest of the wicked practice of police brutality in 2016. The next year, he was out of the league, and no team has offered him a position since. This hypocrisy by the NFL is a case study on how institutional racism and white supremacy work. 

The cold-blooded George Floyd murder at the hands of police, and the global response, is the only reason they are now listening. It is political. They could not withstand the overwhelming influence the tragic event caused on putting a spotlight on the very thing players have been protesting about for four years. Throughout recent history, protesting evil has always been met with deaf ears by establishments underpinned by the financial success gained from Blacks.

An incident at the University of Missouri in 2015 highlights another situation where a political, sports, and economic event occurred that made the institution change course. Racial incidents had been occurring at the school, and Black students and athletes presented this to the administration. The president and others failed to respond appropriately, and in fact, were unprofessional in their communication with the students. It was a total lack of leadership and gave a perception that the university tolerated racism. However, after the football team threatened not to play, potentially costing the school millions of dollars, Tim Wolfe, the school president, resigned. Like the NFL, the cost of fighting against doing the right thing was no longer worth it. 

Many other institutions practice this type of benign neglect, such as the NCAA’s stance on sharing the enormous wealth-creating by their student-athletes. The NFL profits off the labor of Black men; the league, from the top downstream to the vendors it does business with, does not look like the people underpinning its successful existence. The NFL would do well to recognize this is not a sustainable system and repent to a more equitable future.