Now that we have that cleared up, let’s move on.

My colleague Jerry Wilson wrote a fascinating piece here at Red State called Of NFL TV Ratings and Andrew Breitbart. I strongly suggest you read his post before moving on to mine, being I have just a slightly different view which I shall explain below.

Jerry laid out very well that the NFL has bounced back (ratings-wise) from the li’l kerfuffle they had a couple of years back, when a lot of conservatives vowed to boycott watching their crap product. This was right after the Colin Kaepernick issue popped up with kneeling during the national anthem. For the record, I’m all for anyone peacefully demonstrating, and Kaepernick and anyone following his lead was doing that very thing. Peacefully demonstrating. I’m also for him being verbally destroyed during a game by fans, but alas, Colin’s talent did not allow him to continue playing in the league for that to happen.

Here is part of Jerry’s excellent article that I found very interesting…

Much has been made, ever since the NFL bowed the knee to the wokesters in general and BLM in particular, of how conservatives were tuning out in droves. Ratings were tanking. Red ink was hemorrhaging. We’ll show them who’s the boss! This is still the case, although the evidence dictates we’re not running things. Either there are a lot fewer conservatives out there than is perceived to be the case or a lot more conservatives are watching football than is being let on. In terms of effectiveness, conservatives boycotting the NFL is at the same success level as the Lincoln Project’s war on pedophilia.

Maybe we should rethink things. For starters, we can accept the truth. We who hang out together online are the minority within the majority. The majority of conservatives do not frequent this site’s comments area. Or spend much if any time on Twitter arguing politics. While they’re missing out, it’s apparent they’re not interested in 24/7 political talk. They have families and jobs and hobbies and such taking precedence, which is as it should be.

Remember the late great Andrew Breitbart’s truism: Politics is downstream from culture. Marinating in politics all day, every day, is a luxury few can afford. It warrants asking if doing so, rising in righteous anger whenever someone or something gores your sacred cow, accomplishes anything. Certainly, the Biden administration’s miserable failures arouse our ire every time any of us shop for food or fill our car’s gas tank. But until the next election, we’re stuck with these clowns. Getting mad won’t change that.

I simply love when anyone gets a good dig in at the arsehats over at the Lincoln Project!!

Here is where I differ slightly with my colleague on the effectiveness of people bitching and boycotting the W.F.L. or Woke Feelings Legion. The ratings are just now coming back to above-2016 levels, according to an article I tripped across from Business Insider…

The average audience for a 2017 regular season NFL game was 14.9 million, down 9.7% from 16.5 million in 2016. In comparison, the average viewership for an NFL game dropped 8% YoY in 2016. Nevertheless, NFL games remained among the most watched TV programming, accounting for 33 of the top 50 programs during the year.

Jerry’s article shows that the league is finally above an average of 17 million per game, which took five years to reach. Now I can’t account that this is from a lack of viewers in the all pissed-off, anti-woke warriors crowd, but I imagine they had a hand in this. As I stated above, the putrid quality of the NFL product has to be part of this mix also. Americans do love their sports and with the cluster of having shortened seasons last year, any distraction from the day-to-day grind of 2021 is a welcome one.

I personally stopped caring about professional football years ago to save my own sanity, being I grew up a Detroit Lions fan. I was a season ticket holder for close to 14 years, and the only good thing about that was that I was able to watch the great Barry Sanders at almost every home game he played in.

So, I didn’t walk away because of Kaepernick, but I have followed how bad the league handled that situation. I was not surprised of course, being Goodell has not found a woke cause yet that he doesn’t dream of implementing into the game.

The second part here is that the late Andrew Breitbart PREACHED about politics being downstream from popular culture. He pleaded with people to not ignore what was being done all around you, with the notion of: it didn’t matter if you didn’t care about it. He was 100 percent correct that it mattered a whole metric ton.

Yet if you choose to watch and you happen to have some opinions on how dumb the league handled the Aaron Rodgers COVID case, let it rip. Maybe you don’t like how Jon Gruden was thrown under the bus with his emails being released; let them know. Possibly you are still wondering how Joe Buck still has a job? If you feel so inclined, tell Roger and his munchkins in New York how absolutely idiotic they are via any social media platform.

Breitbart was all about being engaged on every level of society not just with politics, and it was sage advice. Yet no product deserves your undying loyalty, and that includes the NFL or any other sports.

Okay, I lied. I will watch baseball 24/7, but that is it.

As Jerry mentioned in his article above, the Goodell follies, also known as the National Football League, are the king of the ratings for television shows. As long as gambling and fantasy football are around, that will probably never change.

However, letting the league know that trying to acquiesce to every squeaky wheel cause that trends on Twitter is good for the overall American soul. If that means walking away for good, so be it. Maybe you just watch clips and save yourself a Sunday of bad officiating and holding your head in your hands for hours — that is good also. Whether you still watch a number of games each Sunday or something in between, do what works for you. If that hurts the bottom line in any way possible, maybe the dopes in the league office will take pause.

No matter what, make sure you do voice your opinion when the sanctimonious people in these leagues speak out and make it stick with humor and tenacity. The prima donna class, like Kaepernick and LeBron James, need their woke idiocy pushed back on.

That would be a very Andrew Breitbart-like thing to do.