317752's blog: "More Ado About Something"

The week ahead is going to be bad.  You and I have to be the adults and make some serious choices and I doubt most of us have even realized those choices are there, let alone contemplated their significance.

Thursday is the NFL Draft, next Saturday is the Mayweather/Pacquiao fight and the choices are about where we as sports fans, where we as human beings draw the line about domestic violence in this country. Jameis Winston is still likely to be the No 1 overall pick in that NFL Draft.  Jameis Winston, with an overall public conduct record that makes Johnny Manziel look like a hall monitor, and fresh from making a public excuse for walking out of a supermarket with three pounds of crab legs that is so completely nonsensical it sounds like it was dreamt up BY THE CRAB LEGS, Jameis Winston, who more importantly is the defendant in a civil suit from a former student at his university accusing him of sexual battery, assault, false imprisonment and intentional infliction of emotional distress, the suit filed after local prosecutors chose not to press charges.

Florida State held a Code of Conduct hearing in December and cleared Winston of responsibility for the incident. The accuser has now sued the school and the US Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights continues its federal investigation of how FSU handled that incident. It should be noted that campus rape and sexual assault is virtually at epidemic stages in this country. From the Department of Justice there are more than 6 cases reported per thousand students, and 80% of all cases go unreported.

Why an NFL team would draft what looks to even a casual observer like a ticking time bomb, draft him in the 5th round, let alone No 1 is beyond me. As if the league or any of its teams need a potential new disasterous scandal in 2015 after how NFL negligence about domestic and family violence overshadowed 2014. However the jury is still out on Jameis Winston.... perhaps literally.

Not so with the boxer Floyd Mayweather. The juries PLURAL have already ruled on Floyd Mayweather. FIVE TIMES!!! In a report this afternoon on Outside The Lines, John Barr told us Floyd Mayweather's record of criminal violence against women "cascades down upon all of us, like an avalanche." According to records obtained by Outside The Lines, Mayweather has been CONVICTED 5 TIMES for incidents dating back more than 14 YEARS!!! FINALLY, after his 5th conviction Mayweather landed in jail, but did NOT land in any significant trouble with the people who make money off of him. 

The Nevada State Athletic Commission can suspend licenses for an ARREST for anything north of a speeding ticket, yet in the case of Mayweather, with 5 CONVICTIONS for violent crimes, 3 of which were IN NEVADA, EVEN WHILE MAYWEATHER SERVED A PRISON SENTENCE, The Commission has never suspended Mayweather's license or even held a meeting to discuss the issue. In fact, NO GOVERNING BODY IN ANY STATE has ever suspended or revoked Mayweather's license to box.

You will support this poor excuse for a man?? You will help him continue to behave as if his conduct is acceptable in the 21st century?? or the 20th?? or the 19th?? I won't. I regret this deeply; I saw an interview with Manny Pacquiao last year and a quieter, more respectful, more dignified boxer I have never witnessed, may he make millions more, but I will NOT give Floyd Mayweather a dime.

That line I wrote of earlier... Mayweather is so far beyond it we can no longer even see him, and we shouldn't have to. He should have been banned for life by his sport years ago. I will not watch, discuss or even inquire about Mayweather's fight, I will boycott it completely and I urge you to do so as well. And I have grave doubts about Jameis Winston and as such have grave doubts about the integrity of the NFL Draft. I am not sure where Winston is relative to the line but since the NFL doesn't seem to care I am afraid I can't run the risk. I will boycott the draft too because when you discover that there are no other adults in the room, that the commissioners and the boxing organizations and the leagues are the money hungry children, then by the process of elimination, you have to become the adult. And WE, the reluctant adults, WE have to draw the line.

It is an unavoidable fact that the NCAA Final Four must be moved out of Indianapolis, Indiana and with the additional necessity that the National Collegiate Athletic Association must move it's headquarters out of the same city, and the further requirement that the National Football League approach all future business in the State of Indiana, Superbowls, rookie combines, indeed the continued presence of a franchise in Indianapolis as it approached such business in Arizona roughly one year ago. 

There are times in the history of this country in which sports not only influences our destiny but leads it, and this is such a time. For the NCAA, for the NFL, and for the NBA, and most importantly perhaps for all of us, as the consumers who constitute the backbone of the sports industry, the NCAA must, the NFL must, the NBA must, WE must use our moral force against a law that will not only immediately harm players and coaches and executives and fans in that state, but the loopholes of which are based on sloppy federal legislation from two decades ago which has since become a template for other bad laws in dozens of other states.

The State Senate of Indiana has passed and the State's Governor has signed Senate Bill 101 which makes it legal to discriminate against what is estimated to be about one tenth of Indiana's residents. It is presented in this nation in the insidious guise expressed in its title, the "Religious Freedom Restoration Act", which is not about freedom but about the loss of freedom, which is not about religion but about discrimination cloaked in religion, which is not about the restoration of anything except the hatred and prejudice of fifty or one hundred years ago.

It seems benign enough, its substance contained in just twenty three words, "a governmental entity may not substantially burden a person's exercise of religion, even if the burden results from a rule of general applicability." But what those twenty three words truly mean is being celebrated by those who backed this bill as the right of people in Indiana to now discriminate against other people there who are gay. There are now numerous cases of photographers, florists, cake makers and farmers being forced to participate in celebrating same-sex weddings in violation of their belief that marriage is the union of a man and a woman. But the new law, which will go into effect July 1 where the Indianapolis Colts and Indiana Pacers play and where the NCAA is headquartered and where the NCAA will stage its Final Four this weekend, this bill says nothing that limits it to that absurd notion and image of the government forcing a baker to make a same-sex wedding cake against his will. 

If the baker can refuse the same-sex couple then the hotel can refuse the reception, and if the hotel can refuse them a reception, it might also refuse them the right to stay there, at a wedding, or before a wedding, or ever, the gay couple, or the gay friends at a straight wedding, or at anytime anyone who is gay or anyone who the hotel thinks is gay. Or perhaps, the hotel could refuse to serve anybody, any orientation, color, religion, left-handed people on a religious pretext. And the Indianapolis Colts or a future Final Four if their lawyers could present some religious excuse could deny almost anybody admission to their games. 

When a similar bill was proposed in Arizona last year, the National Football League pointed to a calendar and the date February 1, 2015 and made it very clear that conducting Superbowl XLIX in Glendale, Arizona on that date was dependant upon no such law being enacted. No such law was enacted in Arizona, a conservative governor vetoed it. The NFL has received and deserved an extrordinary amount of criticism from me and many others for what might be called indifferent citizenship in many areas; NOT in this one. In Arizona the National Football League acted swiftly, even courageously and deserves the kind of credit for exactly the same kind of leadership it needs to express now.

On Monday, the same Indiana legislators who passed this bill insisted they will pass additional legislation to guarantee the new law will not be used for homophobic discrimination, yet the governor has stated that no such guarantee will be made. The NCAA, faced with an immediate crisis in its own back yard has spoken with boilerplate, "The NCAA national officeand our members are deeply committed to providing an inclusive environment for all our events. We are especially concerned about how this legislation could affect our student-athletes and employees. We will work diligently to assure student-athletes competing in, and visitors attending this week's Men's Final Four in Indianapolis are not impacted negatively by this bill. Moving forward, we intend to closely examinethe implications of this bill and how it might affect future events as well as our workforce."

But the sports relevance of the new law is not its effect on the NCAA but rather, the NCAA's potential effect on the new law, and the effect of the new law on the United States of America. NCAA President Emmert has stated he is not even pushing for the clarification the politicians themselves promised, saying "I am going to leave that up to the legislature," while allowing the NCAA might have to now talk about moving the 2016 Women's Final Four. 

Yet the "nation" in the National Collegiate Athletic Association is this nation, our nation and there are times when "national" organizations like the NCAA and NFL and NBA must remember that word and think not of its teams, but of its nation. And if at this point you are saying, "this is not sports, this is politics" and you choose to ignore politics, as I do, then what was Jackie Robinson's story if not politics? Do you celebrate Jackie Robinson? Do you celebrate Texas El Paso 1966 or the AFL moving the 1965 All Star Game or the pressure the sports leagues of fifty or sixty years ago brought to bear against prejudice in the southwest and then the south? What were those stories if not politics? Sports, an entity as large and perhaps as influential as any other in this country, religion and entertainment could be its only rivals; Sports and its consumers, you and I, are unavoidably, inescapably and permanently political. And it has always been this way.

For ten decades southern states had laws identical to Indiana's in spirit, but without the gaudy, vague wrapping of supposed religious restoration. These laws were enacted under the same pretext of freedom and tradition as Indiana's Senate Bill 101. They legally permitted segregation, suppression and marginalization of another minority group, African-Americans, and often no less venomously, often Jews and often Catholics. These laws were collectively known as Jim Crow. And when these laws created an almost medieval world, there was no major league sports teams there.

Until 1966, both south of St. Louis and east of Houston, no sports. Not until 1966 when Hank Aaron led the Braves into Atlanta. Not until after those laws had been repealed and the fight to prevail against their hateful influence in the courts and on the streets had begun to "overcome". Even when baseball and football and basketball were as white as the front seats of a Montgomery bus, there were no teams in the south. In 1940, Dallas-Ft. Worth and New Orleans were bigger than Cincinnati, Ohio, yet Cincinnati won the World Series that year and Dallas-Ft. Worth and New Orleans did not have teams. In 1950, as forced integration began and the leagues had already pushed past St. Louis to the Pacific coast, Houston was bigger than Minneapolis and Atlanta, Louisville, Memphis, Richmond and San Antonio were all bigger than Syracuse, but the 1950 NBA Finals were Minneapolis versus Syracuse. In 1960, Houston was bigger than all but six American cities, Dallas bigger than all but thirteen and only in that year, as racism's grip in Texas was loosened finally, did Dallas and Houston get teams.

This was not activism by the sports leagues but it was also not coincidence. The economic impact of the passive pushback against unjust law was as real as any boycott or refusal. And then came the day of a "refusal". When the American Football League scheduled its 1965 All Star Game for New Orleans, a city then angling for a franchise in either the AFL or the NFL, the players were greeted with threats and verbal abuse, they were refused transportation and lodging and they, black and white said they would not play in such a place. And the league backed them up; and moved the game to Houston.

Just as the players and schools and fans and the viewers should now say we will not play nor watch in such a place as Indiana, where this month has brought new laws that were deemed unfit for civilized society half a century ago even in parts of this country where hatred and prejudice were thought permanent. The NCAA needs to move the Final Four out of Indianapolis and the Women's Final Four of 2016 as well and the NFL needs to warn the state it gets nothing, no Superbowls, no combines, no drafts, nothing, until this law comes off the books.

Now, without turning this into a purely socio-economic commentary or even a debate about human biology, an instinct versus a learned behavior, before you say there is no parallel between how sports reacted to racism against blacks and how it has and should react to homophobia against gays; if you do not believe in the comparison between prejudice against black people and prejudice against gay people; if you hide behind the discredited notion that skin color is inherited but sexual orientation is a choice, your own belief proves you are wrong anyway.

For a moment, ludicrous as it may be, let's presume orientation is only a choice. So a law can allow you to avoid merely interacting with somebody making a voluntary choice that somehow offends your religion. But what is religion, if not a choice? If membership in a church is not a choice, why does every single church offer conversion? Someone in Indiana who thinks a gay person is making a choice is himself making the choice to obey one rule, promulgated by a group he has made the choice to join. Even if that which genetic research argues is ridiculously untrue is somehow true, Indiana has also made a choice; it has made the choice to reward one group making a choice by punishing another group making a choice.

In the offices of the NCAA and the NFL and the NBA and the sports media of this country, even in the narrowest, most ill-informed mind in those offices, this is the situation at the moment; THE football league in this country and THE college sports league in this country are tacitly supporting a law that allows those that have voluntarily chosen to join a group, to discriminate and be prejudiced at the expense of those who may or may not have had any choice at all, and the reality of course, is NOT.

The NCAA needs to move the Final Four out of Indianapolis and the NFL must warn Indiana and the Colts. Because ultimately, you and I have a choice. Do we participate in these laws? Or, do we do only as much as even the narrow, prejudiced sports leagues of the 1930's and 40's and 50's did; opt out. Stay away. Take our business elsewhere until the laws of hate are gone.

Choice. Again, do not tell me you have made a choice and this is not sports, it is politics and you choose to ignore politics. What, I ask you again, was Jackie Robinson's story if not politics? Your choice is this; do you endorse, in this Indiana law, a revival of the kind of hatred that opened the door for Jim Crow, or do you repudiate it? If you have humanity in you, if you see the fraility of love and the inevitability of biology, if you see what it makes you if you try to tell adults who they can and cannot marry, your choice is clear, as is the choice of the National Football League, as is before April 4th, the choice of the NCAA.