The Emperor Has No Clothes

The NFL has always been a cesspool of idiocy and arrogance. At least to anyone paying attention. The Lions getting boned by incompetent refs in the 4^th quarter, leading to lynch mobs being formed, blood orgies in the streets and one dude even calling sweet, gentle Ty Schalter a fucking retard (Excuse me, it was actually YOU ARE A FUCKING RETARD) for daring to suggest that the Lions probably could have played a little better despite the dicking they got from the refs, was just the latest in a long line of examples of the NFL’s rotten bullshit.

The truth is that it has been there for everyone to see for a long time now. Lions fans are already intimately familiar with it. Just go back to the Process of the Catch nonsense that stole an obvious touchdown away from Calvin Johnson in Chicago. That’s what makes this so hard for most Lions fans, I think. It’s not just a revelation of a combination of incompetence and arrogance by the NFL, but a confirmation. And it happened at both the worst possible time, and the time when long-suffering Lions fans expected it to happen. That is a terrible combination that leaves grown dudes and lady dudes shivering and shaking like broken junkies, sniping at each other bitterly and imagine dark deeds involving Emperor Goodell and a trash compactor.

It’s not just the incompetence. Refs in all sports suffer from that particular malady, and hey, we all make mistakes. To err is human, blah, blah, blah. But it’s the NFL’s almost unbelievable arrogance that is at the core of this rotten business. It manifests itself most obviously, and most publicly, when something like this happens. Or something like the Process of the Catch ruling. The NFL obviously fucks up, but instead of owning up to it, they just try to remake reality to fit the horrible New World that they have created with their inanity. It’s why I’ve compared the NFL’s rulebook to a Necronomicon. It’s a dark wizard’s tome that only fell sorcerers and wicked magicians can read. The Emperor clears his throat as the rabble starts to get out of hand, and the Minister of Propaganda, Mike Pereira, rolls his bones, smears cow blood on the face of a baby, watches the pigeons for signs and then declares the NFL’s obvious misdeeds just.

But it also manifests in other, more insidious ways. It can be as simple as the NFL fining dudes for not wearing Official NFL Merchandise during press conferences. Years ago, back when Jon Kitna was with the Bengals, they fined the dude for wearing a hat with a cross on it during a press conference. Kitna, for those who don’t know, is big into the Jesus thing, which… whatever, that is his deal and you have to respect that. But the NFL didn’t give a shit. They fined him because it was not an NFL Licensed and Approved cross, which… that’s some shit, isn’t it? I mean, that’s some straight out of the Bible money lenders in the temple kind of shit. That’s old school wicked fairy tale villain kind of nonsense.

And then there’s the Ray Rice incident, or any number of off the field incidents over the last several years, which have finally laid bare the arbitrary and ridiculous nature of Emperor Goodell’s punishments. He’s set himself on the throne and just arrogantly waves a dismissive hand at anyone who bothers him, offering barely thought out dictates that people are not allowed to question. It all depends on his mood, whether or not he’s paying attention and what he thinks he can cover up. It’s arrogant and stupid, and, well, those two things often go hand in hand. Hell, next season he’ll probably decree that a contract dispute can only be resolved by cutting a baby in half.

But it’s not just the NFL. No, the NFL is just the root of the problem, the festering poison that effects anyone else who spends too much time around it. NFL insiders soon end up exhibiting the same diminished mental faculties as a dude who fell asleep in his running car with the garage door closed.

All you have to do is look at how NFL insiders dealt with Jim Harbaugh’s move to Michigan. Their arrogance and lazy dismissal of what was happening right in front of them was almost shocking. It was a mirror image of the attitude of the league that they love and cover. While Michigan insiders were adamant that something big was happening, never wavering in their coverage of the deal for weeks and months, the NFL insiders refused to even acknowledge the possibility because no one leaves the NFL.

That shit is chilling. That’s a rotten, fucked up attitude right there, the sort of thing normally seen only in cults. NOBODY LEAVES THE NFL. That was the refrain heard from countless reporters who couldn’t imagine a better world outside of their twisted utopia. It was arrogant and stupid at the same time. Sound familiar?

Of course, they were wrong, just like the NFL is so often wrong. And just like their beloved NFL, they immediately tried to reshape the story to fit their bullshit narrative. It was pretty clear that Harbaugh and Michigan were a match made in heaven all along. The insider stories that have come out make that clear. But oh no! That doesn’t fit with the NFL’s vision of the world. They say the world is flat, so fuck you, Columbus. First, it was Harbaugh is never leaving the NFL for college, then it was Harbaugh turned Michigan down but changed his mind after a desperate Michigan made a last minute offer of a bajillion dollars that no one could match, then it was Harbaugh will still stay in the NFL because he’s only using Michigan for leverage (an idea which never made sense given that Harbaugh pretty much had his pick of jobs in the NFL, he didn’t need to use Michigan – a lowly college team according to NFL insiders – when he had several NFL franchises ready to try to outbid one another), and then when he finally took the job and made them all look like fools, it was that Harbaugh only did it for the money, and when that was proven to be bullshit (Harbaugh is making the same amount he made with the 49ers) they turned around and said that it was because he couldn’t find a job in the NFL, which… what the fuck? That level of intellectual dishonesty is staggering, usually only seen in, well, the NFL.

But the NFL can’t change reality, no matter how hard they try. And neither can its slappies, those Defenders of the Shield who have allowed themselves to be coopted and perverted into little more than propagandists, mouth-pieces for a corrupt regime intent on greedily raking in as much money as it can and glorifying its own image at the expense of everyone else, from the fans who make its existence possible to the dudes who concuss themselves into an early grave for a few tosses of the coin from the Emperor and his minions.

The NFL won’t acknowledge reality, and will try to change it to meet some alternate-universe bizarro-world that they’ve cooked up for themselves like meth-heads in a dirty trailer. They’ll tell you that somehow that bullshit call against the Lions was justified. It’s gotten so bad, though, that even Mike Pereira can’t bring himself to lie and twist the truth for his Emperor. He admitted it was a bad call, which probably means he’ll be hauled away for electro-shock treatment and “reeducation” by the Emperor’s goons.

The NFL will still try to twist it, to somehow make all their bullshit “true,” and if they can’t, they’ll just try to sweep it under the rug and pretend it didn’t happen because fuck your memories, peasant. The Emperor makes reality.

And doofuses like John Clayton won’t acknowledge reality either. They’ll still say shit like Harbaugh took the Michigan job as a “soft landing” because the NFL which was so hot on his trail only hours before, so hot in fact that one dude tried to claim that the Raiders would give him $16 million a year (no, really, an “insider” actually “reported” this) suddenly had no room for him and he was forced to lick his wounds with a lowly college team. (A college team that routinely draws over 100,000 fans, has an alumni and fanbase that any NFL franchise would murder small children for, is laden with tradition and is a financial powerhouse that can pay their coach whatever they damn well please, but… okay, sure, it’s just the Minor Leagues) But why wouldn’t the insiders do this? Why wouldn’t they lie and twist and play intellectual shell games? The world that they live in, the world of the NFL, has made those things into virtues. They are merely doing what daddy taught them.

But anyone with eyes to see and a brain to think can see reality, can see just how rotten and absurd the NFL has become. It has been this way for a while now, and you can even make the argument that their arrogant bully tactics are at the heart of the league, interwoven in its origins and its staggering growth through the years, much like a crime family. But regular people are starting to see this shit. The Emperor has no clothes and while his advisors and the Baghdad Bobs who cover him and his kingdom insist that he’s got on the finest of furs and the best silks from all across the world, the peasants can see him standing naked in the window, his doughy ass hanging out for all the world to see.

The NFL isn’t going anywhere. It’s too big and its sheer momentum means that it will remain the Big Boss in the sporting world for years to come. But that doesn’t mean that I have to pretend that it is righteous or good or worthy of my adulation. Fuck the NFL. This isn’t about my team getting screwed or throwing a hissy fit because I don’t like what happened. I blame the Lions for fucking up that game just as much as I blame the refs. Well, maybe not just as much, but I’m certainly willing to say that they could have done a lot more to make sure that call would be little more than an unfortunate and irritating footnote.

I say this because I want you to understand that this is not the result of irrational anger of the lynch mob variety a la what we saw on twitter while it was all going down in real time. No, this is the result of years of arrogance, of heavy-handed megalomania, of having the NFL’s bullshit shoved down my throat for far too long. I see you, NFL. I will always see you. You are too big to miss. I am not going to make outrageous claims about burying my head in the sand and pretending that you’re not there. That would just be letting you get away with it. You see, I am a football fan. And you are fucking with that, and I don’t like it. You will not drive me away from being a football fan because you are not football. You are the NFL, and there is a world of difference between the two, and it’s about time everyone sees that.

The NFL is not football. Football is football. The NFL is a corporate wasteland of rotten souls and diseased brains. I am a football fan. The NFL can go fuck itself.