The National Football League is the most popular sports league in America. It dominates sports to such an extent that other leagues actively attempt to schedule their games around the NFL.
But as NFL training camps are underway — and the 2021 season rapidly approaches — the league is in the news not for the phenomenal product they put on the field, but for what they’re pushing off of it.
The NFL is not mandating the COVID vaccine, but they’re coming as close to it as they possibly can.
While the vaccine is not required for players, it is highly incentivized. So much so, that there are two sets of rules for those that have made the decision to get the shot and those that decline.
For players who have been fully vaccinated, nearly all restrictions have been relaxed. Masks and daily testing will no longer be required, travel restrictions have been lifted, they will be allowed to eat in the cafeteria with other vaccinated individuals, and no restrictions will be placed on social/media/marketing/sponsorship opportunities, among other things.
For those who have not received the vaccine or are yet to be fully vaccinated, life in the NFL will be vastly different.
COVID-19 testing will be required every day, masks must be worn when at the team facilities and while traveling, they may not use the sauna/steam room, leaving the team hotel to eat at restaurants is prohibited, and no social/media/marketing/sponsorship activities will be permitted.
The NFL is strongly pushing the vaccine with their rules, and a few of the league’s players and coaches are speaking out.
“It’s your typical leftist big government move by a league that continues to align itself with that way of thinking,” former NFL player Jack Brewer told The Daily Wire. “I think it’s obviously absurd and it’s grounded in deceit. If this rule or this messaging was grounded in truth, I think the NFL players are mature enough to be able to take that. And I think if you start talking about what it really should be about, and that’s player safety — at the end of the day the league’s focus should be on player safety. Player safety has everything to do with making sure that the players are protected from the virus and that they have proper health care. And the fact is, there has been zero, not a single NFL player, a single professional athlete, has died from the coronavirus. “
In July, the NFL sent a memo to teams highlighting their rules for the regular season should there be an outbreak among unvaccinated players. If a game cannot be rescheduled due to an outbreak among unvaccinated players, the team with the outbreak will forfeit the game.
Brewer points to the fact that the league’s athletes are young, and haven’t been dying from COVID-19. He also says “there are countless diseases — illnesses like the flu — that don’t [cause] forfeit. So why are they doing it for this one?”
“It’s wrong, it’s un-American, and I think it resembles the new NFL that is aligning themselves with socialist movements. I don’t agree with it,” he says.
There is a certain comical element to the NFL’s newfound focus on “player safety.” For years, the NFL looked the other way on concussions and the league still does not give players financial stability by granting fully guaranteed contracts.
“They’ve treated players like animals from the beginning,” Brewer told DW. “Whether it’s the concussion issues, whether a player gets injured on the field, and whether they don’t get guaranteed contracts. It goes back to do you really believe that these NFL players are people? Or are they just like horses in the stable? I think the answers are clear when you see the history of race-norming, and using these racist prehistoric policies to determine the cognitive ability of a player. So they clearly don’t think that the players are intelligent, just based off of that.”
Brewer believes the vaccine push by the league is just another example of the NFL caving to the Left with their policies.
“It’s straight political. They’ve already turned into a political arm of the Democratic Party. All of their messaging supports leftist policies from top to bottom. From all of a sudden becoming gay during pride week to backing Black Lives Matter — despite their (BLM’s) all-out assault on the nuclear family and on Christian principles in the nation. The NFL has made it clear where they stand on these social issues and what they want to back. They’ve put millions of dollars of advertisement into these social causes to corrupt the minds of our children. And those that look up to players and look up to this league, and those that enjoy the sport, are now forced to take on these leftist policies, and either embrace them or turn the TV off.”
When it comes to the vaccine — especially in a predominantly black league — there is a deeper conversation that needs to be had. There is hesitancy in the African-American community on receiving the vaccine, and Brewer explains why.
“Because there has been a history in America — unfortunately — where we are treated like monkeys,” he said when asked why there is hesitancy to receive the vaccine in the African-American community. “We were treated like inhuman people. From the Tuskegee Project on, there have been times where experimental drugs have been used on people of color. And anyone that denies that is denying reality, denying truth. And so with that truth, you’re going to have hesitation.”
Brewer went on to rip the NFL for their decision to partner with Left-leaning groups and promoting causes that are “destroying Black America.”
“You have to get that fear when you see that the league is aligning themselves with so many of the root cause issues that are destroying Black America,” he said. “When you start talking about sexual perversion of our kids as African-Americans that hits those hard. The largest population of little girls that are sex trafficked are black. When you start talking about aligning yourselves with Black Lives Matter, calling for the destruction of the nuclear family, they are destroying that African-American man. When you see in the streets of Chicago with blood running down them because of the murders in St. Louis and so many places, the National Football League is not standing against issues that are going to help stop that.”
He sees it as a lack of trust in a league that has not always appeared to have their players’ best interests in mind.
“They’re aligning themselves with this mentality and in a way kind of appeasing and tap dancing for African-Americans to say the right things. But they’re not doing the right things,” Brewer said. “When you’re working for a league that literally has a $1.4 billion case where they’re supposed to deploy money and funds to players that are hurting, and then you see them take all the black players and consider them dumb in order to avoid paying them and compensating them for their injuries and their families that are suffering, what else can you think it is? I mean, they have shown us who they are. By their works not by their words.”
Joe Morgan is the Sports Reporter for The Daily Wire. Most recently, Morgan covered the Clippers, Lakers, and the NBA for Sporting News. Send your sports questions to [email protected].
The views expressed in this piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.
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Source: Dailywire
