An Open Letter to the Commissioner of the NFL.

Date:  Today

National Football League
ATTN:  Mr. Roger Goodell,
           Commissioner
10950 Washington Blvd.,
Culver City, CA 90232           

Dear Mr. Goodell;

     We're now in Year Two of the Anthem protests.

     And your League is hemorrhaging viewers at flank speed.  This is not good.  Viewership of your nationally televised games is down more than 20%!  And that's our National Pastime we're talking about here!  And it is not what your owners are paying you to avoid.

     You are being paid more than $40 Million a year to make sure your League doesn't go through what your League is going through.  And I submit it is entirely your fault.

     People watch football for an escape.  An opportunity to forget their worries and lose themselves in a sporting contest for a few hours that means absolutely nothing but can captivate everyone.  And it's been that way for more than 50 years.  And it may cease under your reign...    

     A spoiled, self-possessed, aggrieved multi-millionaire decided one day a year ago to protest police shootings of Blacks and some other stuff, I think, but can't be entirely sure.  He chose the National Anthem to frame his protest by kneeling instead of standing, reverently, hand over heart, until the music stops, as the Rules specify.  Apparently he wasn't taught the niceties of being a patriotic American.  And he displayed that ignorant, self-possessed disdain in front of millions one Sunday afternoon.  


     And the NFL has been in upheaval ever since.  

     All you would have had to do, Mr. Goodell, is issue a proclamation, an Executive Order, or whatever, demanding that this player and all the other players adhere to the Rules as they exist!  Those Rules state that the players will stand with their hands over their hearts while the Anthem plays.  He didn't.  And the rest, as they say, is history.

     Mr. Goodell, I hate to say it, but you are displaying your lack of talent and leadership each day you permit this to continue.  Try taking a page out of the Cowboys' Jerry Jones' playbook and tell them to stand or get the Hell out.

      People make a conscious decision as to how to invest their free time.  And the question as to whether they choose to invest it watching a bunch of overpaid whiners protest the Symbol of our National Greatness, and the price our heroes have paid to make and keep us free, is being answered in real time.  And the answer you're getting is "pack your bags."  If you'd like to watch the National Football League go down in flames under your feckless leadership, just keep doing what you're doing.  Or, in this case, not doing...  

     I offer these suggestion with due respect and deference.  I know you must know what you're doing or your billionaire owners wouldn't keep giving you a bushel basket of cash every year to do it.  So, unless you have pictures of them in bed with a hooker or a young boy, I suggest you grow a set and save the League before it goes the way of the buggy whip.

                                        Regards,


                                        Chuckmeister, 
                                        Command Bunker
                                        Peoples' Republic of CA