Eric Reid files collusion grievance against the NFL

[MichaelWeston]

11 hours ago, SF2 said:

And more and more people will stop watching.  Where the NBA players display intelligence the NFL players continue to cling to a form of protest that has had almost zero effect other than drop ratings almost 20%. 

 

The good thing for the NFL is CTE has disappeared from the discussion.  The players are so fucking stupid they took their eye off the real crime: The intentional and well known effects of helmet to helmet blows since they sold more tickets. The owners use them like a horse owner uses a gelding: race them until they break down then send them to the slaughter house.

Ratings dropped nearly 20%? I have not seen that. Their prime time games are still the biggest things each week. 

[|SF2|]

24 minutes ago, Jamie_B said:

Not what I asked, but ok.

I asked the question first, you deflected.   Who is we and who do YOU want to make uncomfortable? 

 

If we are talking about NFL Anthem protests, the only one who has made any sense is Eric Reid.  Kaepernick can't string a sentance together, wears cops are pig socks, Fidel Castro tee shirts and a Kunta Kinte tee shirt to a deposition.  So I guess the message is all cops are pigs, Castro was a great man and the NFL Owners who paid me $43.4 million in 6 years to play a game and become a star are slave owners.   

 

You know, Rosa Parks was NOT the first woman to refuse to sit in the back of the bus.  She was chosen to be the face of the protest because of her squeaky clean back ground and well spoken manner.   There could have been a good message from all this but Kaepernick screwed the pooch.  

 

 

[MichaelWeston]

2 hours ago, SF2 said:

I never said it was the sole and solitary reason, dont pull a Fred.  There is not doubt it had an impact though.   

 

The major networks had a $600 million shortfall in ad revenue this year due to decreased viewership. The lower ratings forced them to give away millions in free advertising due to lower ratings.  if your 3 major customers are lighting up your phone telling you to stop the protests, it might be a good idea to do it.   

 

Football is a business.  The players receive 46% of all the revenue.  Unfortunately, few of them understand anything about business and only care about their own personal brand.  The majority of players have been coddled and fawned over ever since they began to dominate in high school.  Hell, one guy at my Catholic High School got caught smoking dope in the bathroom in the late 80s.  Nothing happened to him. NOTHING.  We had tournament games to win.  Went on to Ohio State and then the pros.  Schools like Moeller, ST X, Cleveland St Ignatius etc  actively recruit and finance them to attend.  Colleges give them free education and boosters line their pockets with cash everytime they "visit" for a sit down meal at the house.   The majority have no business sense what so ever since everything has been handed to them for years to include grades.   

 

Delanie Walker of the Titans is the poster child of this mindset.  "And the fans that don't want to come to the game? I mean. OK. Bye," he told the Tennessean. "If you feel that's something - we're disrespecting you, don't come to the game."  Can you imagine any employee of another business treating customers like that in the press?   Walker has no idea who pays his salary,..ITS THE FANS.  Fans go to games or watch on TV.  The networks get huge add revenue and a huge chunk goes to the league. 46% of that revenue along with other sources pays your salary dumb ass.

 

If I started to take political stances at work that cost our company even 5% of our customer base, I would be fired immediately.  A solder refuses to salute the flag at reveille and he will end eventually end up behind bars.  A cop starts wearing a MAGA hat,.. fired.  The First Amendment does NOT PROTECT you from workplace consequences, PERIOD.  It protects you from GOVERNMENT consequences.   Since the players are not intelligent enough to see this, the adults in the room had to lay down the law.   

 

If a player has an issue, find another line of work or play in Canada.  We don't live in North Korea.  If an owner doesn't want to put up with your shit, too bad.  Do you think Terrell Owens, Randy Moss and Dez Bryant were released because they couldn't play anymore?  No, their former teams got tired of their shit.  Happens all the time in businesses across the globe.   One of our top advisors in a place I worked with got fired because he kept sending inappropriate jokes to people in our MONITORED email.  Just because you have talent doesn't mean you can't be fined or fired. 

Football is a business but players are human beings and they are not slaves. If a fan doesn't want to watch because they don't like the protests, when the protests are about trying to improve african americans lives a player is well within their rights to tell them to stop watching. If I don't shop at chick fil a because of their support of trump it's still their right to support trump. They should stand by what they believe in. If FANS are racist a holes you don't have to cater to them just because they buy a ticket. 

[MichaelWeston]

37 minutes ago, SF2 said:

Sorry, I don't watch football for the protests.  I get enough of it every where else I look.   This country has come a long way in 40 years but if you are expecting perfection, you will be bitterly disappointed until the day you die. 

How does the protest for 1 minute not during the game effect you watching the game?

[Jamie_B]

2 minutes ago, SF2 said:

I asked the question first, you deflected.   Who is we and who do YOU want to make uncomfortable? 

 

If we are talking about NFL Anthem protests, the only one who has made any sense is Eric Reid.  Kaepernick can't string a sentance together, wears cops are pig socks, Fidel Castro tee shirts and a Kunta Kinte tee shirt to a deposition.  So I guess the message is all cops are pigs, Castro was a great man and the NFL Owners who paid me $43.4 million in 6 years to play a game and become a star are slave owners.   

 

You know, Rosa Parks was NOT the first woman to refuse to sit in the back of the bus.  She was chosen to be the face of the protest because of her squeaky clean back ground and well spoken manner.   There could have been a good message from all this but Kaepernick screwed the pooch.  

 

 

Answering a question with a question to ensure we are on the same page is not deflection. Also I don't necessarily disagree that Kap was not the best messenger, for all of this either.

[Jamie_B]

1 minute ago, MichaelWeston said:

How does the protest for 1 minute not during the game effect you watching the game?

 

I love that the 49ners Owner said they would look into suspending concession sales while it was being played. If these folks are serious about it, it shouldn't inconvenience them right? After all we don't want to inconvenience them. :)

[|SF2|]

5 minutes ago, MichaelWeston said:

Ratings dropped nearly 20%? I have not seen that. Their prime time games are still the biggest things each week. 

Keep in mind their ratings have always been the highest for over a decade.  Ratings determine how much a network is willing to pay for games based on the amount of revenue they can generate from advertisers.   This is all based on RATINGS.  The networks are having to give away $100s of millions in free advertising to make up promised ratings that did not materialize.   Are the protests the only reason?  Of course not but it is one of them. 

 

 https://www.outkickthecoverage.com/nfl-tv-partners-set-lose-500-million-ratings-decline/ 

[|SF2|]

6 minutes ago, MichaelWeston said:

Football is a business but players are human beings and they are not slaves. If a fan doesn't want to watch because they don't like the protests, when the protests are about trying to improve african americans lives a player is well within their rights to tell them to stop watching. If I don't shop at chick fil a because of their support of trump it's still their right to support trump. They should stand by what they believe in. If FANS are racist a holes you don't have to cater to them just because they buy a ticket. 

The Chick Fil A protest had nothing to do with Donald Trump, it had to do with the owner's view on same sex marriage.  BTW, Chick Fil A has ZERO hiring restrictions when it comes to single gays, married gays, transgenders etc.. and the company is PRIVATELY OWNED.

 

The protests will do nothing to improve the lives of most African Americans.   It won't improve the schools, doesn't promote marriage or the importance of fatherhood and doesn't do anything to lessen crime, in particular street gang drug crimes.   it focuses entirely on a few horrible events that unfortunately happen in a country of 320 million and is nothing more than pure deflection.   It will have no effect on the 99.995% of hard working African Americans who don't commit crimes or mouth off to cops.  

 

The Chris Rock video has never been more true:  

 

[|Bunghole|]

3 hours ago, LostInDaJungle said:

 why not watch Season 3 of "The Expanse" on Monday night? 

The Expanse is probably my favorite TV show as I have read all the books. It is so ridiculously well done, so brilliant, so amazing that words fail me. I LOVE IT!

 

But I also love football, my favorite team is the Bengals, and I am going to fucking watch them no matter what. I can't help it. My interest level is as high as it's ever been. With my liver disease, I probably have about 2 years to live, so they need to hurry the fuck up and win a SB so I can die happy.

2 hours ago, SF2 said:

 Hell, one guy at my Catholic High School got caught smoking dope in the bathroom in the late 80s.  Nothing happened to him. NOTHING.  We had tournament games to win.  Went on to Ohio State and then the pros. 

 

 

 

 

C'mon, you can't lay that out there and not tell us who it is. Tell! Tell Tell!

[|SF2|]

20 hours ago, USN Bengal said:

Politics, religion, and money have been and are the ruin of the world. Especially in this country, where it’s all mixed together for the elites to keep themselves above us peons.

 

Fuck the owners, the politicians, and especially those who are IGNORING the VALID reason for the protest and turning it into patriotic bullshit.

Mike Brown was killed in August of 2014.  Freddy Grey died on April 19, 2015. There were marches and borderline riots.  The black president of the US empowered his black attorney general Lorretta Lynch to try and fix these problems.   I only took the NFL 2 ENTIRE years to get all righteous.  Colin Kaepernick was about 2 years late to the party and only showed up for some activist pussy.  BLM and other groups were way ahead of any of these weak protests and that is what they are WEAK ASS LAME PROTESTS.   Kneeling for 1 minute to push your brand didn't fix one fucking thing NFL players.  NOTHING.   Now its about bravado and puffing out your chests against the evil owners who pay your salaries after the latest anthem policy was released.  None of this will fix ONE DAMN THING.

 

I will still contend that bad policing in the  African American community and ALL poor communities is the LEAST of their problems. Drugs kills more people in one day than unarmed blacks have been killed in the last 5 years.  Approximately 22,000 seniors in Chicago City schools will NOT be graduating this year.   The police are not preventing students from attending school and getting a good education.   This is about broken culture particularly in the political dens of CITY POLITICIANS.  Find me a shit hole and I can almost always point to corrupt politicians surrounded by a corrupt bureaucracy.  The NFL players won't even touch that, they won't piss off the people who give them the key and protection to most of the cities they play in. 

[|SF2|]

8 minutes ago, Bunghole said:

The Expanse is probably my favorite TV show as I have read all the books. It is so ridiculously well done, so brilliant, so amazing that words fail me. I LOVE IT!

 

But I also love football, my favorite team is the Bengals, and I am going to fucking watch them no matter what. I can't help it. My interest level is as high as it's ever been. With my liver disease, I probably have about 2 years to live, so they need to hurry the fuck up and win a SB so I can die happy.

C'mon, you can't lay that out there and not tell us who it is. Tell! Tell Tell!

One clue:  Wide Receiver 

[|SF2|]

32 minutes ago, Jamie_B said:

 

I love that the 49ners Owner said they would look into suspending concession sales while it was being played. If these folks are serious about it, it shouldn't inconvenience them right? After all we don't want to inconvenience them.

They should get RID of the Anthem.  It was only done by the NFL in order to make money off the military who PAID to have soldiers on the field  and flyovers for recruiting purposes. 

[Jamie_B]

34 minutes ago, SF2 said:

Keep in mind their ratings have always been the highest for over a decade.  Ratings determine how much a network is willing to pay for games based on the amount of revenue they can generate from advertisers.   This is all based on RATINGS.  The networks are having to give away $100s of millions in free advertising to make up promised ratings that did not materialize.   Are the protests the only reason?  Of course not but it is one of them. 

 

 https://www.outkickthecoverage.com/nfl-tv-partners-set-lose-500-million-ratings-decline/ 

Correlation does not equal causation. One might argue that the increase in finding links on the internet to watch (ie: piracy) could also be the problem with the dip in ratings.

[Jamie_B]

3 minutes ago, SF2 said:

They should get RID of the Anthem.  It was only done by the NFL in order to make money off the military who PAID to have soldiers on the field  and flyovers for recruiting purposes. 

I completely agree.

[|SF2|]

1 minute ago, Jamie_B said:

Correlation does not equal causation. One might argue that the increase in finding links on the internet to watch (ie: piracy) could also be the problem with the dip in ratings.

Its a mixture of that along with a bad product the last few years.   The offenses have become very stale and predictable since defensive backs can't do anything to disrupt a route.  A QB league with very few great QBs.  Add in the protests and few who were beginning to lose interest might finally use that to finally stop watching.  I don't watch nearly as much as I used to.  I didn't watch NBA games for years after Jordan left but have finally started watching again with my son who loves pro ball.   Pro Football has become so slow with all the replays and commercials and too many coaches are too afraid to take risks. 

[|Elflocko|]

2 hours ago, SF2 said:

The Anthem is part of the game. 

Didn't used to be, shouldn't be now. 

 

It's a jingoistic recruiting tool by the DOD paid for with your tax dollars. 

 

Plus our national anthem is a shit piece of music... 

[Jamie_B]

2 minutes ago, Elflocko said:

Didn't used to be, shouldn't be now. 

 

It's a jingoistic recruiting tool by the DOD paid for with your tax dollars. 

 

Plus our national anthem is a shit piece of music... 

Plus the 3rd verse of it is racist AF

[LostInDaJungle]

2 minutes ago, Elflocko said:

Plus our national anthem is a shit piece of music... 

And then comes the troubling second verse... Which I'm sure all true patriots who respect our flag know.

And where is that band who so vauntingly swore,
That the havoc of war and the battle’s confusion
A home and a Country should leave us no more?
Their blood has wash’d out their foul footstep’s pollution.
No refuge could save the hireling and slave
From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave,
And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.

 

Ironically, the melody Key assigned to accompany the lyrics of “The Star-Spangled Banner” was a popular English drinking song called “To Anacreon in Heaven.”

Written around 1775 by John Stafford Smith, the song honored the ancient Greek poet Anacreon, a lover of wine. It was originally performed at a London gentleman’s music club called the Anacreontic Society.

The Anacreontic Song, as it was known, had a track record of popularity in the United States by 1814. In one famous case, defenders of the embattled second president, John Adams, used the tune for a song called “Adams and Liberty.”

Key himself had even used the tune before, as accompaniment for verses he wrote in 1805 commemorating American naval victories in the Barbary War.


 

Though his celebrated anthem proclaimed the United States “the land of the free,” Key was in fact a slaveholder from an old Maryland plantation family, and as a U.S. attorney argued several prominent cases against the abolitionist movement. He did speak out against the cruelties of the institution of slavery, but did not see abolition as the solution.

Instead, Key became a leader of the colonization movement, which advocated the relocation of black slaves to Africa and eventually resulted in the modern nation of Liberia.

[|SF2|]

1 hour ago, LostInDaJungle said:

And then comes the troubling second verse... Which I'm sure all true patriots who respect our flag know.

And where is that band who so vauntingly swore,
That the havoc of war and the battle’s confusion
A home and a Country should leave us no more?
Their blood has wash’d out their foul footstep’s pollution.
No refuge could save the hireling and slave
From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave,
And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.

 

Ironically, the melody Key assigned to accompany the lyrics of “The Star-Spangled Banner” was a popular English drinking song called “To Anacreon in Heaven.”

Written around 1775 by John Stafford Smith, the song honored the ancient Greek poet Anacreon, a lover of wine. It was originally performed at a London gentleman’s music club called the Anacreontic Society.

The Anacreontic Song, as it was known, had a track record of popularity in the United States by 1814. In one famous case, defenders of the embattled second president, John Adams, used the tune for a song called “Adams and Liberty.”

Key himself had even used the tune before, as accompaniment for verses he wrote in 1805 commemorating American naval victories in the Barbary War.


 

Though his celebrated anthem proclaimed the United States “the land of the free,” Key was in fact a slaveholder from an old Maryland plantation family, and as a U.S. attorney argued several prominent cases against the abolitionist movement. He did speak out against the cruelties of the institution of slavery, but did not see abolition as the solution.

Instead, Key became a leader of the colonization movement, which advocated the relocation of black slaves to Africa and eventually resulted in the modern nation of Liberia.

That is the 3rd verse and he is describing the British conscripts, slaves and hirelings that made up much of the British marines.  In fact, it was the seizing of US ships  and conscripting of men (defacto enslaving) into the British Navy that was a direct cause of the war of 1812.  He is describing the British, not Americans.  

[|SF2|]

1 hour ago, Elflocko said:

Didn't used to be, shouldn't be now. 

 

It's a jingoistic recruiting tool by the DOD paid for with your tax dollars. 

 

Plus our national anthem is a shit piece of music... 

The fisrt and 4th verse are ok.  The middle verses are confusing as hell and difficult to sing. 

[|Elflocko|]

1 hour ago, SF2 said:

The fisrt and 4th verse are ok.  The middle verses are confusing as hell and difficult to sing. 

The tune itself is pure shit. An abject, atonal abortion...

[Rick]

Reid will not win. The owners will use their multi-million dollar lawyers to stop him and future players from trying to take more money from them. They are their employees. 

[T-Dub]

57 minutes ago, Rick said:

Reid will not win. The owners will use their multi-million dollar lawyers to stop him and future players from trying to take more money from them. They are their employees. 

 

 

Yeah I keep seeing that, and despite everything else suspect about the statement..  It's the teams that are being fined, not the players aka "employees".  Because, y'know, again this is about power & control.  It's important than the conversation stay well away from racist police brutality. 

 

So anyway.. Can we move on to the "protesters = traitors" thing now or would that be skipping a step?  This is my first real fascism, I've only read about it in books & stuff so I'm not really sure how it goes.

[LostInDaJungle]

1 hour ago, Elflocko said:

The tune itself is pure shit. An abject, atonal abortion...

It's a classical modal tune. Might sound weird o modern ears, but it melodically very simple. It actually evolved over the first 50 years and the current melody had to be codified by presidential committee. The version we have is what sounded best to the ears of 1890's musicians.

C Ionian - A Aeolian - D Aeolian progression

The only "atonal" accidental is the F# during "say does thAT" and that is just a 5 on 2 substitution - a staple of modern rock. If there's anything truly weird it's having so many minor chord in an anthem. But "God Save The Queen" is similar.

[T-Dub]