The NFL and the military: a love affair as strange and cynical as ever

[unhappycamper]

http://www.theguardian.com/sport/2015/sep/11/the-nfl-and-the-military-a-love-affair-as-strange-and-cynical-as-ever

As another season kicks off for a league that charges the Pentagon to fund troop tributes, the NFL’s strange love affair with the military again takes center stage

The NFL and the military: a love affair as strange and cynical as ever
Jeb Lund
Friday 11 September 2015 04.31 EDT

This is the power of the NFL: it can brand something you respect into something nauseous. I have a lifelong fascination with the military: my grandfathers were pilots in WWII, one also in Korea. My stepfather, a man I love and respect, only retired from the Air Force this decade. I attended high school near Eglin Air Force Base, living out near Range Road, where you could sit on your roof at night and watch the bomb tests light up the underside of clouds. Most of my friends’ dads were in the service.

But just like that friend’s dad who got in your face all OORAH about how you could never dare question him (on anything) when you knew in reality that he ran Quicken for the 101st Chairborne, doing sorties on Excel columns, the NFL doesn’t have an off switch on its deployment of big words like battle and sacrifice. NFL commissioner Roger Goodell glad-handing veterans who’ve lost something, smirking under a flyover, is another avatar of the rear-echelon dudes who spent their Iraq War scanning the base doppler for tornados in the midwest and up-armoring their word rage to combat the “libturd” War on Christmas, daring you to question those who do their duty. The NFL is in the business of not being questioned, and the troops are its favorite accessory.

Complaints about the creeping militarization of the NFL are almost as old as complaints about how current finesse dynasties always get the defensive pass interference calls, and their ubiquity reduces them to the angsty hum of a punk band tuning all their guitars to drop-D. But this last year reified the issue as something worthy of consideration to more than just teens hoping to annoy dad. The NFL, which swaddles itself in camouflage to honor the troops, allowed 14 teams to charge the Department of Defense $5.4m for the privilege of their own honor, over four years.

That the NFL found a way to monetize patriotism shouldn’t surprise anyone; the only surprise is how efficiently and directly they did it. This sort of behavior is par for the course with the NFL. Every October, it puts its athletes in pink shoes, pink towels, gives refs pink penalty flags and sells “authentic” alternate pink jerseys to promote breast cancer awareness. The proceeds from these sales do not go breast cancer research, and what little escapes the wholesaler, distributor and retailer goes toward promoting screening and awareness. The NFL doesn’t directly profit, but its friends do.