From: Pierre de Craon  [Email him]

Josh Levin at Slate wrote “Anonymous NFL execs say they’re not blackballing Colin Kaepernick. They’re just racist.” [He Doesn’t Fit the System, August 31, 2017]

Although I am a tired old man with ever-declining interest in the professional football segment of Establishment distractions meant to conceal from white Christians that they are being disinherited in the country their ancestors built from scratch, I reacted to Eugene Gant’s comments with both wry amusement and dismay. The rank hypocrisy of the quoted sentences above is one of their many less than laudable characteristics, especially as they appear in a journal (i.e., Slate) that was a senior partner in the successful enterprise to blackball Tim Tebow, who was thrice the quarterback of Kaepernick and Griffin combined—and doubtless still is. (See Paul Kersey’s article Tim Tebow: Bucking The NFL’s Anti-White Bias.)

I think of Tebow every time I hear a fan or a coach bemoan the difficulty of finding an above-average QB in today's overexpanded NFL market. I recall, too, that at just about this time last year, when it was difficult to get even a weather report from a radio station because of the ceaseless chatter about the Patriots' need to find someone to replace Brady for the last three games of his admittedly unjustified four-game suspension, Boomer Esiason stated on air that Tebow ought to be on a short list of those considered for the job by Bill Belichick. The host cut away from Boomer so fast that I was surprised to see that he still had a job the following week.

What's more, if there is any substance to Josh Levin's smug dismissal of the very notion of a pro football meritocracy, it is not for the reason he offered. Rather, what rendered the meritocratic claims risible yet again was the proud announcement by the New York Giants that the team was giving the perpetual loser Geno Smith (right) his umpteenth chance for an unmerited but very fat paycheck. The only consequence of the hiring of Smith will be to make the protection of Eli Manning the team's first priority.