Not long ago, while rummaging through old boxes, I discovered a 1980 Pittsburgh Steelers calendar complete with team schedule. Final scores of each Steelers game appeared in the handwriting of a 6-year-old boy. In other words, like many Americans, I consider myself essentially a lifelong fan of the National Football League.
At some point, however, the NFL will leave millions of fans no choice but to walk away from it for good. After all, prolonged exposure to relentless lying corrodes the soul, and we should want no part of it.
At his annual pre-Super Bowl news conference on Monday, woke NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell showcased the shameless lies, unconscious ironies, and profound moral abominations at the core of the league’s diversity, equity, and inclusion policies when he pledged to continue those policies despite President Donald Trump’s overwhelming victory in the 2024 election and subsequent efforts to dismantle DEI nationwide, prompting one user on the social media platform X to characterize the commissioner as “tone-deaf.”
Goodell’s pledge came in response to a question from a journalist who referred to Trump specifically.
“In light of Trump’s White House and many companies in corporate America dismantling DEI,” the journalist said in a clip posted to X, “how has that made the NFL more steadfast? Have you had feedback from owners, corporate partners, other entities in terms of how the NFL addresses its DEI policies?”
The journalist’s exact wording deserves some attention. After all, the phrase “how has that made the NFL more steadfast?” fits the textbook definition of a leading question. In other words, it excluded the possibility that the NFL might grow less “steadfast” in its commitment to DEI.
Then, whether or not the NFL planted that “steadfast” question, Goodell proceeded to gaslight listeners for nearly two straight minutes.
“We got into diversity efforts because we felt it was the right thing for the National Football League. And we’re going to continue those efforts because we’ve not only convinced ourselves, [but] I think we’ve proven ourselves that it does make the NFL better,” the commissioner said.
In 2003, the NFL adopted the “Rooney Rule,” named for the late Steelers owner Dan Rooney. That rule originally requires teams to interview at least one “diverse” candidate for head-coaching vacancies. The league has since expanded the rule to cover other staff positions, such as general manager and coordinator.
By “diverse,” of course, the league means “not white.”
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Moments later, Goodell lied about DEI’s purpose. He referred to the league’s DEI policies as “fundamental in trying to attract the best possible talent into the National Football League, both on and off the field.”
By definition, DEI has nothing to do with attracting the best possible talent. And it certainly does not apply to players “on” the field.
Then, the commissioner added a defense of the Rooney Rule to his expanding litany of lies.
“The Rooney Rule, for us, is not — there’s no requirement to hire a particular individual on basis of race or gender. It’s simply on the basis of looking at a — uh, uh, uh — canvas of candidates that reflect our communities,” he said.
Normally, one does not transcribe the “uhs” that represent a speaker’s hesitation as he or she searches for words. In this case, however, Goodell’s three-second hesitation — “uh, uh, uh” — occurred at a point in his answer where he tried to describe the process of considering candidates on the basis of race or gender without actually saying “race or gender.” So he came up with the Orwellian phrase “canvas of candidates that reflect our communities.”
Roger Goodell on continuing the NFL’s DEI policies:
“It does make the NFL better. We’re not in this because it’s a trend to get in or a trend to get out of it. Our efforts are fundamental in trying to attract the best possible talent.” pic.twitter.com/cYMK6sfjI7
— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) February 3, 2025
The journalist’s question, planted or otherwise, did have some justification. After all, Trump’s administration has taken a sledgehammer to immoral DEI policies nationwide. And public opinion, as reflected by Trump’s election, has put corresponding pressure on many businesses and corporations.
“Wow, talk about being tone-deaf,” one X user wrote, adding a clown emoji.
NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell says the league will continue their DEI policies.
“We got into diversity efforts because we felt like it was the right thing for the National Football League, and we’re going to continue those efforts.”
Wow, talk about being tone-deaf.
🤡 pic.twitter.com/dP3GGX08Vr— Sadie (@Sadie_NC) February 4, 2025
Another X user, endowed with more common sense than Goodell, described DEI as “literally the opposite of getting best talent.”
DEI is literally the opposite of getting best talent.
— Critaper (@Critaper99) February 3, 2025
Goodell’s shameless lies practically expose themselves.
After all, the league proudly uses skin color, for instance, to determine a pool of coaching candidates. It does not do that, however, for the NFL draft. There, players rise and fall on merit alone, as they should.
Moreover — and this often gets overlooked — DEI policies do not determine who owns a franchise. The owners exempt themselves from the same scrutiny they apply to their coaches and general managers.
But why? After all, if one can make the argument that skin color must play a role in determining coaching or executive positions, then why does the same argument not apply to the wealthiest people in the league — the owners? Why does the league not select a half-dozen or so franchises at random and sell them to “diverse” owners only?
Speaking of owners, Goodell’s answer highlighted two incredible and apparently unconscious ironies in the NFL’s DEI policies.
First, by adopting the Rooney Rule, the owners effectively acknowledged their own bigotry or stupidity. In other words, they conceded that, absent said rule, they would ignore qualified “diverse” candidates. That makes them either racists or fools.
Goodell, in fact, admitted as much.
“We got into diversity efforts,” he said. Then, he described those efforts as “fundamental to trying to attract the best possible talent.”
What had those racist morons been doing up to that point? Excluding “diverse” candidates by design? Or simply limiting their prospective talent pool by sheer ineptitude? Either way, it does not reflect well on the league’s owners.
Second — and this irony applies to DEI policies in general, not simply the NFL’s — those who promote policies branded as “anti”-racism are the only ones keeping “race” alive as a category.
Why not simply tell the truth? In short, categorizing people based on immutable characteristics, and then taking action based on said characterization, has no moral justification.
Instead, they use language and adopt policies that, in another context, the Ku Klux Klan would approve. We need a “canvas of candidates that reflect our communities,” Goodell said. That amounts to categorization and action based on skin color, something we were supposed to have left behind a long time ago.
In sum, Sunday’s Super Bowl between the Philadelphia Eagles and the two-time defending Super Bowl champion Kansas City Chiefs — the latter widely perceived as a darling of NFL executives and their on-field officials — already has some fans considering tuning out of the big game.
Eventually, that tuning-out phenomenon — and maybe even the discarding of old NFL memorabilia — should become both widespread and permanent.
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