— Sports Illustrated (@SInow) September 26, 2017
When scrolling through my timeline, I originally thought this was a photo from The Onion. If it was, it would effectively satirize the disjointed, non-uniform stances of professional sports when dealing with the National Anthem protest saga. Sports Illustrated attempts to paint the sports world as unified in a country in the midst of turbulence, but its stance is lazy and the characters used as the torch holders is confusing.
United in what? Against police brutality? Against Trump’s recent comments? Against further CTE studies? Despite your stance, the message is super convoluted.There’s no depiction of Colin Kaepernick, the man who started the movement single-handedly last year, but Roger Goodell, Shad Khan, and Aaron Rodgers are portrayed as the figure heads? I guess Goodell deserves to be front and center after releasing a three-sentence statement about how Trump’s comments failed to respect the NFL and its players. Yeah and why not throw in Jags owner Shad Khan in the mix for linking arms with his players despite donating $1 million to Trump’s campaign last year.
It’s courageous for SI to try to have a convincing voice in a sensitive discussion, but can’t really blame the Twitter heads for being united in thinking it sucks…
