God Bless the NFL

The West has fallen and the crucified Christ has been replaced by the pig skin and the goal posts.

Americans don’t believe in anything but their football teams. If we had it our way – which is always available to us for a small $10 a month fee – we would prefer an unseen thick accent foreigner from the global south that works 22 hours a day to raise our children through an iPad screen while we scream and howl at Patrick Mahomes and Travis Kelce to get us into field goal range and send us to overtime so that they may reaffirm our prejudices just one more time.

Yes! YES! We are rooting for the winners! God has a favorite team after all! Or does He (or She, or They, or whatever the fuck you need to hear in order to keep reading)?

Every Sunday, every bloody Sunday, we find ourselves rolling out of bed, adorning our robes of our own personal faith, traversing our way to our nearest television set, where we spend the next three hours sweating, chanting, embracing, and (most importantly) praying, that our lord and savior, QB1, can redeem us and lead our damned souls out of the jaws of defeat and on to victory.

Does that sound familiar?

I’m talking about church you football crazed maniac! For God’s sake, I just watched a commercial where Buffalo Bills fans were literally baptizing their infant children by throwing them through baby sized plastic tables. We have replaced the cross with the meaningless wins and losses of a for profit company that is slowly draining our communities’ time, attention, and resources while hiding behind the shield of a patented logo!

The sick joke of it all is that whether or not you adorn the Kelly Green or the Chiefs Red,all of us Americans are fair weather fans. We say we stand for something, believe in a direction of sorts, some kind of loosely guided morals that seem to blur with every passing day, but really we don’t have the slightest clue of who we actually are. We don’t remember what the West stands for – or maybe we do and we simply don’t like what we have become – but damn it Son! How about those Chiefs?

The moment “our guy” or “our party” turns out to be a spineless AIPAC sell out or, God forbid, a gang of pedophile mercenaries, we seemingly always find a way to turn the other cheek, determined to not let the “other side” see the smear of shit running down our face.

God forbid we bother to look up from our mechanized and individually designed life path of self betterment, progress, and touchdown, touchdown, touchdown that is spoon fed to us by thousands of flat screen televisions. Maybe then, if we found the damn remote to turn this GARBAGE PRODUCT off, we might realize that we are just a small blot of color on a much larger canvas. Maybe then, we would remember a time when the West was a symbol of peace,safety and strength and not an endless loop of self identity masturbation slop.

I’ve got a strange little itch in the back of my head telling me my good ol’ American education was a lie. Was the West ever a shelter for moral responsibility, individual dignity, and democracy? Did we ever protect the unique cultural celebrations that made our communities great? Or have we always been begging to pay $130 for a colored jersey that screams “I eat whatever shit they tell me to eat and I’ll come back again and again if it means my team will eventually win”.

Now that the symbol of our people is a reality television star who spray paints himself orange and uses his power and credibility to take advantage of young girls, we cling to our Super Bowl bragging rights like company store credits.

We have nothing left. Our moral compasses are spinning out of control and we are in crippling debt and Christ won’t save us. Whatever we used to believe in (God, love, family, community, whatever) has been dethroned, discarded like trash, and we have filled the void with endless commercials, war games, and silver penis trophies (yes, your favorite football player did just kiss the tip. He’s a champion after all!)

The only thing left I have to say is may God bless the NFL, because it’s all we got left.