The NFLers Are At It Again - Chiefs Playoff Game This Saturday

When they showed the television schedule for the playoffs next week I eagerly looked at their spiffy little graphic only to see when the Chiefs played. Saturday night at 5:00 (our time out here on the west coast).

And then I noticed something that made me chilled to the bone.

The broadcast. 

I noticed they had an "ABC" logo or an "NBC" logo next to each of the six games featured next weekend, you know, good wide-reaching national broadcast as they have always done.

Excccccept our game, the Chiefs-Dolphins game -- it did not have any of that. Instead it just had this one word.

Peacock.

I knew instantly what that meant.

We could only watch it if we had their particular streaming service.

I couldn't believe it. What is worse is scouring the web for anyone expressing any objection to this and finding virtually nothing. Some of that I understand -- the NFL will still show the games on regular broadcast to the Kansas City and Miami markets.

The rest of us?

We have to buy the NBC streaming service.

Now yes we can find someone who has it and invite ourselves over. We can go to the sports bar and watch it there -- there are actually a couple Chiefs-fan places in the Los Angeles area so that's cool.

But it is indeed just the principle of the thing.

I don't want to buy anything from NBC. I don't even want to endure the hassle of seeing about getting it for free for a time just to watch the game but then have to go through the rigmarole of cancelling the whole thing later. I don't want anything to do with these people, mostly because the things they are about with their programming and news broadcasts is absolute wretchedness.

Now yes, I realize, it is no different with CBS, ABC, or Fox. I get that. And in watching any Chiefs thing there I am giving them my attention and in that sense supporting what they advertise.

I'd read that NBC already had a very lucrative deal with the NFL to broadcast one single playoff game on the streaming service, which this year just happened to be the Chiefs game. There was also a bit of a nod to the Chiefs in that NBC deliberately wanted that game because, yes, the Chiefs are such a draw. I can see that. Patrick Mahomes is the most marketable pro football athlete today -- he's personable, he's impassioned, he's courageous, and he is a phenomenally gifted athlete.

But still. 

I still do not want to give two cents to any of what the networks and the NFLers who run them put out for me to consider. I caught the SI issue from last October at the doctor's office and took a snapshot of the main story. It was mostly about how high profile college players may now get $$$ from their name, image, and likeness, but it also touched on all the seediness involved in all kinds of now-virtually-irreversably prevalent money-making activity throughout the sportsing world. It isn't that people earn an income, even of astronomical values, that's cool. The issue is really what is mixed up in all of that.

The networks that broadcast the games to pay the on-field performers are still showing alcohol commercials -- I know they always have and always will, but it doesn't make it right. Now every automobile or truck commercial you see is for all-electric vehicles -- no ads for a single "gas-guzzler" among them. This too is wicked because it is more promotion of the climate changle alarmist policies that destroy communities in ways these networks will never address -- I'd venture to say those companies are subsidized to advertise in this way. Too many of the commercials are now featuring same-sex couples and it is obvious they are there presented in the same way as man-woman husband-wife relationships. This too is profoundly immoral.

So yes, you are right, I confess. If you are someone who is responding to this with a great big enthusiastic "Take a hike then, don't watch the games," I get it. You have a point.

But here in this blog post I can just share my take and maybe others will concur, and we can perhaps someway, some day enjoy a fine sport with fine athletes representing the best of our favored geographic identity and everything good that comes with healthy professional sports competition, without all those tremendously ugly things added in. Maybe.

As it is the gambling thing is still going and growing and getting worse, and it too was addressed in that SI issue, by the way. It was addressed in a story about how deep some people related to some team got in it all and how much that involvement cost them the integrity of their games.

I happened to catch this Breitbart story, there with the screenshot, and sure enough, it all about one of those things I'd mentioned before.

Gambling destroys lives.

So why then is the NFL and just about every other sports whatever making "official" relationships with these people?

I mean, I know why. It is because they know it is so easy for so many people to whip out their mobile devices and make a bet on this and a bet on that... and when they are done they can so easily do it again and again and again BECAUSE IT IS SO MUCH FUN! The whole purpose is to keep their interest in the whole enterprise so the NFLers can make that much more money.

Again, it isn't that people make money, it is that they are making it off so many morally questionable things. These are the things that make it not-okay.

And this is precisely why the whole Chiefs-game-only-on-Peacock is so objectionable.

The Chiefs are being used as a promotional device to get people to buy the service. That's what is so disgusting about it. Really, me personally, I don't even have to watch the game. I can get the radio broadcast. I can see the highlights. I can read about what happened. I don't even have to pay any attention to any of it at all. All that's just as great -- the Chiefs aren't my god.

But to many people their sports affection is. And that is what the NFLers and all their associated commercial mandarins are exploiting and making worse. It is the wanton encouragement of people to drink and gamble and carouse and pay out of their nose for things in the name of an absurd "climate change" hysteria -- even imbibe deeply the full panoply of humanist, materialist, leftist dogma that NBC regularly spews -- all of it is evil as all get-out.

So yeah, I hope my good pro football team the Kansas City Chiefs do well on Saturday, I do. I enjoy their success, or even their non-success as it may be -- they're my team. This first playoff game they have is against a Dolphins franchise that historically is 3-0 against us in the postseason, including that classic but devastating-to-Chiefs-fans Christmas day overtime game in 1971.

But if I don't see a thing of actual live game-time action it isn't a bad thing -- might be good in that I can at least do my own little bit of objecting by abstaining. It is sad, and sad that I don't see many people expressing at least something of what I'm sharing here, even if it is just some kind of principled statement against the streaming service commercial exploitation.

Would sure like to know if there are. I know there are, but again it'd be nice to know of them.

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