RUSH: I don’t remember when exactly it hit me that football, as it’s played today, is in its last days. It was recently, of course, but I can’t pinpoint the exact date. I forget what it was, even, that alerted me to this. I think it was cumulative events, series of events, that led me to an instinctive conclusion. And it is happening, and it’s happening at a more rapid rate than even I expected it to happen.
It is happening almost exactly as I predicted it. This is a huge See, I Told You So. I want to read to you first from Bob Ryan of the Boston Globe yesterday. Now, who is Bob Ryan? You sports fans know that Bob Ryan is the dean, the current dean of sportswriters in Boston, at the Boston Globe. He is a revered figure in the sportswriter community. He appears frequently on all of the ESPN sportswriter shows. He appears on Around the Horn. He is a go-to commentator for anything happening in Boston, be it with the Patriots or the Red Sox or the Celtics or the Bruins.
He’s not a quack. He’s a seasoned citizen. He been doing this a long time. He’s in the Will McDonough league, highly respected. He is well thought of. I mean, young sportswriters always wanted to be Bob Ryan. He’s that kind of figure. Now, he’s also politically aligned on the left, but they all are, so that’s not a big deal. The point is that Bob Ryan of the Boston Globe is not some quack. Bob Ryan’s not the kind of guy that would go on ESPN and say, “We need to get rid of the National Anthem because it’s a war anthem like Kevin Blackistone did.” He’s a serious sports reporter and analyst, extremely knowledgeable of the game, and again, in no way is Bob Ryan a quack. I don’t mean to be damaging his career here by praising his work.
The point is, when Bob Ryan writes something about sports, it’s akin to the New York Times writing something and newsrooms all over America picking it up. I want to read to you what Bob Ryan wrote in the Boston Globe. I saw it yesterday. I don’t know actually when he wrote it. I saw it on Breitbart. “Popularity of Football Reflects Poorly on America.” Now, after you read this, we’re gonna go back to May 7th of 2012 and relive from the Grooveyard of Forgotten Favorites the prediction I made about what was going to happen with football and how it would be taken out, how they would do it.
And I predicted that it would be the media, who derive their living from it, the sports media who make their living covering this sport, are going to be the ones, wittingly, or unwittingly, who take it out. That’s the essence of my prediction. But it’s far more detailed than that.
Bob Ryan. “Football has an enormous appeal to many people who are borderline psychopaths.” He’s talking about the players. He’s talking about the players and the fans. I want you to remember, too. When I was critical of a Chargers-Patriots playoff game some years ago, in which I said, “My gosh, I felt like I was watching the Bloods and Crips,” everybody came down on me. “How can you say that? That’s racist! That’s bigoted!” Everybody just descended on me with untold mountains of criticism.
So now here is the dean of sportswriters, I mean, really everybody in the sportswriter community just loves this guy. I mean, he’s that influential, and he writes, “Football has an enormous appeal to many people who are borderline psychopaths in a manner that no other sport — and this includes the very virile sport of hockey — does not. I come to you as an enabler, and I suspect there are many more out there like me. We are essentially troubled by the casual acceptance our society has of a sport that really and truly maims people. That football is AmericaÂ’s current sport of choice reflects poorly on us as a people.”
Now, this guy’s made his living reporting on the greatness of people who’ve played for the New England Patriots. This is a man who has told every one of his readers how player X, player Y, player Z, is great. Now all of a sudden Bob Ryan is suffering pangs of guilt over having promoted and enabled the popularity of football. Which, again, has an enormous appeal to many people who are borderline psychopaths. And then he writes this.
“The simple truth is that football can never be made safe. Even if the essential ‘kill’ mentality were changed, football can never be made safe. And it has never been more dangerous than it is now, thanks to a combination of there being larger, quicker, more lethal people delivering the blows and the lingering mentality brought to the game by coaches and players who cannot or will not change.”
This is a profound 180. And you have to ask, “What brought this on?” Do you realize how fast this is happening? I don’t know how long Bob Ryan has worked at the Boston Globe, but it’s decades, and all of a sudden now he’s suffering pangs of guilt, the people who play the game are borderline psychopaths, it says horrible things about us as a people because we enjoy and promote a sport that maims people, really and truly maims people. And he’s troubled by the casual acceptance our society has for this.
This is happening at an even more rapid rate than I thought. I want to take you back to my prediction. Now, this prediction is twofold, and the last half of what you’re gonna hear has not happened yet, but it’s the next shoe to drop. The first half of this prediction is amazing, even if I say so myself. Let’s go back to May 7th, 2012, on this show, talking about the game of football and how and where liberal attacks on the game would take place.
RUSH ARCHIVE: What happened in the Colosseum that everybody talks about? What is the legend? That Christians were given to the lions and that the crowd roared! The crowd loved it. And if you don’t like that, go further back to the gladiators wiping each other out. Thumbs up, thumbs down. The Roman Caesar and his women sitting there. Thumbs up, thumbs down. Think Russell Crowe if you’re a Hollywood type. Well, in both those cases, people were dying and it was being cheered. On the one hand, in the jaws of lions; on the other hand, by swords and other weapons.
Now, I guarantee you, this is going to happen, folks. It’s going to happen in the sports media. It’s going to happen in the sports media under the guise of compassion and an attempt to be sensitive and helpful. … But the idea that it can’t be made safe so we have to get rid of the game, I’m telling you: It’s a groundswell that’s being spun “into control” or “out of control,” however you want to look at it. What’s gonna happen is somebody is gonna figure out here pretty soon that since 75% of the players in the NFL are African-American, that 75% of the concussions are being suffered by African-Americans; 75% of the heart attacks, early deaths, whatever, are African-Americans. And then somebody is going to ask (maybe this week after I put it out here), “How long are we going to put up with the sacrifice of African-American males for a bloodthirsty American audience?
“How long are we willingly going to submit African-American males to maiming, concussions, early death, and perhaps suicide? For what? The blood lust of the American population!” And they’ll make the obvious connection to the old plantation days. You watch. That’s what’s gonna happen. It will be used as a further arrow in the quiver to ban the game, not as something we have to protect because it employs so many African-Americans. That’s my little prediction.
RUSH: Now, the only aspect of that prediction that is not part of what Bob Ryan said is the African-American connection, and it will be next. It may be implied, but it will be next. (interruption) Well, I… Snerdley’s asking me, “What do you think the psychopath line is?” You think that’s a reference to gangs? You think it’s a…? (interruption) I don’t know. I don’t want to put words in Bob Ryan’s mouth.
He could be thinking of Richie Incognito as a psychopath. There’s a white guy. I don’t think he means “psychopathic “is exclusively African-American. But you’ll notice I used the word “maim;” he used the word “maim.” I predicted somebody would say that we are engaging in a game like the Romans used to sacrifice Christians and the lions in the Colosseum, and everybody is applauding it, and he’s asking for forgiveness.
He’s enabled that. It’s the same thing today. That’s what football is. That’s what he’s saying: Football is on the way or it already has become that, a sport that really and truly maims people. He’s troubled by the casual acceptance our society has. “That football is AmericaÂ’s current sport of choice reflects poorly on us as a people.” It’s a mess. I expected all this to happen. I didn’t expect it to happen within five years. It is amazing.
You take what’s happening here with the Jonathan Martin and Incognito and the bullying aspect, and look at how quickly people in the media who used to be die-hard fans are now writing these columns. It’s the sports media writing this critical stuff. It’s the sports media that is casting aspersions on the game and feeling pangs of guilt over it. Bob Ryan writing this is not like Anastas Mikoyan at the Charlotte Observer.
Not to insult the Charlotte Observer, but I mean, he’s a big guy. It’s not insignificant. And, by the way, I predict here that somebody’s gonna say there’s nothing we can do to make it safe. He says,
“The simple truth is that football can never be made safe. Even if the essential “kill” mentality were changed, football can never be made safe.” The people that play it are “larger, quicker, more lethal,” and they’re “borderline psychopaths.” And it’s unlike any other sport in that regard. It’s attracting bad actors. The fans supporting it are promoting and supporting bad actors. The coaches look the other way when the bad actors dominate and triumph. I mean, it is an astounding See, I Told You So.
I fully expected it to happen, don’t misunderstand, but nowhere near this soon. I’m just telling you, the next shoe to drop on this is gonna be everything that Ryan has said; then they’re going to get to the racial component. Seventy-five percent of the league is African-American. You add that to every other criticism he wrote here, and it makes the game racist. Even if the players are handsomely compensated, it’s still the evil owners of whom there is no one African-American.
They’re basically running a blood sport.
Fans are happily paying to watch permanent injury and maiming.
You wait. It may happen before the end of next week, at the rate this is going.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: I went back to the RushLimbaugh.com website. I first made reference to the attacks on football perhaps leading to its demise on December 14, 2011. That’s how far back it goes. The See, I Told You So bite was May of 2012. It’s uncanny. Folks, I just know these people. I’m not prescient. I don’t have a crystal ball. I just know liberals. Like with SUVs, I just know what they’re going to do. I know.
What strikes me about this is that here you have people who made their careers building this sport up and the people who play it and writing puff piece profiles about how great all these guys are. Now (I mean, inside of one season, two seasons), it’s stunning to me to watch how a piece of conventional wisdom or groupthink can totally overtake an entire a group of people to where they all end up thinking and writing and reporting the same thing. It’s just so easily predictable.
Every concussion on the field now results in stories on potential suicide.
Every suicide results back to possible concussions while playing.
It just in the cards, folks. The die is cast.