THE UNDERLINED RACISM OF MAJOR LEAGUE DRAFTS
With sports being such a huge market and a very influential part of society no matter where you go, there is bound to be many controversies to go with these great sports with many being very popularized like when the World Cup was played in Qatar two years ago and is a very anti-LGBTQ country and didn’t even allow players to wear stuff that represents their pride of being queer or even not allowing affection to be represented between people of the same sex, or maybe a very popular discourse is to let or not to let transgendered people play in the sports division of their preferred gender, or maybe the talk of NIL (Name image and Likeness) and the huge discourse about if college football players should get paid for the work the put into these school’s programs.
Sports is ever changing and there are going to be a lot of changes in the near future because we need to be able to control the impact of sports as a people and make sure the influence of these sports are going in a good light.But as good as controversies can be for worldwide sports there is one thing that seems to keep getting thrown under the rug. That is the talk of NFL (National Football League) players and how there is a huge problem with the way we look at them and many other professional athletes. Football is a game of numbers… yards, stats, and measurements create the game of football and are a good way to mathematically separate good teams and players from bad teams and players. But with Statistics controlling the game so much, the game of football has slowly been losing its spirit and the players are losing a sense of humanity especially towards the fans and the NFL owners which has caused a huge hierarchy switch which reminds people of a system very similar to one many years ago.
When we look at NFL players many of the first things we see is their size and speed, basically what they’re abilities are and what they can do. We never really look at them and they’re personalities unless they’re really big faces and household names. But when it comes to being on the field and being evaluated, it’s a completely different game.The NFL and NBA Draft are one of the biggest events in a sports offseason and it’s where both of the professional leagues evaluate college and minor league players and try to see which of them can be the best player for their team. The way teams get to the conclusion of whose the best is a series of testing and measurements. The 40 yard dash, 3 cone drill, and vertical jump are all things that can boost or tank yourself as a product. But that is the problem right there, getting bad scores and numbers can make you a bad product, you are seen as a product and with the NFL having high ranking owners trying to be the first to get the product.
A lot of this system reminds you of slavery. It Represents Who is the best and biggest product for your team and who can do the most for you as an owner or coach. This language is very diminishing of these players and belittles them as humans while diluting them to just numbers on the field, many people today call NFL players modern day slaves and even thought slaves weren’t getting million dollar contracts, there are a lot of bad undertones when discussing athletic minorities working their tails off to just be seen as a product to white NFL owners