Mike Ditka Earns Clueless Guy of the Week Award
Mike Ditka opened his mouth Monday and let his opinions be known about protests and oppression. Ditka was quoted as saying there hasn’t been oppression in the United States “in the last 100 years”. He went on to say if he were still coaching he would have a policy that all of his players have to stand for the anthem or face some form of punishment. He also stated that he believed if you want to protest something then go leave the United States and go play football in another country.
Once Mike Ditka got out of coaching and they put a microphone in front of his face, no one was confusing him for FDR or Barrack Obama with his ability to articulate intelligent thoughts on anything outside of football.
Most of Ditka’s statement was to be expected but, I do have to take issue with his 100 years comment. 100 years Mike, really? We’ve only had to do deal with Jim Crow laws, segregation, the Civil Rights Movement, Brown vs. The Board of Education, the CIA funneling drugs into poor Black and Latino communities, mass incarceration that has wiped out nearly 2 generations of Black men, but please Mike Ditka tell me about how it’s been all good for the last 100 years.
Mike Ditka represents a larger problem in the US that will continue to impeded progress until people like him start to see the inequalities and imbalances that exist to help people who look like him get ahead. The year Mike Ditka won the Super Bowl with the Chicago Bears in 1985, there no Black Coaches in the league. To that point, there had yet to be a black coach in the league even though there a number of qualified candidates see this article from the Washington Post in 1985.
If coaches and critics of the players want to see the kneeling come to an end, maybe it might make sense to start to have worth while discussions about the issues they are actually protesting.
Pro Football Hall of Famer Mike Ditka said during a radio interview Monday that he doesn’t believe there has been oppression in the United States in the “last 100 years.”
The former NFL tight end and head coach made his comments in an interview with Jim Gray on Westwood One’s Monday Night Football pregame show, when discussing the issue of players sitting or kneeling during the national anthem as a way to protest social injustice.
The issue has been a topic of a national debate, which intensified after President Donald Trump’s comments that NFL owners should “fire” players who don’t stand for the anthem.
“All of a sudden, it’s become a big deal now, about oppression,” Ditka said. “There has been no oppression in the last 100 years that I know of. Now maybe I’m not watching it as carefully as other people. I think the opportunity is there for everybody. … If you want to work, if you want to try, if you want to put effort into yourself, I think you can accomplish anything.”
The 77-year-old Ditka, who said Americans should be “color blind,” maintained that he was not “condemning anybody or criticizing anybody” but said a football game is not the right place for players to protest.
“If you were coaching … would it be your policy that either you stand for the national anthem, or you don’t play?” Gray asked Ditka.
“Yes,” Ditka said. “I don’t care who you are, how much money you make. If you don’t respect our country, then you shouldn’t be in this country playing football.
“Go to another country and play football. If you had to go somewhere else to try to play the sport, you wouldn’t have a job. So that would be my take. If you can’t respect the flag and the country, then you don’t respect what this is all about. So I would say, adios.”
In a conference call with media members Tuesday, Joe Lockhart, the NFL’s executive vice president of communications and public affairs, said the league does not share Ditka’s opinion.
“Everyone’s entitled to an opinion. … The league would not express that opinion by any stretch of the imagination,” he said.
Steve
Steve is an affordable multifamily housing professional that is also the co-founder of Whiskey Congress. Steve has written for national publications such as The National Marijuana News and other outlets as a guest blogger on topics covering sports, politics, and cannabis. Steve loves whiskey, cigars, and uses powerlifting as an outlet to deal with the fact that no one listens to his brilliant ideas.
