Can Sports Heal a Divided Country? It's Happened Before, Says Retired NFL Player
* By Jill Wagner*
As Colin Kaepernick’s new Nike ad continues to divide the country, one former NFL player says, in the end, sports will help reunite it.
Randal "Thrill" Hill played for the Miami Dolphins, the Phoenix / Arizona Cardinals, and the New Orleans Saints long before Kaepernick and other players started kneeling during the National Anthem to protest racial inequality.
So, is he worried that the Anthem controversy will permanently damage the league? Just the opposite.
Hill told Cheddar Big News, "When things go wrong in this country, the NFL and sports usually brings the country back together.”
Hill points to the days after the attacks on September 11th. Professional baseball was put on hold for six days. When the season resumed, the Mets played their archrival the Braves for the first major sporting event in New York after the attacks. Mets players wore NYPD and FDNY hats, Mike Piazza hit a home run, and for many people, it felt like things would actually be okay.
Then the Yankees made it to the World Series, and President Bush threw out the first pitch.
Hill also talked about the Miami riots during the 1980s, and how football helped bring the city together during those troubling times.
“The NFL usually brings ー and even Major League Baseball ー bring citizens of the United States together to cheer and have fun and to go out just have a great time watching a good event.”
It’s still not clear how history will judge Nike's new “Just Do It” ad, which aired during Thursday night’s NFL season opener. Former 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick voices the commercial, telling the audience to "Believe in something. Even if it means sacrificing everything."
The company’s stock price has dropped since Nike first revealed the new campaign and some critics have burned their sneakers. President Trump weighed in, tweeting, "Just like the NFL, whose ratings have gone WAY DOWN, Nike is getting absolutely killed with anger and boycotts.”
At the same time, many fans and professional athletes are showing their support, with the hashtag #JustDoIt trending on Twitter.
NFL legend Tom Brady says he is done playing football after 22 seasons. Cheddar News speaks with Trey Wingo, Chief NFL Analyst at Pro Football Network, about Brady announcing his retirement.
Greg Bishop, Senior Writer for Sports Illustrated, joins Cheddar News' Closing Bell, where he says Tom Brady's legacy is all about 'progress' and expects the future Hall of Famer to bolster his entrepreneurial ventures following his retirement.
Big Brothers Big Sisters of America has been a driving force for youth mentorship since 1904. The nonprofit organization is launching its annual Big Draft campaign this month in partnership with the NFL, and Artis Stevens, the first Black CEO of Big Brothers Big Sisters of America, joined Cheddar to discuss the push for adding more "Bigs" as mentors on his one-year anniversary leading the non-profit organization. "While the NFL is recruiting and drafting more players, they're also helping us to draft more mentors and, particularly, men all the way from across February to all the way to April of this year," Stevens explained.
On this episode of Cheddar Reveals, Jim Riordan, Director of the MBA Sport Management program at Florida Atlantic University, breaks down the successes, failures, and chaos of the first seven months of the Name, Image, Likeness policy in college athletics; Adi Kunalic, President of Opendorse, discusses the first-ever association-wide deal in college athletics between Opendorse and the NAIA, and how Opendorse is marketing and educating student-athletes to make the most of their NIL deal potential; Cheddar gets a look at Curiosity Stream's 'Predicting a Pro'.
Jim Riordan, Director of the MBA Sport Management program at Florida Atlantic University, joins Cheddar Reveals to break down the successes, failures, and chaos of the first seven months of the Name, Image, Likeness policy in college athletics.
Adi Kunalic, President of Opendorse, joins Cheddar Reveals to discuss the first-ever association-wide deal in college athletics between Opendorse and the NAIA, and how Opendorse is marketing and educating student-athletes to make the most of their NIL deal potential.
With the Beijing Winter Olympics set to get underway on Friday, Dan Wolken, a national columnist for USA Today, joined Cheddar News to break down the big storylines as the pandemic and international conflicts threaten to cast a cloud over the event that is aspirationally seen as a beacon of international cooperation. Wolken noted specific issues over cybersecurity for visiting athletes and disputes over human rights leading to a diplomatic boycott have been making waves even before the opening ceremony. "So you've got sort of these barbs going back and forth already between the Americans and the Chinese, and things haven't even started yet," he said. "We don't even know what's going to happen once the games start and people actually start winning medals."
We are a week away from the 2022 Beijing Olympics, and China has already faced a host of problems leading up to the opening ceremony of the Beijing games. DJ Peterson, president of Longview Global Advisors, joins Cheddar News to discuss the many concerns and controversies surrounding the event.
The Los Angeles Rams and the Cincinnati Bengals will be the two teams competing at Super Bowl LVI after both survived their respective nail-biting conference championships. The Big Game will be held at the SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, California, home of the Rams, potentially granting them a home-field advantage. Frank Schwab, a sportswriter for Yahoo Sports, joined Cheddar to discuss what bettors should be looking for at this year’s NFL finale. "Super Bowl, unlike any other game on the NFL schedule, where if people bet once a year, it's going to be on the Super Bowl, especially with so many states having legal betting now," Schwab said.
