In 49 BC, it was the Roman Senate that ordered Julius Caesar’s army not to cross the Rubicon river. Crossing the Rubicon was considered the point of no return.
Caesar ignored these orders and ignited a Roman Civil War that led to Caesar achieving a “dictator for life” status for the Roman Empire.
The NFL dictator, Roger Goodell, is facing a couple of Rubicons and depending on how he crosses these Rubicons will determine if his dictatorial status in the NFL will be supplanted or cemented.
Indeed, the biggest Rubicon in Goodell’s way in the short term is figuring out how to proceed with getting players to stop protesting the National Anthem since now President Donald Trump is stating he will relinquish the NFL’s tax exemption status even though the NFL voluntarily relinquished its tax exempt status in 2015.
So the NFL is facing a political crisis of sorts and blacklash will come despite how the NFL decides to move forward. Something tells me it won’t be the way of acknowledging the White Supremacy, and police brutality since it’s the NFL owners deciding what rules to implement about the National Anthem.
Makes perfect sense that a group of owners with no black owners are going to decide how their players that are black by an overwhelming majority can protest.
White men in positions of power have been doing this for centuries, but we elected a Black President so everything is ok right? Even though a study conducted by the Economic Policy Institute and Prosperity Now projects Black America’s wealth to hit zero by 2053.
No systemic racism to see here… move along. So let’s move along to a Rubicon not on the minds of sports talking heads that could sink the NFL if they don’t get this right. This Rubicon is plant based not cloth based. It’s whether or not to allow players to use Marijuana for pain management.
Former Denver Broncos Tight End, Nate Jackson needed a way to cope with the pain his body was in from smashing into people on a daily basis so he “weeded as needed” which he found to be an effective way to manage his pain.
In 2014, Jackson and former Minnesota Vikings Punter, Chris Kluwe, appeared on the program HBO Sports. At that time, Kluwe and Jackson estimated around half the NFL players use Marijuana. Many of these players openly talked about using Marijuana for their pain management.
The National Academy of Sciences released a report this year that cannabis or cannabinoids, which are found in Marijuana, can be an effective treatment for chronic pain. Couple this with the fact that now 29 states have made Medical Marijuana legal, the NFL has a real conundrum on its hands.
To combat chronic pain from slamming their bodies into one another, the NFL gives players a combination of pain pills and anti-inflammatory injections. These medications include: Hydrocodone, Vicodin, Percocet, Toradol, and Celebrex.
Many people understand the school to prison pipeline system that operates in low income black and brown communities all over this country, but do they understand the riches to rags pipeline the NFL is operating?
The scheme involves listing Marijuana as a banned substance that forces players to use these addictive pain medications which causes many of their riches they earned in their playing days to turn to rags.
This can be because of the constant rattling around of their brains from being hit day in and day out which causes Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (C.T.E.), and as a consequence their brains turn to mush. Now the player is in his 40s, is starting to exhibit signs of C.T.E., and does not have the financial means to sustain around the clock healthcare for the next 20 to 30 years of their life.
What it’s also causing is players to turn on their bank accounts like it’s a faucet is they have become so addicted to these pills they have been ingesting for years.
In 2011, a study by researchers at the Washington University in St. Louis found former NFL players were four times more likely to abuse prescription painkillers than the general population. And more than seven in 10 players who used pain medications during their playing days went on to abuse them.
Indeed, with the growing amount of evidence that Marijuana can be an effective form of pain management the NFL powers that be knew they had to respond. So in August 2017, the NFL reached out to the NFLPA with an offer to study Marijuana for Pain Management.
If this is just a talking point to stall those in favor of lifting the ban of Marijuana use in the NFL it could be the death knell for the league.
Here’s why. Nearly 1,000 players filed a class-action lawsuit against the NFL for covering up the consequences and dangers of concussions to its players. The NFL settled in 2013, but a judge this year ordered the settlement payout to increase to 1 billion dollars since this settlement is going to cover more than 20,000 ex-NFL players.
As a result of this settlement, the NFL has tried to curb the rules of the game to show the world they are concerned about concussions and are doing their best to prevent them, even though it’s the constant hitting that is leaving players with C.T.E.
While this phony game of cat and mouse about the NFL and player safety ensues, there’s a team at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem may hold the key to save the way the NFL game is played for a little longer.
The University team found that rats and mice subjected to traumatic brain injury showed significantly better recovery when treated with cannabinoid compounds, possibly opening the way for clinical trials in the near future.
There is mounting evidence that Marijuana is an effective alternative to addictive pain medications in treating pain management. And indeed there is evidence picking up steam that it may even help with brain injuries such as C.T.E.
If the NFL fails to acknowledge this and does not provide their players the freedom to treat their pain management through another legal vehicle that’s proven to be effective, they could be subject to future litigation. This could result in changing the way the game is played forever, and the changes may be so dramatic people will tune out.
The NFL right now is synonymous with words like “protest”, “justice”, and “unity”. So where’s the protest in stopping the injustice of this riches to rags pipeline via pain pill addiction? NFL worshippers must also unite in giving players the option in choosing their legal routes of managing the pain the game inflicts on all of them. It’s the least Americans can do as millions of Americans watch the players destroy each other’s brains for their entertainment.
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