teed off on the NFL<\/a> on the issue of player safety during an appearance on First Take.<\/p>\n\u201cNo league lies publicly like the NFL,\u201d Wilbon said. \u201cNo entity in this country lies as thoroughly, as convincingly, and as successfully as the NFL to try to sell, \u2018We care about health and player safety.\u2019 They do not. . . . It\u2019s a lie. It\u2019s a fraud. It\u2019s the NFL, and people aren\u2019t going to call them out on it, usually. People just want their football, and whatever the NFL is selling, we as a culture will buy it. . . . Don\u2019t ever say to my face if you\u2019re an NFL executive or a club executive, \u2018Oh, we care about health and player safety. You do not.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a fair opinion, delivered honestly and without compromise by someone who is now indirectly paid by the NFL. At a time when it sure seems as if ESPN is tiptoeing around the Mike Vrabel-Dianna Russini situation on its umpteen TV networks, it\u2019s gutsy.<\/p>\n
And it\u2019s possibly going to become rare. Especially this week. On most ESPN platforms, the message will be everything is awesome! with hosts and analysts leading the cheers in lieu of pointing out the warts.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s a place for both. Moving forward, it will be important to constantly monitor the balance between the sugar and the spice when it comes to ESPN\u2019s handling of the NFL.<\/p>\n
And, please, spare us the lazy, middle-school argument that anyone who criticizes the NFL doesn\u2019t like football. The reality for many of us is that we love football enough to want it to be fully worthy of the time devoted to watching it, consuming it, and covering it. <\/p>\n
Like many, I was indoctrinated into pro football by the pedestal on which the NFL put itself through NFL Films. It\u2019s not too much to expect the league to continuously earn it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With the NFL now owning 10 percent of ESPN, it\u2019s fair (and necessary) to keep an eye out…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":872190,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2026],"tags":[7],"class_list":{"0":"post-872189","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-football","8":"tag-football"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116450423174761125","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/872189","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=872189"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/872189\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/872190"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=872189"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=872189"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=872189"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}