Reid and React
Amidst the madness of the 2018 news cycle, the Panthers Safety has kept the player protest in the NFL spotlight, without concession or compromise.
“Moving the goalposts” appears to have originally been a British construction, referring to moving the sticks that children would use to mark a goal in makeshift football matches. Of course, we Americans, as we are wont to do, eventually co-opted the expression, and made it our own, with that same phrase, at least here in the states, typically evoking the familiar yellow goalposts that sit at the back of the end-zone. It’s appropriate too, given that no American sport revolves more plainly around territory, conquest, and staking new ground, than our own version of football, built as it in on the very notion of a perpetual battle for position.
In recent years, “moving the goalposts” has become an almost obnoxiously ubiquitous phrase, one that has a useful place in our lexicon, to be sure, but which also exists to signal someone as a serious politics knower. Along with “whataboutism”, “ad hominem attacks” and “arguing in bad faith”, the phrase has become an essential part of debating, well, anything, in 2018, given that our world is now an endless series of culture war grievances sporadically interrupted by actual horrors.
So it’s not entirely surprising that the phrase popped into my head, recently, upon listening to Carolina Panthers safety Eric Reid speak to the press following his team’s 36–21 victory over the Baltimore Ravens. Reid, who one week earlier got into an on-field confrontation with Philadelphia Eagles safety Malcolm Jenkins, his former partner within the Players Coalition, explained to reporters in greater detail the sequence of events that led to him severing his ties with the group.
“So we leave that (October) meeting. We re-establish internally, the people that are involved with the Players Coalition, that we weren’t negotiating an end to the protest. The NFL said they wanted to use its resources to help the black community, so I was fine giving my opinion on how they could do that. That changed the last week of November, when Malcolm called me on the phone, and asked if the NFL made a donation to the Players Coalition, would that be enough for me to stop protesting. He said they were willing to do five million dollars. And I told him, no, we’d already established two times prior to this that we weren’t negotiating an end to the protest. He then asked me well how much would it take. So I ended that conversation, I reported back to the other players what he said to me, and at that point we removed ourselves from the Players Coalition.”
Call it moving the goalposts, call it a bait and switch, call it false pretenses, or call it, as Reid has, repeatedly, “neocolonialism”. Whatever you call it, there is little doubt that Reid has every right to be upset with how the process unfolded, and every inclination, now that he has once again reclaimed his rightful place in the league, to share his frustration.
For that we should all be grateful.
Along with all these trite political phraseologies, it’s also become something of a cliche, in our immersion blender of a news cycle these days, to point out how the constant bombardment of major stories turns time itself into an utterly elastic concept. Remember when we learned that Donald Trump’s entire empire was seeded through rampant tax evasion? That was just a few weeks ago. Do you recall that day we all spent on Twitter trying to figure out who wrote the anonymous New York Times Op-Ed? That was in September. “I like beer” feels like a lifetime ago doesn’t it? Try one month. Following current events in 2018 is to be Liz Lemon, flabbergasted by what a week it’s been, only to be reminded that it’s Wednesday.
So it probably shouldn’t come as much of a surprise that the NFL, after spending months tripping over their own feet, eventually did stumble upon a strategy for dealing with the protest movement sparked by Colin Kaepernick more than two years ago.
Wait it out.
That, ultimately, has been the NFL’s most effective gambit, far more so than their heavy-handed attempts at discipline, or the rather transparent effort, as Reid detailed, to buy off the players’ political power with a charitable donation. Eventually the league realized what we’ve all come to accept, that the constant conveyor belt of outrage, tragedy, and scandal, at home and abroad, makes it quite difficult for any story to have staying power.
And so, with Colin Kaepernick still sitting at home while Nathan Peterman takes the field, with the league’s television partners in commercial break during the solemn and sacred national anthem, with our big moist manbaby trading out the NFL for the caravan as his twitter topic du jour, it is perhaps entirely unsurprising that the protests have petered out, with only a handful of players continuing to take a knee, through the early part of this season. NFL ownership’s goal was always to turn the page, to change the subject, and eventually, they came to realize that rather than taking an adversarial approach, all they really needed to do was let the content firehose do its job.
That is, until the Panthers found themselves in need of a safety.
We should all be quite thankful that Eric Reid’s talent, the undeniable gifts for the game that saw him drafted in the first round, and made him a Pro-Bowler in his rookie season, were ultimately too obvious to ignore. Early in the season, it appeared that Reid might be forced out of the league, in the same fashion as his former teammate, Kaepernick, who is now Reid’s compatriot in collusion lawsuits filed against the league. For the Carolina Panthers, however, any desire the league may or may not have had to make a statement by locking out one of the most prominent protestors was eventually overpowered by a need to, well, win football games, something that Reid is undeniably equipped to do.
Thank goodness for that, because Reid’s return to the league means the reinstatement of one of football’s most conscientious voices, a man with the credibility, and character, to make sure that the protests he continues to participate in, and the causes that he champions, do not simply fade from view. Sunday’s post-game remarks were a reminder that Reid is supremely adept at explaining why he and his colleagues took a knee in the first place, and why they can’t possibly stop now.
Because what seems quite clear, having listened to him on Sunday, is that for Eric Reid, simply accepting a charitable donation and calling off the movement would be the very definition of “moving the goalposts”. His aim, when he and Kaepernick and others started down this road, wasn’t merely to win concessions from the NFL, to shame them into action, or to secure funding that, without a doubt, should absolutely be spent, and can undeniably be put to great use in underprivileged communities throughout the country.
No, Eric Reid’s goal is to end racial injustice in this country, and if that sounds rather daunting, impractical, or unlikely to be achieved over the course of his football career, well, yes, but maybe that’s precisely the point.
On Wednesday, after Carolina Panthers Head Coach Ron Rivera reaffirmed that Reid’s protest was “not an issue” for him, Reid himself was asked what it meant to have his coach’s full support. In the most diplomatic way possible, one of the most righteous voices in sports refused to fall into the trap of giving Rivera, or anyone else, the power to control his message.
“Very respectfully, he doesn’t have a choice. He’s entitled to his opinion, but I know what my rights are. His family was a military family much like many of my people were in the military. My cousin just got back from Afghanistan. My mom was in the armed services. My uncle was enlisted. The list goes on. But when they get home they’re still black in America. They’re going to fight the same wars when they get home and still face the same things I’m talking about. So I get encouragement from my family that served in the armed forces because they agree with what I’m saying.’’
Halfway through the season, Eric Reid finds himself occupying a very unique place within the National Football League. His place on the Panthers provides him to opportunity to carry the banner for the movement Colin Kaepernick created, but his unsigned absence at the start of the season, coupled with his unchallenged assertion that he was asked, by the Cincinnati Bengals, whether he would continue his protest, affords him the credibility that comes with principle, with being totally unwilling to stand in silence, even if it meant sacrificing the career he has earned. The end result is that Eric Reid finds himself with a massive platform, speaking with a unique and well-earned righteousness.
Will that be enough? Can it cut through, shake people from their apathy, and reignite one of the most visible protest movements in American sports history? In this climate of headline fatigue, ‘fake news’, and Orwellian memory holes, who’s to say?
But Reid isn’t giving up his effort for anyone, or anything. Others may try to move those proverbial goalposts, but Eric Reid is a free safety, and a good one.
He sees the entire field.
