“People are rightfully admiring him for being a patriot and standing behind him – as do I in regards to his service and by comparison to the people who surround him – but conservative media and patriotic Americans have also willingly overlooked a quote of his that I cannot.”
Standing at 6’9’’, Alejandro Villanueva is the tallest player in the NFL. During Sunday’s mass protests in which over 200 players either took a knee or stayed off the field altogether during the national anthem in not one, but two countries – Villanueva stood even taller than he ever had before.
The Pittsburgh Steeler’s life is a story fit for the silver screen. Army Ranger – check. Spanish-American seemingly representative of the exact kind of melting pot Americanism we all talk about wanting to see – check. Years of service to the nation – check. A life of glamour as a pro-athlete – check. Courage in standing for what he believes in – check. Bravery for doing it alone – check.
I’m sure there’s plenty more to add to any American Sniper-esque screenplay based on this guy that I could absolutely see Hollywood jumping on to produce a smash hit. There’s enough there for two lifetimes.
Compare #78 with his colleagues. Many of the “protesting” players don’t really even know what they’re kneeling for other than that they are doing what their instincts tell them to do – to stubbornly push back on Donald Trump, someone who they see as engaging in a high-powered offense moving them back on their own turf.
These are professionals at playing “the game of inches,” after all, and the president’s speech calling their entire organization out at a rally in Alabama didn’t just take an inch in this gridiron analogy. Trump’s public evisceration of the league’s spoiled and disrespectful players, and subsequent call for owners to do something about it moved the chains with a highlight-reel play. More familiar with basketball? Trump posterized these dudes with a groin-in-the-face slam dunk.
Many of those protesting are basically the adult version of the stereotypically mindless hunk of meat high-school jocks that the now supportive liberals mockingly but enviously rolled their eyes back and turned their noses up to back in their teens. I know because I was one of those dumb jocks, but I grew up and became an adult who values strengthening the muscles of his brain over his biceps.
These athletes and their fervent supporters aren’t doing this because they’re enlightened – they’re doing this because they’re “woke.” It’s a fad. Lemmings were playing Pokémon Go! a few months ago and they look just as stupid kneeling now as they did walking into traffic with their heads buried in their iPhones then.
I repeat. None of these guys get paid for their brain power, social expertise, or life skills as grown men. They get paid because they are naturally gifted to be bigger, stronger, and faster than the rest of us with or without the help of performance enhancing drugs. Many of today’s dumbed-down society, however, treats Colin Kaepernick the way Thomas Sewell should be treated and vice versa. It’s a mess.
I’ve had experience in my job dealing with NFL players running around like drunken and entitled spring-breakers at Atlanta nightclubs. My patience at 4 o’clock in the morning on a Tuesday has kept some of the same guys kneeling before the flag on Sundays out of jail and off of TMZ.
Villanueva is not one of those guys and his actions on Sunday demonstrated that – but now it’s time to take a sharp turn and look at the Villanueva story from the lens of a cop. The man is a hero for his service, but if it were up to me I’d hold off on erecting the statues.
It turns out that Villanueva is something far different and far superior than his counterparts. As a military brat with an international upbringing, the Offensive Tackle played football at West Point Academy before graduating and becoming an Infantry Platoon Leader, Army Ranger, and the recipient of a Bronze Star Medal over the course of three separate deployments in Afghanistan.
Because of the symbolic power in the optics of Villanueva’s show of defiance against his league’s new cool and trendy thing to do, the conservative internet has naturally responded with fawning adoration for the man – and the American public has done the same. Since Villanueva’s stand yesterday, number 78 Steelers jerseys and t-shirts donning his name in big black block letters have been the highest selling NFL gear in the country.
People are rightfully admiring him for being a patriot and standing behind him – as do I in regards to his service and by comparison to the people who surround him – but conservative media and patriotic Americans have also willingly overlooked a quote of his that I cannot.
As a police officer, I may be a few rungs down on the American Patriot ladder from Veterans of the Military who I’ve always looked up to – but I can’t overlook Villanueva’s comments because they are just as harmful to my brothers and sisters coming from him as they are coming from Colin Kaepernick or any of the 200+ players that knelt this week. The comments are harmful because they simply aren’t true.
This is what Villanueva had to say about breaking with his team’s protest:
“I will be the first one to hold hands with Colin Kaepernick and do something about the way minorities are being treated in the United States, the injustice that is happening with police brutality, the justice system, inequalities in pay. You can’t do it by looking away from the people that are trying to protect our freedom and our country.”
I know I’m going to be disapproved of by some readers who will undoubtedly disagree with my criticisms and I get it. “Tommy – he’s on our side.” “Tommy, he’s our guy.” “Tommy, stop being negative and appreciate what he did.” There is a cultural war over the soul of this nation and Villanueva is obviously more of a friend to conservative and/or patriotic Americans than the NFL or the media, but as a police officer, I can’t just sycophantically clap for the guy when his explanation for the now famous stand seen round the world does nothing but back the bus wheels over the bodies of American cops that have already been run over.
Look, Villanueva is an enormous step up in standards from any dolt colleague of his that the mainstream media is passing off as a role model, but with that being said, he is so wrong. We’ve been over and over the numbers at OpsLens. There’s the Harvard study showing police are more reluctant to shoot black men than white men that even the New York Times had to report on.
To this day, there is virtually no evidence of widespread police racism against blacks outside of isolated incidents, propaganda, and mass hysteria overtaking weak minds
Not into studies? How about over 500 homicides in Chicago this year with a full quarter left to go? It is the detectives investigating these homicides when black teens kill each other and it is uniformed officers laying their lives on the line responding day in and day out to the small arms warfare taking place in the streets. To this day, there is virtually no evidence of widespread police racism against blacks outside of isolated incidents, propaganda, and mass hysteria overtaking weak minds.
Black Lives Matter, the media, the NFL, the NBA, and the thralls of useful idiots with axes to grind have been complicit in attempting to turn the entire country against police officers with this movement. It all started with Kaepernick kneeling because of imagined police brutality and now we have a mainstream national movement expressing a message that America is no longer worth standing for because of its racist and murderous police officers.
Villanueva may have stood for his own brothers and sisters in the military and for the values he associates with the flag, but he really did leave us police officers high and dry in the media afterwards. A man of his caliber should have known better.
Villanueva is commendable and impressive, no doubt – and I’m not usually into boycotts – but I’m just done. No more fantasy football and no more tuning into games. Many Americans addicted to NFL Sundays – fellow cops even – will use the Villanueva Stand to justify their continued support for an organization that holds them in utter contempt, but I just can’t.
A cop’s relationship with the NFL is codependency at its finest and I’m not going to be a victim of battered-woman’s syndrome.
