Pro football is, or has been, my favorite sport.  Lately however, it is getting harder even for me to watch this stuff.  The NFL has been a virtual money machine, but a couple of years ago things began to change.  The NFL, which had been a refuge from the press of everyday problems, became the focus of those problems.  The teams are not responsible.  The NFL is suffering because it has come under the scrutiny of an ever more left-leaning media.  The coverage of the NFL has became about subjects other than football.  The league seemed immune from the problem, but last year reports of low ratings for NFL games made the problems too big to ignore.  Now it was serious.  The television contracts are coming up for renewal.  Some advertisers dropped their ads, while others balked at paying exorbitant prices for NFL commercials.  Excuses were made.  The ratings were down because the country was distracted by the presidential election.  Not likely.  Once the election was over the ratings didn’t rebound.  I’ve long believed that, during a game, the average NFL fan is wholly unconcerned with world events, never mind national politics.  The announcers on Monday Night Football bring a celebrity into the booth at halftime.  I think that they could bring Putin in to announce that Russia had taken over our government, and the reaction of most fans would be “We better score some points in the second half.”  The election wasn’t the problem.  The problem was, and is, that the top story week after week stopped being football.  “Deflategate” was bad enough, but at least the issue was about something that happened in a football game.  Then there was Ray Rice.  Now, I make no excuses for Ray Rice, because domestic violence is a serious problem which cannot be tolerated, but the media, including the sports media people, who are, if possible, even more liberal than your average commentator on MSNBC, went totally overboard on the story.  No coach could be interviewed without the issue coming up.   You turned on the game to escape the world, and all you heard about was domestic violence.  The NFL discipline policy only made things worse, as the league has no consistent standard for proof of guilt, and its blanket penalty fails to distinguish between a push during an argument and attempted homicide, both of which are domestic violence.  So, a new season, and a new domestic violence story; this time that of Ezekial Elliot.  And once again it’s not about football.  When they weren’t talking about domestic violence, we were lectured about concussions.  Of course the league should protect the players, but I don’t want to hear about the latest concussion lawsuit during the game.  Let’s move on to the saga of Colin Kaepernick, the former quarterback of the ’49ers.  Kaepernick made headlines for refusing to stand during the national anthem to protest police brutality.  He later wore socks depicting pigs wearing police caps.  Kaepernick said, “I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color.”  “There are bodies in the street and people getting paid leave and getting away with murder.”  When some other players joined the protest, the top story became, again, not the game, but racial politics; and the sports media fanned those flames constantly.  While I am sure Kaepernick genuinely believed the things he said, he is hardly the best spokesman for America’s oppression of people of color.  He had an NFL contract worth $129 million, and had been paid over $39 million when he walked away from the ’49ers, who seemed poised to cut him due to his poor performance.  Unsurprisingly, he has found it difficult to sign with a new team.  Few teams want to import that kind of distraction.  Kaepernick, like anyone else, is entitled to his opinions, however one is not entitled to make a spectacle of one’s opinions at work, especially when one works for an NFL team and the spectacle is on national television.  Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones understands this.  He has promised to fire any player who fails to stand for the anthem.  He has every right to do so, and as a result, the Kaepernick protest is not an issue in Texas.  But the Kaepernick story doesn’t go away.  Over the summer we endured reports suggesting that Kaepernick was being blackballed by NFL teams because of his opinions.  The NAACP threatened a boycott of the NFL.  In August, an Atlanta NAACP leader announced, “There will be no football in the state of Georgia if Colin Kaepernick is not on a training camp roster and given an opportunity to pursue his career, this is not a simple request.  This is a statement.  This is a demand.”  Not for nothing, but if you want to see bodies in the streets, just try to keep NFL fans from getting to their pregame tailgate parties.  As this is written the boycott has not materialized, perhaps because somebody told the NAACP that 70% of the players in the NFL are black, and the average NFL player is oppressed by a median salary of $860,000.  Funny thing is Kaepernick almost had a job with Baltimore.  Team executive Ray Lewis, who’s not a white oppressor, says he was about to be signed until his girlfriend tweeted a photo of Lewis hugging the team’s white owner, and compared it to a slave embracing his master.  Baltimore chose to avoid that distraction.  But the media’s obsession with issues other than football doesn’t stop.  On Monday night, ESPN reporter Sergio Dipp opened the coverage by stating of Vance Joseph, Denver’s new head coach, a 44 year old African-American, that “the diversity in the coach’s background is helping him a lot tonight.”  No Sergio.  First, the fact that he’s a black man doesn’t make coach Joseph “diverse.”  More importantly, Joseph’s talent and experience got him the job, not diversity.  But what can you expect from ESPN, the network that fired Curt Schilling for his opinion on the North Carolina transgender bathroom policy, fired Mike Ditka for his opinion of Obama, and this week didn’t fire reporter Jemele Hill who said, “Donald Trump is a white supremecist; the most offensive president of my lifetime (she’s young), who was elected as a result of white supremecists.”  Job hunter Colin Kaepernick immediately agreed with Hill’s statements.  The point is, most football fans simply don’t want to listen to this crap, and that’s what’s wrong with the NFL.