By AJ Hayes
It’s interesting how the NFL promotes itself as the all-American sport while making its players follow a zipped-lip policy you might have expected to find behind the Iron Curtain. That’s the Iron Curtain of the former USSR, not the Steel Curtain of the ’70s Pittsburgh Steelers.
For all the times football fans have had to sit through incessant flag waving John Mellencamp’s “This is Our County” Chevy ads during NFL telecasts you might have thought that the NFL big wigs would have freedom of speech as a basic right of it’s employees.
The Ravens’ Samari Rolle
But when you see what happened to four Baltimore Ravens players this past week after they spoke out about what they perceived as poor officiating calls and insulting treatment that got personal from game officials, during a very tough 27-24 loss to New England on Monday Night Football (Dec. 3) you would realize that the NFL believes the first amendment rights apply only to the shot callers, not the grunts who break their necks (sometimes, literally) so the NFL stuffed shirts can also stuff their wallets on a weekly basis.