The NFL And A Multitude Of Distractions

You might think winning the Super Bowl is based in Xs and Os, giving your all, and all those other platitudes you hear every week at your cousin’s pee-wee football game. But that’s all crap. Winning a championship in the NFL all comes down to minimizing distractions. Just ask Super Bowl-winning coach Tony Dungy.

The thing is, no one can decide what actually constitutes a distraction. Luckily, I’m here to break it down, so you know exactly where your team stands the next time a potential distractions arises. Let’s begin with things that could potentially distract your favorite team from focusing on its goal of winning a Super Bowl.

Things that COULD be distractions:

• Pretty girls in the stands (Can also be seriously distracting to professional broadcasters)

• When fans collectively spell words at the stadium

• Troy Polamalu’s hair

• The Wave (Seriously, can we ban the wave? Can we take a note from the NBA and treat people who participate in the wave like Donald Sterling or your crazy uncle at Thanksgiving? Just don’t talk to them anymore. They’re your ride home? Tough. Get a new ride home.)

• The Jacksonville Jaguar’s new uniforms

•  When players do that tummy roll after a sack

• How loud those fans can get in Seattle

• How many fans don’t show up to Dolphins games

• Joe Flacco’s mammoth contract (Seriously, Baltimore? $120 million? Really?)

• When the media asks about the playoffs

• The National Anthem

• A compilation of Giovani Bernard’s college highlights on YouTube

• A BuzzFeed quiz that answers what Disney Princess you would be

• That photo your ex-girlfriend posted on Facebook with her new boyfriend on that vacation they took, that you’d been talking about, like, forever…

Ok, now I’m getting distracted. But seriously, we live in a world full of distractions. They’re everywhere. But now, here’s a list of things that might distract the average human being, but are not distractions to the NFL.

Things that SHOULD be distractions, but that the NFL IS apparently NOT distracted by:

• Murdering a fellow human being

• Being allegedly involved in the murder of a fellow human being

• Murdering and torturing dogs

• Knocking your fiance unconscious (Although, the NFL may actually be so distracted by this, they forgot for 5 months to suspend Ray Rice)

• Assaulting women

• Sexually assaulting women

• Assaulting women again

• Serially drugging and date raping women

• Assaulting women… Okay, seriously, the NFL doesn’t give a shit if its players are assaulting women. Just type “NFL,” “assault,” and “woman” into Google and see what comes up. I’ll wait. You done? It’s appalling. But remember, not a distraction.

• Steroids 

• Other performance-enhancing drugs 

• Abusing adderall

• The use of deer antler spray to magically heal torn triceps

• Abusing pain killers

• DUI manslaughter

• Intoxication manslaughter

• Regular drunk driving

• More drunk driving

• Seriously, A LOT of drunk driving. Go back to Google and search “NFL” and “DUI.” There are a lot of results. I can wait some more.

• Gun violence

• Concussions

• Concussion lawsuits

• Not remembering there’s a concussion problem because of all the concussions…

NFL players do not get distracted. EVER. Maybe it’s all the adderall they’ve been taking. I don’t know. All I know is, NFL players have committed some of the most heinous acts in recent memory, and no one was distracted. No one.

Lastly, I’ve put together a short list of things that NFL players and coaches sometimes confuse for distractions, but are definitely not distractions.

Things that are definitely NOT distractions:

• Race

• Religion

• Sexuality

• Michael Sam

It’s simple. If the NFL isn’t distracted by sexual abuse, substance abuse, or any of the other atrocities its players commit off the field, why would it be distracted by a man, who loves another man, who wants to be treated by any other athlete, on the field?