If Rush Limbaugh takes over the reins of the St. Louis Rams, they may well become the first all-white NFL team since George Marshall was forced, kicking and screaming, to integrate the Washington Redskins:
Mathias Kiwanuka loves his former defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo, but the Giants' defensive end says he will never play for Spagnuolo's Rams if Rush Limbaugh purchases the team.
Kiwanuka and the Jets' Bart Scott made it clear Thursday that they would never play for the Rams or any team owned by the controversial conservative radio host.
"All I know is from the last comment I heard, he said in (President) Obama's America, white kids are getting beat up on the bus while black kids are chanting 'right on,'" Kiwanuka told The Daily News. "I mean, I don't want anything to do with a team that he has any part of. He can do whatever he wants, it is a free country. But if it goes through, I can tell you where I am not going to play."
Even beyond his shrill attacks on President Obama, there is a football-specific racial issue that has black NFL players leery of playing for a Limbaugh-owned team.
Remember that in October of 2003, Limbaugh was forced to resign from an (horrifically bad) gig at ESPN when he said that longtime Philadelphia Eagles starting quarterback Donovan McNabb was overrated by a media eager to give praise to him only because he was black.
Bart Scott made it abundantly clear late last week that he, for one, had not forgotten that incident:
"A lot of us took it as more of a racial-type thing. I can only imagine how his players would feel. I know I wouldn't want to play for him. He's a jerk. He's an ---. What he said (about McNabb) was inappropriate and insensitive, totally off-base. He could offer me whatever he wanted, I wouldn't play for him. ... I wouldn't play for Rush Limbaugh. My principles are greater and I can't be bought."
McNabb, not surprisingly, also said that he would not be the signal-caller for the Rams anytime real soon, either.
Of course, one does have to wonder why Limbaugh would be interested in owning an NFL team. Media reports invariably describe Limbaugh as a big sports fan (often to give the multi-millionaire a sense of "regular guy" authenticity). But this is also the same Limbaugh who once had this to say about the National Football League:
Limbaugh, who grew up in Missouri about 100 miles south of St. Louis, is an avid sports fan who once said that "the NFL all too often looks like a game between the Bloods and the Crips without any weapons."
Perhaps, it is for that reason, along with his absurd criticism of McNabb (who, for the record, threw a 51-yard TD pass on his first attempt since returning from injury on Sunday), that the NFL players union is a little leery of a Limbaugh-owned NFL team. Over the weekend, executive director DeMaurice Smith sent out an e-mail which read, in part, as follows:
"I've spoken to the Commissioner [Roger Goodell] and I understand that this ownership consideration is in the early stages. But sport in America is at its best when it unifies, gives all of us reason to cheer, and when it transcends. Our sport does exactly that when it overcomes division and rejects discrimination and hatred."
Strong words, and words that NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell (himself the son of a former moderate GOP Senator who Limbaugh would no doubt deride as a RINO if he were alive today) would do well to consider.