“NFL Pink” is pretty much bullshit
“Pink is OK matched with Colts blue and white but it’s absolutely brutal looking next to Bengals orange. Televisions are really, really good now and the visual assault the NFL launches on fans this time of year is almost too much to take. What makes it even worse is knowing that the NFL’s “pink October” campaign is pretty much bullshit.”
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Ocober NFL games are the worst.
It’s not that the competition on the field isn’t as exciting in October or that the players aren’t leaving it all on the field. It’s one of the beautiful things about the NFL that each team only plays sixteen games in the regular season so that each one is crucial. A win now is just as important as one in December and a loss stings just as badly. What makes October suck is seeing badass motherfuckers forced to trot around with a bunch of pink on. Pink is OK matched with Colts blue and white but it’s absolutely brutal looking next to Bengals orange. Televisions are really, really good now and the visual assault the NFL launches on fans this time of year is almost too much to take. What makes it even worse is knowing that the NFL’s “pink October” campaign is pretty much bullshit.
It’s not difficult to understand why the league has dedicated an entire month to pandering to women. It’s marketing 101. Goodell and Co. see the female market as having potential for growth and they assume that by feigning concern for breast cancer that they can convince ladies that they truly care. Better yet, they can sell a few extra jerseys at NFLshop.com by offering them in a stylish shade of shocking pink. Until just a couple of weeks ago a gal could even order a special Ray Rice jersey in NFL pink with the promise that part of the proceeds would benefit “breast cancer awareness”.
“Awareness” is this case (and in many others) is a tricky word. What it really means is “marketing”. Verbage at NFLShop.com states that fans can “support the fight against breast cancer with NFL pink breast cancer awareness gear”. Five percent of sales of pink NFL gear atNFLShop.com (the league keeps 95%) goes to charity, but not for research or for medical care. This tiny portion of the overall proceeds instead gets channelled to the American Cancer Society for advertising and other forms of public education and “awareness”. The league earns far more in profit from each sale than it gives and of what it gives not one dime is dedicated to actually finding a cure for breast cancer. And that’s only on the gear that sold online dirctly through the NFL’s shopping site. Pink items retailed by stores like Sports Authority benefit breast cancer even less. Those items are sold as wholesale by companies like Reebok who have a licensing relationship with the league but are under no obligation to share the wealth with any charities.
Breast cancer has become big business. Besides the American Cancer Society, outfits like the Susan G Komen foundation generate hundreds of millions of donated dollars, much of which is spent in the effort to keep the donations rolling in. Marketing disguised as “awareness” is job one for many of these organizations. As such they seek the leadership of executives who might otherwise work in the for-profit corporate world. Nancy Brinker, the CEO of the Komen Foundation, earns an annual salary of $684,000, about a quarter of a million dollars more than the top person at the American Red Cross, a charity ten times the size of Komen.
Thre breast cancer industry hasn’t pulled the wool over the NFL’s eyes. The league knows full well that “NFL Pink” is a money making ruse far more than it is a goodwill gesture. In the current environment, with the NFL under a microscope due to the mistreatment of women by its players the league likely feels as though it is more important than ever that they create the impression they care about women’s health issues. Smart fans are beginning to realize, though, just how hallow the gesture is. In fact, it has gotten to the point where the pink initiative is simply embarassing.
The NFL has only just begun to pretend to care that players abuse women in any number of different ways. Domestic violence and sexual assault are nothing new among ballers but the pressure is on the league to address the issues now, thanks mostly to the massive publicity surrounding Ray Rice’s abuse of his then fiance and the misdoings of Adrian Peterson who, in addition to being an accused child abuser, has left a trail of fatherless children strewn accross the USA. And that is the next shoe to drop in terms of negative PR for the NFL. At some point the national media is going to place a spotlight on the immense number of kids born to women who breifly dated pro athletes.
This seems to be an era of reconing for the NFL. The league has always looked the other way when it has come to the types of troubles its players cause in women’s lives. It cannot hide anymore. Society is watching very closely now and the league is in a panic to get its arms around a myriad of behavioral issues. For it to try to cloud these issues by insisting that players, coaches, officials and even broadcast announcers don pink is beyond transparent at this point. And the fact that the NFL Pink is fraudulent makes the campaign even more insulting. The NFL is profiting directly by creating the impression that it cares about breast cancer. The next thing you know the NFL will ask performers to pay to do the Super Bowl Halftime show.
