By Carron J. Phillips
With the NFL season opening in less than a week, the league has yet again proved that it is too big to face consequences for its tone-deafness or negligence. Deference and a refusal to hold its members accountable appear mandatory — despite the league’s perennially mediocre leadership and failure to uphold any moral standards.
Recently, it was reported that the league will continue its superficial on-field “anti-racism” messaging, which saw all 32 franchises etch their end zones with some combination of the phrases “End Racism,” “Stop Hate,” “Inspire Change,” and “Choose Love” last season. These performative displays date back to 2020, when, like the rest of corporate America, the NFL momentarily acted as if it cared about racial and social issues in the wake of the murder of George Floyd.
Seven seasons later, the charade continues.
“Can confirm that we are continuing with both the end zone stencils and helmet decals this season,” an NFL spokeswoman told Front Office Sports in a statement.
Despite how well-intentioned the token messaging may seem, it’s impossible to take these continued gestures from the NFL seriously — especially since it participated in last season’s league-wide tributes for Charlie Kirk, a man arguably responsible for stoking rhetoric that directly opposed the NFL’s social justice slogans.
“‘End Racism’ in the back of the end zone is a great marketing campaign, but what are the actions behind it?” Colin Kaepernick asked in a recent interview with NBC News. As we near the tenth anniversary of when the former San Francisco 49ers’ quarterback first sat, then knelt, during the national anthem, he’s returned to the public eye, having recently received awards from the ACLU and the Muhammad Ali Center. “I don’t think the NFL has materially changed. None of their actions show that,” he explained. “We have seen it time and time again. For them, it has gone back to business as usual, and I think that is a tragedy that we have allowed them to be able to get to that point.”
Ten years ago, the league became ground zero for the athlete activism movement that surged through sports. It’s when protests began, inspired by public awareness that police officers were evidently using Black bodies for target practice — according to NBC News, 986 people were killed by police in 2017. If protests were to recommence today, they could be ignited for a litany of reasons: the long-term health of players, an unnecessary war, attacks on our voting system, or the discrimination that’s stripped our military of multiple high-ranking officials (to name just a few causes).
In fact, there’s far more to protest against in 2026 than in 2016. Yet America’s most popular professional sports league keeps making a mockery of the activism required to uphold our democracy, while showing no compassion or consideration for the human beings that enable its status and fortune.
Recently, a new study discovered that at least one in four former NFL players who died between 2016 and 2021 had chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE). CTE is an incurable disease that causes progressive and often severe, lifelong brain damage. “If the changes that have been implemented at the NFL level, including reducing the amount of contact in sports practices to less than one per week, were propagated at the collegiate, high school and youth levels, athletes would be better off,” said the study’s lead author, Daniel Daneshvar, a professor at Harvard Medical School and the chair of physical medicine and rehabilitation at Mass General Brigham.
Before the study was released, the NFL stated that it supported the research — but has made no additional changes to its rules or practices, nor has it used its mammoth national platform to help spread awareness of the disease’s alarming prevalence. Caution rising talent or enforce measures to protect players’ brains? Not interested. They’d prefer to invest in slapping a useless, PR-driven decal onto their helmets. While the conversation about player safety has been ongoing for decades, the callousness with which it has been handled sheds a brutal light on the league’s priorities.
At the top of the year, Sportico reported that NFL games accounted for 83 of the most-watched U.S. telecasts in 2025. The league has dominated the American media landscape for decades — signaling just how much people in this country are obsessed with football. However, when the league stumbles or finds itself in a public relations nightmare, it’s often due to mishandling an issue outside the scope of what happens on the field.
Last month, according to reports, 49ers’ owner Jed York contacted a prostitution ad three times before he was ultimately arrested in Ohio on prostitution charges. York’s situation is reminiscent of New England Patriots’ owner Bob Kraft being caught on video surveillance soliciting prostitutes, and later charged with two counts of first-degree solicitation as part of a human trafficking investigation. Kraft remains the boss of the Patriots’ head coach, Mike Vrabel, who was recently at the center of a scandal in which he was rumored to be involved with former NFL reporter Dianna Russini while both parties are still married.
At times, it’s fair to wonder if the NFL is a serious professional sports league, i.e., one that holds its owners and coaches accountable for inappropriate behavior, or merely a daytime soap opera.
The NFL would be an easier pill to swallow if it stopped trying to be something it’s not — a vehicle for broader societal issues — and instead focused on what it is: a game. Ironically, public perception would go more smoothly if the powers that be would forgo the hypocritical slogans and pretenses of integrity. Instead, just “shut up and lead.” Or, as Bill Belichick would say, “Do Your Job!”
Carron J. Phillips is an award-winning journalist who writes on race, culture, social issues, politics, and sports. He hails from Saginaw, Michigan, and is a graduate of Morehouse College and Syracuse University. Follow his personal Substack to keep up with more of his work.