The NFL stood by African American players ... until its money was threatened

For a while the world’s most lucrative league supported its players in the face of hostility from Donald Trump. Then the NFL looked at its bottom line

Somehow this is where we find ourselves in America in 2017: the president of the United States uses race to drive a wedge between football players and their fans while the world’s most-lucrative sports league caves to his tweets.

NFL players are sacrificing their brains for a league that will make at least $14bn off them this year. Many are shorting their memories, breaking their bodies and forgoing any hope of walking normally past the age of 45. The majority of them do not have guaranteed contracts and while the very best are paid well for the tiny window that is their professional career, they remain among the most exploited of American professional athletes – their sports lives dangling by the sturdiness of their ACLs.

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from The Guardian http://ift.tt/2wNCWtq