A Pretend Controversy About an NFL Buttkicker

Breaking: a stupid organization makes a stupid statement about a regular man saying regular things.

Have you seen the video of NFL player Harrison Butker giving a speech that has caused massive controversy over the past week or so?

I haven’t.

I really don’t care to, for at least three reasons:

1. I’m not Catholic.

2. I’m not a student at Benedictine College.

3. I don’t really care about the NFL these days.

I suspect the same could be said about almost everybody on the internet who is mocking this man and the speech he gave. So why on earth do they care at all what he said?

Because the internet has a way of making people act uniquely irrational and stupid, that’s why.

I’m 38. I’ve seen a lot of controversy on the internet since I first logged onto it in 1995, but this is easily one of the most baffling and inexplicable “controversies” I’ve seen.

As far as I can tell, here are the facts:

A Catholic man gave a speech to Catholic students on a Catholic college campus and mentioned what the Catholic church teaches about Catholic theology.

That’s it.

Yet, the timelines on all my social media accounts—Twitter/X, Instagram, and yes, even Facebook (when I log into it once a week)—are filled with posts and videos of people reacting to it: some are approving and positive, but far more are angry and hostile.

...and this is nothing short of baffling.

People are totally losing their minds and throwing temper tantrums about what a private citizen said to a captive audience at a private college.

What?

This is the kind of idiocy that makes me want to give up on the internet entirely. I sometimes wonder when God will finally reach down from the heavens and punish us, saying: “You are all grounded. I’m taking away your internet.”

These kinds of “culture war” fights are all just a giant, spiraling vortex of stupidity, and we’re circling the drain, arguing with each other about nothing.

As I said, I haven’t even watched Butker’s speech itself because I don’t really care to, but I have seen dozens—scores?—of reaction videos and articles with people screeching (sometimes figuratively, sometimes literally) in anger.

If you liked the video, good for you. If you agree with Butker, good for you. Share it, celebrate it, and enjoy it.

If you didn’t, might I suggest you just... ignore it? Or turn it off? You know it’s okay to just—gasp!—disagree with people, right?

Today, I found a transcript of what Butker actually said and skimmed it. In his twenty-minute talk, he spoke about a lot of things: leadership, cathedrals, St. Damien of Molokai, who lived in poverty and devoted his life to leper colonies in Hawaii, the deadly sin of pride, and more.

Most of the hostile reactions, it seems, have been about a few choice phrases regarding “the role of women as mothers.”

But other people objected to his statements about so-called “social issues” and, apparently, were angry at a Catholic man who literally praised the Catholic school he was speaking at for—wait for it—“embracing traditional Catholic values.”

I kid you not.

Can I put it in internet terminology?

Catholics gonna Catholic. Y U MAD BRO?

Back when The Onion was still capable of creating humor, I imagine they would lampoon a moment like this by showing an imaginary news headline reading: “BREAKING: Catholic Man Says Catholic Things; World Reacts in Horror.”

...because that’s basically what’s happening.

But it’s not just knee-jerk video clips of young people in their cars shouting into their smartphone cameras who don’t like what he said. Even some people I normally have respect for are writing some pretty dumb things in response.

Nick Gillespie, editor at the otherwise fairly reasonable publication “Reason,” wrote that Butker has “stupid views on sex, gender, and abortion.”

Stupid views? Who’s being judgmental now?

What’s so weird about all this is that, until last week, I had never even heard of this man before. I had also never even heard of the college he spoke at, nor the town it’s located in.

When I did learn about this guy, I was sure I’d misheard his name or that it had been misspelled. He has a last name for a first name and a misspelled last name? What? Weird.

“Butker? With a K?” I thought. Surely, his last name was Butler.

But no, indeed, this very young man (he’s only 28) has a name that looks remarkably like “butt-kicker.” That’s ironic because, as I also just learned, he is a kicker in the NFL.

I additionally just learned that he plays for the Kansas City Chiefs, the team I have rooted against during their last three Super Bowl appearances.

But none of that matters... what matters is that he was asked to speak at a college, he did, and now lots of people—presumably none of whom actually went to that college—are angry at him.

So angry at him, in fact, that a petition is circulating on a loony website demanding that the NFL fire him for what he said.

Fire him!

The cancel-culture deplatformers and censors are striking again, insisting that free people are not allowed to express their views freely, and if they do so, they don’t even deserve to be employed.

Here’s a friendly reminder to those ignorant of American history: Anti-Catholic bias is one of the oldest forms of discrimination in the USA. Dating back to colonial times, truly hateful people have made efforts for centuries to prevent Catholics from getting hired in the first place simply for being Catholic. Today’s efforts to get them fired are no different.

The irony is thick with this crowd.

I suppose the saddest part, though, is that America’s football monopoly moved rapidly to distance themselves from their star player’s private remarks at a private university.

In a shameful and impotent act of betrayal, celebrated by some haters, the NFL took the unusual step of making a public statement condemning the comments of their three-time Super Bowl champ.

I say unusual because it is unusual for the NFL to make specific statements telling the public that they disagree with the particular religious views of an explicitly-named employee.

Yet that alone is strange because the NFL has a history of being quiet when their employees take other actions, which have often included crimes of violence such as rape, sexual assault, dog fighting, and even murder.

So when a young, married man, who is not accused of any crimes, tells people from his same faith tradition to dig deeper into their faith tradition in a friendly celebration during a joyous graduation event, only an organization as stupid as today’s NFL would immediately make a forceful statement telling the world they don’t agree with it, and I can only see it for what it is: religious intolerance.

But even using the term “forceful statement” is actually giving today’s NFL far too much praise.

In fact, they didn’t even make a real statement at all. In the history of all generic, lukewarm phrases ever made by giant, soulless corporations that really don’t care but simply want the media to go away, some brain-dead PR hack (probably an unpaid intern working for free) with a minimum of effort, clearly copied and pasted the most anodyne, milquetoast sentence imaginable:

“The NFL is steadfast in our commitment to inclusion, which only makes our league stronger.”

Huh?

This small dribble of small words from a small mind doesn’t even say anything except to prove that the NFL is committed to being exclusive. That’s right: making a public statement to specifically condemn and pillory a current employee—by name—and say, in essence, “We don’t claim him” is the height of being exclusionary.

Also, the toothless sentence fragment is nonsensical, self-defeating, and easily disproven. Just look at the numbers:

• In 2024, there are approximately 2,144 football players in the NFL.

• Every single one of them is a man.

• There are precisely zero female football players.

• There has never been a single female football player in the NFL’s entire 104-year history.

Finally, the NFL is one of the most exclusive and exclusionary organizations on the planet. According to their own statistics, only 0.2% of high school football players make it to the NFL.

If the NFL were a college, it would have the lowest acceptance rate of any college on earth. And if you compare it to the next most exclusionary college on earth, Harvard, with an acceptance rate of 6%, it isn’t even close.

Plus! Unlike the NFL, Harvard has had “DEI” programs in place to allow students who are not actually qualified to get in when the school prefers people with their skin color over other students. (Fortunately, this was stopped when SCOTUS finally voted 6-3 to strike down these programs as clearly unconstitutional).

The NFL is, traditionally, a merit-based institution, which means you have to be good to get in. That is not at all “inclusive” in the sense they’re trying to claim. They have NEVER had “inclusion” programs like Harvard had.

Because I’m actually willing to spend more time on this than the intern who blasted that dumb statement to the media saying they disagree with their employee who helped them win three Lombardi Trophies, I can run a few calculations…

Here’s some quick math:

• It is 3,233% easier to get into Harvard than the NFL.

• It is 30 times harder—that’s 3,000% harder—for high school graduates to become football players in the NFL than it is for high school graduates to get into Harvard.

• As a reminder, the NFL accepts ZERO WOMEN as football players.

So don’t tell me the NFL is “steadfast in their commitment to inclusion.” They aren’t. They never have been. And they do not actually believe it “makes their league stronger.”

To be frank, there were more women in the graduating class of that little Catholic college I can’t remember from that little town in Kansas whose name I’ve already forgotten who were sitting in the audience listening to that NFL player with the weird name... than have ever played football for the NFL.

Part of what I find so galling about the NFL’s response to this is just how cowardly they are.

When I was a kid, I wanted to play football in the NFL. That was my dream job. I had hundreds of NFL football cards, I wore NFL memorabilia, and my bedroom wall was covered in NFL posters.

Today, the NFL has become a grotesque self-parody, filled with woke, institutional rot of the highest order, almost unrecognizable from what it used to be.

Here’s a reminder to today’s NFL:

Dan Marino, my favorite player of all time—the man I wanted to be like when I grew up—is Catholic.

Don Shula, the Miami Dolphins coach—the winningest coach in NFL history—was Catholic.

VINCE LOMBARDI, FOR THE LOVE OF ST. PETER, WAS CATHOLIC!

Would the NFL have ever kicked those men to the curb so giddily like this?

Never. Zero percent chance, no matter how much the screeching critics would have shouted, “Fire them!” in a silly online petition.

But the NFL can’t wait to throw their star players under the bus at the first sign of controversy simply for... authentically being who they are?

Now THAT irony is as thick as Pigskin.

Put simply, the NFL of today is not the NFL of my childhood. Not even close, and it is to their eternal shame for ruining something that was once great. I despise the wimpy, gutless corpse of an organization they have become, and it genuinely makes me sad.

Finally, I’ll close with this amazing discovery that puts a giant cherry on top of this toxic Sundae. As I was stewing on all of this over the past few days, I discovered a bizarre, almost unbelievable, coincidence.

There’s another young man who also gave a speech at a college this year.

Like Butker, he is also an NFL employee.

Like Butker, he also plays for the Kansas City Chiefs.

Like Butker, he also gave advice to young people on how they ought to live their lives.

That young man was Travis Kelce, who is actually older than his teammate, Harrison Butker.

And let me tell you, he sure gave some sage wisdom for the ages. Check out this choice nugget. While holding a beer can, and clearly well-juiced, he said—and it’s hard for me to believe that this actually happened, except it’s been documented on video:

“To all my fellow students, I got a few words of advice. You heard my Welcome to Cincy moment. And before we make this thing official, I thought I’d give you guys some advice. You gotta fight for your right to party!”

Where is the outrage?

Where’s the immediate statement from the self-righteous NFL weenies condemning him, saying that he “gave a speech in his personal capacity” and that “his views are not those of the NFL as an organization,” just like they did with Butker?

I have three sons.

They’re all quite athletic, and two of them particularly like playing football. At least one of them has expressed a desire to play professional sports.

Right now, I have two pieces of advice for them:

First, don’t be like Taylor Swift’s current boyfriend, a beer-swilling idiot whose best advice to college kids is to “fight for your right to party.”

Second, if you want to play football, it’s going to be a tough road because today’s NFL is a stupid organization filled with fraidy-cat babies who are intentionally fanning the flames of a pretend controversy about one of their top players.

Although, I do think there may be hope because that employee that the dumb NFL staff members are trying to stigmatize, as far as I can tell, is kicking their butts.