Football is back, baby!
FOOTBALL IS BACK, BABY!
This weekend was a weekend like no other for sports. More sports were played at the same time than ever before! Thursday, September 10 marked the beginning of the 2020 NFL football season amid the COVID-19 pandemic. The defending Super Bowl champs, the Kansas City Chiefs, played the Houston Texans and won 34-20. Social media saw a spike of over 97k relevant posts on Thursday alone, with over 11k posts close to the 8:20 p.m. kickoff. Thursday night’s social media sentiment was mostly neutral, with many participants in the conversations discussing fantasy football, where to place bets, and general statistics and expectations.
Apart from fantasy
football and general excitement for (or criticism of) football being back, a
large part of the conversation on Thursday night and throughout the weekend
revolved around the NFL’s decisions to back the Black Lives Matter (BLM)
movement. Thursday night, Chloe x Halle, an R&B sister-duo, sang the
National Anthem as well as Lift Every Voice and Sing, known colloquially as the
Black National Anthem, wearing t-shirts with the faces of George Floyd and
Breonna Taylor, two of the African-American citizens shot and killed by police
officers this year. Following the National Anthem, the players and coaches of
both teams joined together in the center of the field in a “Moment of Unity,”
locking arms and standing in silence in honor of those lost to police brutality
and the fight against racial injustice. It would have been a beautiful moment
for the NFL, but Chiefs fans in the stadium filled the moment of silence with
booing. This garnered a lot of attention on social media, some criticizing the
booers and others applauding them.
Posts about the NFL’s siding with BLM continued throughout the weekend. Again, some people supporting the NFL, while others said they would not watch the NFL because they back BLM and furthered #boycotttheNFL, the movement that really gained headway in 2016 when Colin Kaepernick’s decided to kneel during the National Anthem. The sentiment trend throughout the weekend fluctuated, with the majority of posts on Thursday being neutral, Saturday’s sentiment (the first full day of college football) being mostly positive, and Sunday’s (the first NFL Sunday) being almost equally neutral and negative.
A big conversation Sunday night revolved around the Big 10’s decision not to play football this season. After a weekend of college football, it is rumored that a vote will be held sometime this coming week to determine whether or not the Big 10 will decide to play with a proposed start date of October 17. Also within the college football conversation, Army’s Athletic Director garnered some attention for the team who had to cancel their game scheduled for next week due to their opponent’s high volume of positive COVID-19 tests. He posted a personal ad-like tweet, asking Twitter to help him out in finding an opponent to fill next week’s spot.
While the season is still full of uncertainty with COVID-19, it sure was exciting to have it all back! Though the sentiments across social media were scattered, and it seemed like a lot of the conversation was negative, people seemed happy for the return of live sports. Now what we have to hope for is that everyone will stay safe and healthy, so we can enjoy the remainder of this college and NFL season!
Comments
Post a Comment