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Deadspin: I Was An NFL Player Until I Was Fired By Two Cowards And A Bigot


Destino

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Hello. My name is Chris Kluwe, and for eight years I was the punter for the Minnesota Vikings. In May 2013, the Vikings released me from the team. At the time, quite a few people asked me if I thought it was because of my recent activism for same-sex marriage rights, and I was very careful in how I answered the question. My answer, verbatim, was always, "I honestly don't know, because I'm not in those meetings with the coaches and administrative people."

 

This is a true answer. I honestly don't know if my activism was the reason I got fired.

 

However, I'm pretty confident it was.

 

Allow myself to tell you a story about ... myself. The following is a record of what happened to me during my 2012 season with the Minnesota Vikings, written down immediately after the 2013 draft in April, when I realized what was happening, and revised recently only for clarity. I tried to keep things as objective as possible, and anything you see in quotes are words that I directly recall being said to me.

 

This is a story about how actions have consequences, no matter how just or moral you think your cause happens to be, and it's a story about the price people all too often pay for speaking out.

http://deadspin.com/i-was-an-nfl-player-until-i-was-fired-by-two-cowards-an-1493208214

 

Long but interesting read.  

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As an employee, I think the Vikings could have laid down a tough stance on his activity in the media. It wasn't just what he said, it's how he said it. The only reason he had a voice that anyone paid attention to was because of his employment as an active NFL player.

 

That doesn't excuse the behavior of his coach.

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As an employee, I think the Vikings could have laid down a tough stance on his activity in the media. It wasn't just what he said, it's how he said it. The only reason he had a voice that anyone paid attention to was because of his employment as an active NFL player.

 

That doesn't excuse the behavior of his coach.

Agreed. He was unprofessional in the way he spoke out. But a bigger reason his letter went viral was because of how inappropriate it was. People thought it was funny.

I also think it's wrong of him to smear Frazier and Spielman like this. Perhaps they didn't give enough of a damn about this issue to jeopardize their jobs over it, that doesn't make them cowards.

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I think it's likely a combination of things.  He admits in the article that he had at least one bad game and knee surgery.  He also admits that the coaches asked him to stop talking about this and he refused.  Freedom of speech doesn't protect you from employers not wanting to get mixed up in politics, right or wrong.  The coach that said gays should be put on an island and nuked, assuming that took place, doesn't seem like he'd be terribly eager to support him either.  Drafting a punter so early in the draft also screams that they coaches and front office wanted badly to replace him and I'm sure his refusal to do as he was told played a part in that.  Egos as large as head coaches usually don't like to hear "no" from anyone let alone those as low on the totem pole as punters.  

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Dude, you're a punter.  Nobody cares what you think and you are easily replaceable.  Laterzzz

 

He's sensitive about that.

 

I do have to admit that being a redskins fan has made me appreciate punters and kickers a great deal more than the average fan.  We have a kicker that can't kick the ball into the end zone on kickoffs and a punter that I can only assume is trying to increase ratings by making every punt exciting.  

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I sure do respect Kluwe. He's basically committed career suicide (a very lucrative career at that), because he believes in a cause and refuses to not speak his mind very publicly about it. It seems like he gets that this is the consequence of taking a stand and he's choosing advocacy over his career. More power to him.

I'd love to see Kluwe take fat Sav's spot on the Skins...

Also, if half of what he says about that ST coach are true, if I were Zigi Wolf there would be a new opening on the staff immediately.

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Dude, you're a punter.  Nobody cares what you think and you are easily replaceable.  Laterzzz

 

This is silly.  

 

You're not even a punter in the NFL, nobody cares what you think, there's no need to even replace you.  Laterzzz

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The comments by Priefer are deplorable. I wanted to state that right off the bat as clearly as possible.

What Kluwe did was build a very nice, circumstantial case. I would bet that he was let go more for his refusal to compromise with his employer than any specific point of view he had. I'm not saying that's OK, but it's far less black and white than he's implying.

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Hate to say it but if he was a valued skill player rather than a punter he might have been able to pull it off (taking a political stand) but companies look at value when evaluating the trouble an employee may cause. There probably isn't a team in the NFL that doesn't feel that their punter is replaceable. The two coaches weren't cowards. Their job is to produce a winning football team and if Kluwe was a distraction they were doing their job after Kluwe by intention or not dropped trouble in their lap. 

 

Personally I'm of the opinion that if it is important enough that you feel the need to speak out then you should be ready to handle any fallout. For example, you can argue that Snowden had the best of intentions by leaking NSA documents but that doesn't mean he gets a free pass. If he didn't feel like it was important enough to take a fall for, he shouldn't have done what he did.

 

That said Mike Priefer sounds like a complete jerk and good for Kluwe for "outing" him.

 

And still... it's a damn shame though that this guy was speaking out for tolerance and got canned with no public outcry, but some redneck can associate being gay with beasteality and he gets an army of support defending his "freedom of speech.
 

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Kluwe put his notions of right and wrong ahead of his career.  It might have cost him a season or two of income with the Vikings, or maybe not.  Did it cost him a shot with a different team after the Vikes dumped him?  Most owners, player personnel guys, etc. don't get too excited about a somewhat expensive older punter with average stats and recent surgeries.  And that's before even getting to the bit about him being potentially controversial on your team.  Ultimately it might have cost Kluwe little or nothing to do what he has done.

 

But he laid down a great big data point, which is what I suspect he was really after.  And he got it.  It's a smart move, actually, given where he is now with his career.  The next time an NFL player makes a reasonably believable case that his bigoted fundie coach created a hostile environment for retributive or other personal reasons, or ended his career with the team -- or ended his career, period -- it will be a bigger deal and Kluwe will be the previous claimant who gets mentioned in paragraph 4 of the resulting news reports.  Kluwe's piece will make it possible to describe the situation as an "emerging trend in recent seasons," not just one guy saying something in isolation.  (...Because, you know, it's two guys saying something!)  That distinction will be significant.

 

Surely the average-to-smart coaches, even those thick bigots among them, are already thinking this through, as is the league.  Nobody wants to risk becoming the franchise backdrop for the next data point, and the older-generation dudes in the coaching suites and front corner offices will be the first to hear it.  I suspect this will be far more important in the long run than whether Kluwe wrote this piece primarily as a self-serving gesture vs. an emotionally distant piece of personally sourced social commentary.  At minimum, his claims are going to matter 32 times.

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This is silly.  

 

You're not even a punter in the NFL, nobody cares what you think, there's no need to even replace you.  Laterzzz

 

Worse. He's a conspiracy theorist of the highest order and he gets upset that no one takes his theories seriously.  :P

 

good observations mjah

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I understand that he not of much value and a punter, but the thing that gets me is the coach making the homophobic comments.Football culture is full of meatheads.

I think Steve Czaban was right today though when he said we've only heard one side to this and there is zero corroberation to any of it. The facts are that they drafted a punter to replace him and that he was very outspoken on this issue. What if he's wrong and misinterpreted the whole thing? What has he done to those coach's reputations? They will be forever known by what they were accused of, and not necessarily the truth, whatever that may be.
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Starts by saying 'I didn't know if I was fired for my stance, I truly believe that'. Goes on to state up to and including saying I knew I was fired for my stance all along.

 

'I just thought I would write everything from the start...'

 

While his stance did get him fired, he is sour grapes. Calling individuals bigots and cowards publicly is essentially being just that.

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