NFL sacks rush.

• Author: Zirin, Dave
• Position: Edge of Sports - The National Football League's decision not to allow Rush Limbaugh to own a team

Rush Limbaugh me within a hair s breadth of owning an NFL team. In a league that is 67 percent African American, there was almost an owner who said, "The NFL all too often looks like a game between the Bloods and the Crips without any weapons. Them, I said it."

In a league that has practiced historic partnerships with the NAACP, it almost had an owner who said, "The NAACP should have riot rehearsal. They should get a liquor store and practice robberies."

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In a league that has long had a mutually beneficial interaction with whoever was occupying the Oval Office, there was almost an owner who said, "In Obama's America, the white kids now get beat up with the black kids cheering, 'Yay, right on, right on, right on, right on.'"

In a league that features a team called the Redskins, it would have had an owner who said, "Holocaust? Ninety million Indians, only four million left? They all have casinos. What's to complain about?"

The NFL would have had a person owning a team who said "This guy from The New York Times , if he really thinks that humanity is destroying the planet, humanity is destroying the climate, that human beings in their natural existence are going to cause the extinction of life on Earth--Andrew Revkin. Mr. Revkin, why don't you just go kill yourself and help the planet by dying?" Rush also told a female reporter to sit on a fire hydrant to improve her day.

You might think that NFL players, with their nonguaranteed contracts and short shelf life, may not be the first people to speak out against Limbaugh. But you'd be wrong.

New York Giant Mathias Kiwanuka said in the New York Daily News , "I don't want anything to do with a team that he has any part of. He can do whatever he wants; it is a free country. But if it goes through, I can tell you where I am not going to play."

Donovan McNabb, quarterback for the Philadelphia Eagles, said in his weekly press conference, "If he's rewarded to buy them, congratulations to him. But I won't be in St. Louis anytime soon." (Limbaugh got in trouble six years ago for saying McNabb was overrated because the media was "very desirous that a black quarterback do well.")

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