In a blistering editorial today, ESPN, the world wide leader in sports reporting, called on the NFL to boycott Arizona if they pass a law allowing wide variety discrimination.
On ESPN's most watched program, Pardon the Interruption, long time journalists Michael Wilbon and Tony Kornheiser blasted Arizona's proposed law and called on the NFL to move next year's Super Bowl from Arizona.
Kornheiser: The NFL should leave in a heart beat. Arizona has become the most recalcitrant, backward looking state in the country when it comes to social change.
They were the last state to ratify the Martin Luther King holiday, they have this bill that enabled police to stop somebody because they think you're an illegal alien. And now you have this with gay people. How should they be identified, should they wear a yellow star, because my people went through that at one point.
Wilbon: We can refuse you service?! It this Greensboro, South Carolina in 1960?!
The NFL should bail.
Kornheiser: We can't have this.
This program is watched by low political information people who don't read political blogs and watch cable news, so the opposition to this bill is gaining wide penetration.
The NFL is also getting the message. The NFL has begun drawing up plans to move next year's Super Bowl from Arizona - Pooof! - over the discrimination law,
reports Sports Illustrated.
The NFL isn't fucking around. When Arizona vetoed the MLK holiday in 1990, they moved an already planned Arizona Super Bowl away, and did not return until ratification.