It’s November, which means that coaches throughout the NFL will be wearing the kind of drab green clothing that can make authoritarian capitalists look a little like communist dictators.
Yes, it’s Salute to Service time, with gear worn by coaches that is available (coincidentally) for purchase online. But like Kramer at an AIDs walk, Patriots coach Bill Belichick doesn’t want to wear the ribbon.
“I mean, I usually wear the same thing for every game,” Belichick told WEEI on Monday. “I mean, not the same thing, but depending on the weather and so forth, I just wear the same thing for every game. So, I don’t change what I wear weekly based on whatever the theme of the week is. But, Salute to Service is — look, the military and the job that our service men and women do and the sacrifices that they make are very important to me and my family, always has been, always will be, and I always want to recognize those and I do it. So, I don’t have any objection to what anybody else does, but I just choose to — honestly, I don’t think what sweatshirt I wear is that important. What’s important to me is what your actions are, what you do, so I try to make those count.”
Belichick never has been a guy who does the things someone else wants him to do, and as a guy who doesn’t like to do the things that someone else wants me to do, I can get behind that. Sometimes, however, guys who get paid a whole lot of money to do something that they’d do for free need to play the game, just a little. The images that make their way into millions of homes every week have value, and if Belichick had simply worn the drab green hoodie, awareness of the NFL’s broader Salute to Service efforts would have gotten a significant boost.