Rush Limbaugh Owning the Rams? Why Not?

When news surfaced that conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh was thinking about teaming about with St. Louis Blues owner Dave Checketts to buy the St. Louis Rams, it apparently rubbed some folks the wrong way.

First it was a few players saying they wouldn’t want to play.

New York Giants defensive end Mathias Kiwanuka told 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."

New York Jets linebacker Bart Scott said, "He could offer me whatever he wanted, I wouldn't play for him.”

More recently, NFL Players Association Executive Director DeMaurice Smith and moral vulturists Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson voiced their displeasure at the prospects of Limbaugh owning the NFL ownership club.

"I've spoken to the Commissioner [Roger Goodell] and I understand that this ownership consideration is in the early stages," Smith said. "But sport in America is at its best when it unifies, gives all of us reason to cheer, and when it transcends. Our sport does exactly that when it overcomes division and rejects discrimination and hatred."

And really, it’s not that surprising. The NFL is largely a league made up of African-American players (except punters, a club whiter than 1950s Augusta National) and Limbaugh is hardly a candidate for the NAACP Lifetime Achievement Award.

There were Limbaugh’s comments about Donovan McNabb. There was his comparison of a football game to a fight between the Bloods and Crips street gangs. And there’s that whole thing about rooting for the first black president to fail, not exactly ways to endear yourself to black America.

So you can see how maybe some of the people associated with the game, especially African Americans, would be hesitant to sign off on Limbaugh’s ascendancy into the NFL ownership club.

(As for Jackson and Sharpton, they’re nothing but publicity-hungry media vultures looking for the next feed. Whether it’s Don Imus or the Duke Lacrosse team, all you need is a story with a touch of race and a television camera, and there they are. But I digress ...)

First realize that Limbaugh is a Missouri boy. He was born in Cape Girardeau, Missouri. He went to college in Missouri. His uncle, Stephen N. Limbaugh, Sr. is a Ronald Reagan-appointed federal judge in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri and his cousin, Stephen N. Limbaugh, Jr., is currently a judge in the same court, appointed by George W. Bush after serving 16 years on the Missouri Supreme Court.

Considering the Rams are very much in play for Los Angeles or any other city looking to poach an NFL franchise in five years, a local buyer with deep pockets who would be less apt to ditch St. Louis for richer grounds holds a significant appeal.

The Rams may suck, but being a city with an NFL franchise, no matter how terrible, is and always will be better than being a city with no NFL franchise.

And now for the “yeah, but.”

Yeah, but Limbaugh is a pill-popping maniacal conservative who would probably rather the South had won the Civil War, that there was still such thing as “whites only” bathrooms, and the rest of the world still had a healthy dose of fear of the big bad US of A. (We ask for the Olympics, we get the Olympics, damn it! Don't you know who we are? Don't make us come over there.)

I personally don’t know how much I believe that Limbaugh believes everything that comes out of his mouth. I’m cynical in a way that makes me think it’s half-truth, half-shtick meant to draw in and hold a certain devoted section of the American political spectrum.

But whether he believes it or not, his brand of commentary is to glorify the one side and vilify the other. And people tend to take being vilified rather poorly.

So he’s a controversial borderline-racist trying to buy a piece of a league that relies largely on African Americans for its enormous success.

And to that I say: So freaking what?

Look, I’m not denying Limbaugh’s got his flaws. But, to me, those flaws aren’t bad enough to eliminate him from owning a team.

With the exception of some illegal pills, a marginal offense at worst, Limbaugh is not a criminal. He’s not a Holocaust denier. He’s not same David Duke neo-Nazi in church clothing. He doesn’t get involved in sex scandals, beat up gay people, or bomb abortion clinics.

He’s just a fat guy with a sharp opinion, loud mouth, and a microphone. Whoop-de-doo.

If Limbaugh pairs up with Checketts to buy the Rams, it’ll be a media story because of who Limbaugh is and what he does, but it won’t impact the day-to-day running of the franchise any more than the Williams sisters or Jennifer Lopez buying into the Miami Dolphins.

And in a league that includes all sorts of wife beaters, drunk drivers, dog fighters, drug abusers, and at least one guy who killed somebody (two, once Donte Stallworth comes back), perhaps they shouldn’t go about trying to blackball a guy who talks for a living.

Rush Limbaugh owning the Rams? If it keeps them in St. Louis, I’m all for it.

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