Following the tragic passing of Craig Sager, Odell Beckham chose to pay tribute on Sunday by wearing the above cleats that mirrored Sager’s famously flashy style. Since this isn’t a special week for cleat tributes, the NFL fined Beckham for a thing nobody watching the game probably noticed unless it was explicitly pointed out to them.
https://twitter.com/NYGDaily/status/811902780965265408
18k without a single warning , but the world would never kno, they act like it's no big deal. No respect for the message IMO https://t.co/Ym30L1FnCP
— Odell Beckham Jr (@obj) December 22, 2016
Beckham auctioned the cleats and donated the money to cancer research, something you may have learned about through an Instagram comment Beckham left on a post by DeSean Jackson, which is how we learn of news in 2016.
So while this is bad and the latest example of the NFL missing the point and being tone deaf and all that, isn’t it time we added another facet to the conversation about a league that punishes celebrations and things like Beckham’s cleats?
Can players stop acting surprised when they get fined for doing things like this? Yeah, it’s a stupid fine, but it’s one you know is coming the moment the idea of wearing cleats like this pops into your head. “There was no warning to take them off!” ODB, you know I love you, but if a guy not wearing a mask robs an ATM and waves his home address in front of the camera then gets arrested three days later, he can’t be surprised. There are cameras pointed at every inch of an NFL field and the league loves to shake money out of its player’s pockets. They were always going to find out.
