Not being particularly technologically adept, it took me a while to find a tactic that allows me to watch NFL games without throwing my beer can at the TV: Use the DVR to fast forward past all the social justice/woke virtue-signaling to the actual kickoff itself.

That other NFL fans have not hit on this approach, or at least found it an adequate compromise, is suggested by the huge drop in ratings for NFL games, which is almost certainly related to the league’s increased politicization.

The problem with the NFL embracing politics, in this case an increasingly hard-left version thereof, is that people have different political opinions, and most of the fans probably lean politically the other way (a useful measuring stick for which could be the percentage of those in the stands who stand for the anthem while the players on the field are kneeling for it).

More specifically, when you embrace the “systemic racism” claim, as the NFL ostentatiously has, you are essentially claiming that most, perhaps all white people, are racist because of the color of their skin, and white just happens to the color of the skin of the folks who buy most of the tickets to the games and make up most of the TV audience.

Having semi-literate players calling their fans racist is hardly a good business plan; if they really are racist, you’ve only given them more reason to stay that way, and if they aren’t, you’ve just gone out of your way to offend them.

To state what should be painfully obvious, people tune in to watch a football game, not receive a political lecture by ignorant millionaires whose only claim to attention comes from being proficient at passing or running with a strangely shaped leather ball (or tackling the guy passing or running with it).

It probably doesn’t matter much what particular political views are being pushed (end zones saying “Make America Great Again” would be just as off-putting). It’s the inappropriateness of pushing any political views at times and places when people are seeking a respite from an already over-politicized world.

People who have booed at the social justice messages at NFL games aren’t booing because they disagree with the proposition that “Black lives matter,” as some on the left claim; rather, they boo because they thought they’d bought a ticket for a ballgame and found themselves at a political rally instead.

What those people are saying, albeit in perhaps less than erudite manner, is that politics shouldn’t consume every part of our lives, because our lives would become utterly miserable if it did.

As normal, psychologically healthy adults with an assortment of hobbies and interests to indulge (including sports), we try to avoid the kind of people who can’t stop hectoring us with their (usually ill-informed) political opinions. Contrary to woke/leftist dogma, the personal isn’t always the political, and the kind of person who thinks it is isn’t the kind of person many people want to spend much time with.

Even those of us who teach and write about politics for a living can sometimes (actually most of the time) just want to watch a ballgame and enjoy it for what it is. For my part, the best day of the week in the fall is always Saturday, when I can watch college football from 11 a.m. to at least 11 p.m. without thinking one bit about elections, social justice, or the Arab-Israeli peace process. When Auburn-Alabama or Michigan-Ohio State are on the screen, I couldn’t care less about Donald Trump or Joe Biden.

The great error in all this comes from believing that the solution to America’s problems requires more politicization rather than less, and given the role it has played in unifying people over time, sports is perhaps the best place to build a strong firewall between politics and the rest of life.

As such, it is especially ironic that so many people who decry the polarization and incivility in our public discourse also tend to be the same people who want to politicize just about everything, without realizing that the primary cause of polarization, and the incivility that accompanies it, is precisely such politicization.

Sadly, the politicization of life also reflects a failure on the part of Americans to understand that perhaps the greatest virtue, and certainly the original intention, behind the American political architecture is the manner in which it relegates politics to a suitably modest role, befitting a free, independent people who, by virtue of that freedom, can choose to spend the entirety of their days ignoring politics (and watch football … or movies … or …).

The players kneeling for the anthem, like the Black Lives Matter protesters harassing diners in restaurants and blocking traffic in the streets, claim that they are just trying to make us uncomfortable, to make us think about our “white privilege” and our “subconscious racism.”

But the hunch is that what the fans in the stands and the diners in the restaurants and the folks in those cars just trying to make it home from work are actually thinking is something entirely different, more along the lines of “what a bunch of jerks.”

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Freelance columnist Bradley R. Gitz, who lives and teaches in Batesville, received his Ph.D. in political science from the University of Illinois.