I'm not super sentimental... But this is my favorite picture of all time. Me as an infant with my dad on the football field. I can't express how much this picture has shaped my life. Football was everything to me for as long as I could remember. Being ballboy at my dad's games. Trying to keep up with his players at summer camps. Sneaking a peek at my dad's playbook when he wasn't paying attention. All I wanted to do was learn and play football forever. I LIVED for Sundays when I could watch Jerry Rice, Bo Jackson, Randall Cunningham, and Deion Sanders. And as I grew older I played full contact tackle football. I gave everything I could to it. I'd be first on the field and last off. I'd study the playbook for fun. I was the skinniest kid on the field but I reveled in full contact because I wanted to show everyone I had the most heart. By the time I was an adult I was reading books about football history and studying coaches' schemes. Watching games multiple times just to learn small nuances about the game. I got to feel closer to my dad even when we lived hundreds of miles away, through football... And I had to reckon with the fact that the @nfl is a racist shit organization as I watched the rise of @kaepernick7. Oh, don't forget the NFL media, too. Their coverage of him was racist from the jump. Criticism of the tattoos. Undermining his skills as gimmicks, while praising white quarterbacks for having a fraction of his abilities. Here's this California mixed-kid like me. Living out my pro football dreams, getting shit on for not fitting the conservative white QB mold. I had to reassess my entire relationship with football. The racist power structure with coaches. The shitty fandom. The "Those niggers should feels lucky they have the opportunity to play a GAME for a living" rhetoric that undermined black labor. It was HEARTBREAKING... And now the NFL is going to pretend it cares about Black issues in a cultural moment where its survival may be dependent upon it. I hope the league gets it right. But I'm not going to be fooled. The NFL is the Donald Sterling of sports leagues. They will have to do MUCH more, beyond performative nonsense, to turn things around.