The Josh Innes Show - Lets All Feel Sorry For NFL Players

Episode Date: June 10, 2025

Mike Freeman of USA Today has written a piece urging NFL Fans to understand that NFL players are only human. I love when media people, who make their living covering a sport, judge the fans of the sport. Of course, our friend here wants you to know that legalized gambling has led to more NFL players being dehumanized. This is prime June content. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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please contact Connects Ontario 1866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. Why do fintechs like Float choose Visa? As a more trusted, more secure payments network, Visa provides scale expertise and innovative payment solutions. Learn more at visa.ca slash fintech. All right, well, here's a headline for you from USA Today. Busted. My story went away. You son of a bitch. Headline reads a reminder that NFL players pay a price for football life. Busted knees, a fractured throat, don't forget harsh price NFL players pay. Sure, but they also get paid a lot of money to do it and made the choice to play. Like I'm just I'm fascinated by how there's always these like sympathetic stories about how athletes end up broken down and injured from playing football. Well, you made a choice to play football friend, just like

someone chooses to be a cop like there are no jobs you are forced into. You have a choice. You know, it'd be like me being like these people that bitch about the low pay for radio people. Well, you know, the low pay for radio people. Well, you know, 30 years ago, radio people made more. 40 years ago, radio people made more because it was a more important job. Now it is a lower end job and they're paying people less money to do more shit. But I've made the choice to do this job. If I want to get out of it and try something new, I can, but I continue to do this.

Thus, I don't sit around and bitch about how little radio people are paid because you have an option in life. Like I bet whatever next job I'll get will probably pay okay money, right? But it's the kind of money that if I'm getting paid that to do a radio job that I know how to do and I enjoy versus something I've never done before and may just be a menial nine to five type job that I know how to do and I enjoy versus something I've never done before and may just be a menial nine to five type job that I'm doing because I need to make ends meet, I'd much rather be doing something that I enjoy that still has some upside over a menial nine

to fiver, right? But I made this choice. As I sit here today and do not have a job, I do not have a job because I have chosen to continue looking for a radio job instead of sitting around and trying to find something else or actively trying to do something else that I don't want to do. That's why I don't sit around and complain. I might complain about the process of looking for a job and I might complain about the fact that some people don't call me back or that the dickhead at 97.5 in Philadelphia never even responded to me.

But all that said, I can't sit around and bitch about the state of radio finances when I'm still actively trying to be in it because I've made a choice. And just like I made this choice to work in this industry that is a sinking industry, these guys made the decision to play a sport that might lead you being banged up. Let's read this story. Let's read this sappy piece about the health and the risks that come along with playing football. We'll do that after these words. The NBA Finals are finally here and after spending the playoffs

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One per new customer. Bonus awarded is non-withdrawable Pick 6 bonus picks that expire in 14 days. Limited time offer. Terms at pick6.draftkings.com slash promos. So there was a player who retired from the NFL recently. He isn't one of those blockbuster names you'll know. He is still important and he's important because he's a reminder of the cruel reality of the sport so many of us love. Tyron Armstead played 12 seasons in the NFL most recently with the Miami Dolphins. Armstead was only 33 years old when he retired and many normal jobs are just getting

started at 33, not the NFL. They really are reaching for these stories and I think what they're doing with USA Today according to this is they're trying to do some sort of story about the NFL every day as a way to show you that the NFL never sleeps. Well that doesn't mean you have to force shit that is kind of lazy low-hanging fruit. Woe is the NFL player stories, but here we are. Armstead recently appeared on the Nightcap show and said his career is at the point where he could only play in if he used pain killing medication. Then he described something stunning. He originally injured his knee in 2015, but it never fully healed meaning he's been

playing with a significant knee pain as an NFL player for about a decade. I've been dealing with a knee issue since my third year in the league, Armstead said. I didn't see a practice field at all. And not because I didn't want to where the Dolphins just wanted me to rest. It's like I literally couldn't walk. After a game on Sunday, I wouldn't be able to walk on my own under my own power until Wednesday, Thursday. So I was only able to play under the pain meds. I

couldn't put any pressure on my knee. So it was like I can't keep doing that to myself, which is fine, but I'm not going to sit here and feel bad for you when you made a choice to do this. This was your choice and I get this is your livelihood much like me. I don't think Tyronne Armstead would feel bad for Josh Ennis because Josh Ennis works in an industry where there aren't a ton of jobs anymore. The jobs that exist are low-paying jobs. Tyronne Armstead would not give a shit about Josh in this situation.

He would probably say, well, go find something else to do. I get that you love this, but maybe it's time to move on to something that pays more or something that has more stability or whatever. And I would say the same thing to Toronto Armstead. Look, you're making millions of dollars to do this, but you have made the choice to do this, and that's your life. But I'm not going to sit here because the point of these kind of stories is basically to make you feel bad for NFL players,

guys who are making millions of dollars and dealing with pain. And I think the gist of these stories is they want us to feel kind of like shitheads because we sit around and watch these guys kill themselves for our own enjoyment, and we don't really realize the pain and suffering these guys kill themselves for own enjoyment and we don't really realize the pain and suffering these guys go through. Well, they made the choice. And the same way, I watched the Dale Earnhardt documentary. Dale Earnhardt drove 150 miles an hour, 200 miles an hour in a car around a track for like 30 something years of his life. That

could kill you and eventually it killed him. And it sucks that it killed him. It's sad that it killed him, but you know when you get in a car going 200 miles an hour in a circle 400 times in two hours or whatever it is, that there's a chance you could die doing that. kind of stories are written to make us the consumer feel like we're somehow doing something wrong, all while this guy, Mike Freeman's livelihood is to write and cover the NFL. I always hated that when guys like they make their money off the NFL, but they wanted to make sure you knew that they felt that it was a dangerous, horrible sport and the violent sport and it was unfair to the players. It is far from uncommon for NFL players to deal with chronic pain, even when extreme. I've heard numerous examples of this.

Interestingly, the stories almost always come after the player retires. We know about this part of the NFL, but none of us forget it. Sure, no one forces them to do it. Yes, they get tons of cash in its prestigious. Yes, it is, Mike. All of that is true. The problem is we continue to shift away from recognizing the human part of what players do. We are traversing further away from acknowledging them as human beings like we're on a

starship and the helm is taking us away from our home world. It's not just fantasy football that's doing this. Gambling is dehumanizing players in worse ways than fantasy football that's doing this. Gambling is dehumanizing players in worse ways than fantasy football or anything else ever will. Oh fuck off. Jesus Christ. These guys choose to do this. This is what they choose to do. This is what they they have decided like your first part. Go back to your part where you said that no one forces them to do it. Yes, they get tons of cash and yes, it's prestigious. This is what they choose to do. How about you write long stories

about dudes who got the black lung working in the coal mines? No, you won't do that, will you? How about you write about people like that that made a choice in life and that's what they did and they didn't have an athletic ability and they didn't make millions of dollars to do it. All they did is made what they can make working in the coal mines, got their lungs covered in whatever coal and whatever the fuck else and died. Like, yet somehow I'm supposed to feel bad that some football players got a bum knee. You made the choice. And then of course they

want to spin it into and then the gamblers dehumanize them and the and then of course they want to paint it as the gamblers or the horrible people, not the fantasy football people. Do you honestly think that fantasy football don't dehumanize these people? So basically what I'm reading here is that this is a story about how gamblers dehumanize these poor athletes who deal with injuries and pain all the time and we don't treat them like people. Eric Winston, hey my friend, a former NFL offensive lineman and union executive when once addressing the dangers of legalized gambling spoke of the possible consequences, one of them being the further demeaning of athletes. A lot of people

look at us as, I don't know if it's subhuman, but not necessarily human, not necessarily having those feelings, those issues that everyone else is having. Eric, I love you buddy, we're buddies. I've known you for 15 years now, however long I've known you. But like that's gonna happen whether people gamble or not. Do you think that people haven't looked at athletes as non-humans prior to legalized sports betting or fantasy football? Give me a fucking break, man. Like again, this is an

example of people wanting to have it both ways. They want to have the superhuman credibility and they want people to view them as superheroes and they want people to view them as stars and if you're a star you're making more money and you live in a mansion, you fuck hot women and everything is great, you get into the clubs free and everything. But then you also want the, hey, feel sorry for me because my knee hurts or feel sorry for me because I have a back injury from football. Feel sorry for me because I've had multiple concussions. Brother, that sucks but you made the choice. Like I wonder if athletes look at other, that's the thing. Like we're supposed to look at athletes as if they're you know these these human beings that we're treating shittily because we don't look at them as people we know or whatever like do they look at cops that way do they look at medical professionals that way do they look at truck drivers that way I don't know if they do It's so much worse now. Why we sometimes need to take a breath and pause for a minute, just a minute, and remember what these NFL players go through. Players like Frank Ragnau. He retired at just 29. Ragnau was one of the league's great competitors in Ironman, but the litany of things he played through reads like something from a screenplay for a movie about a chaotic ER. Rag now played through ankle injuries, concussions, fractured throat, turf toe, a groin injury, a calf

injury, a back injury, a knee injury, and a partial torn pec and a fractured throat. Again, if you don't want to deal with what comes with this shit, don't do it. But like, why do we always have to point at the consumers of a sport and say this is your fault, that is your fault that these gentlemen, what would you, what would the alternative be? Don't watch? Like that's your fault, you watch football and you don't care that these people are human and blah blah blah blah blah. One more time, a

fractured throat but beyond the catastrophic injuries are the ones that prevent players from having normal lives, doing things like walking around, bending down, standing, driving. Ragnau once missed 13 games in 2021 because of what he called the most severe degree of turf toe. He had a different injury to that same toe the following season and called that year one of the toughest of his career. He told the Detroit Free Press, part of the USA Today network

two years ago that surgery wouldn't help and he would just have to play through it through the rest of his career. It's difficult to believe it didn't play a part in his decision to retire again at just 29 years old. Like, brother, I'm sorry you dealt with some shit and I don't watch games rooting for you to be hurt or watch games rooting for you to be crippled, paralyzed in a wheelchair, not being able to pick up your kids. But like don't spin this. Like I like how there's one sentence in this story that is sure they're rich and sure they're famous and they chose to do this.

But here's like nine million other words about why it's so tough to be an NFL player like I Mike Freeman. If it's such a horrible thing to you, then don't watch it and don't write about it anymore. If you feel that this is such a moral conundrum that you're watching dudes hurting themselves playing football, then don't write about it because you certainly are making money. Whatever you wrote today, whatever this piece you wrote today is you wrote this about football. So you clearly watch it, you clearly consuming,

although according to you, almost all of these guys are going to end up with debilitating terrible injuries. So then how do you sleep at night when you write about this? How do you sleep at night? How do you rest? How do you put your head on the pillow knowing that Frank Ragnow had to retire at 29 years of age and he had a fractured throat and other shit. How do you sleep at night knowing that Tyronne Armstead had to retire at 33 and has been playing on a bad knee for a decade? How can you sleep at night knowing that you watch that and write about that with this shit happening? But you can because all you do is sit around like most media people do and judge everybody. Don't judge yourself, you judge everybody else for being the Anderthals that watch this, all the gamblers that watch it and treat these

guys subhuman. That's the name of the game, man. And you want to talk about how bad legalized sports betting is, well what about all the people that are current players that are involved with some of these sites? How about the fact that you can watch Kevin Durant go on K. Adams podcast that's sponsored by Draft Kings or whatever. Like you're all in bed with this shit, but you all want to sit around and you never want to judge the players for making the decision to play and you don't want to judge anybody else that you want to judge the fans.

And that is what people constantly do. So it sucks for Frank Ragnar. It sucks for Tyronne Armstead and it sucks for a lot of other dudes that can't get around very well and it sucks for their families but also they live in mansions and if they handled their money correctly they'll be set for life and they drive nice cars and they bang pretty women and they have pretty children and their kids go to elite level schools and they have multiple houses and vacation homes and they can do all this shit.

And you want me to sit around and feel like I'm a shithead because I bet on sports and sometimes yell at the TV and call a guy a motherfucker for dropping a pass. But they all want the love you give them whenever they do something great. But then whenever you're like, fuck you, it's like fans are a little out of control guys and the gambling is just too much and gambling, it's worse than fantasy football ever was and blah blah blah blah blah. So thank you for writing this sanctimonious drivel. Let's see what the last line of this is. Let's see. As we watch them battle, don't forget what they are. Human beings. Oh, eat a dick. My God, dude. The sanctimonious shit. Don't watch it. Don't write about it. Like dudes are making a choice, man. Of course, these are the same media people that want to you know, they're rooting for defund the police and all this other shit that they the media has done over the

last five, six, seven, eight years. But it's like, but please, you know, feel bad for football players and how tough their job is. I wonder how many of these media people saying this are ever like, you know what tough? His job is tough as being a cop, as we tell people to attack them basically. Like, I wonder if people say, this is tough. No, but being an NFL player making a million dollars, that's a hard knock life, man. And feel sorry for them. Ugh.