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Online trolls outraged at Buffalo Bills over gay flag football league

Gillberg
Online trolls outraged at Buffalo Bills over gay flag football league

News Tuesday that the Buffalo Bills were helping launch an LGBTQ-focused flag football league in Buffalo was met with derision and a huge dose of misinformation from online trolls, further proof of how teams of the NFL are “woke”.

“We are proud to support the National Gay Flag Football League by sponsoring the launch of a league in Buffalo! said a post on the team’s Instagram. “We are excited to bring inclusive flag football to Buffalo with the support of the Buffalo Bills. This exciting addition joins 27 other cities and more than 4,000 players, including straight allies, in the National Gay Flag Football League,” said NGFFL Commissioner Joel Horton.

This good news was welcome but not all that earth-shattering, as four other NFL teams have helped support similar projects in their cities, efforts dating back to the New England Patriots sending Hall of Fame linebacker Andre Tippett to flip the coin to open. Gay Bowl III in Boston in 2003.

None of this has stopped trolls like former ESPN anchor Sage Steele, who sees “wokeness” lurking in every public and private decision, from taking to social media and making fools of themselves.

A site called Rawsalerts, which bills itself as “your go-to source for fast, accurate news coverage specializing in groundbreaking events across the United States,” was completely inaccurate when it posted:
“BREAKING: The Buffalo Bills just announced they are helping launch the National Gay Football League. »

No, the bills support a flag Football League in Buffalo.

Still, the post caused Steele – who clearly couldn’t do a quick Google search – to address his 332,000 followers:

“So… does this mean straight people are allowed to play in the NGFL?” Kind of like how gays are allowed to play in the NFL…and have been for YEARS….. The marketing strategy for this league will be fascinating. I can’t wait to watch the commercials.

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Nick Sortor, with 362,000 followers, chimed in: “The Buffalo Bills just announced they are helping launch the National Gay Football League. Yeah, it’s real. I also thought it was a fucking parody.

The Calvin Coolidge project couldn’t resist. When a commenter on their article about the new league asked them if they were serious, they said they would have preferred not to.

Things were no better on Facebook, where Sportskeeda Pro Football posted: “The Buffalo Bills have announced the creation of a gay flag football league, the ‘NATIONAL GAY FLAG FOOTBALL LEAGUE’.”

Newsflash: The National Gay Flag Football League was formed in 2002. I should know, since I co-founded it with Cyd Zeigler of Outsports.

I first played in a gay men’s flag football league (perhaps the first in the United States) in Los Angeles in 1990 and helped run it for 25 years. Also in 1990, the Gay Games added flag football as a sport and I participated in three such tournaments (1990, 1994 and 2006). In the 1990s, Los Angeles and San Francisco held several city-versus-city flag tournaments, where gay men made up the majority (but not all) of the players.

In 2002, Cyd and I invited teams from Boston and San Francisco to Los Angeles to compete in the first Gay Bowl. Later that year, we launched the NGFFL, with six cities. There are now 250 teams in 27 cities and the Gay Bowl offers a men’s and women’s tournament and is growing. Although these leagues and teams are LGBTQ-focused, they are open to everyone and have a significant number of straight men because it’s so much fun.

What the Bills are doing in Buffalo is helping start a league that would be part of the NGFFL. These partnerships typically include money and/or donations of equipment and uniforms. It’s pretty routine business, and yet the usual suspects took to the skies to yell at Google about something that didn’t bother them before declaring the end of American sports as we know it.

As for Steele wondering what the ads would look like, she must have missed this video of the NFL, CBS Sports and the New England Patriots celebrating gay flag football:

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