Opinion: Roc Nation’s most significant impact with NFL must be far beyond Super Bowl music
MIAMI – With Jennifer Lopez and Shakira headlining the LIV stage, the NFL’s Super Bowl halftime show is back to A-list business … a year after Rihanna and other top artists boycotted the league for the wrongs done to blackballed quarterback Colin Kaepernick.
This seems like the easy part for what the NFL banked on in striking a deal last summer with Jay-Z, whose given name is Shawn Carter. His Roc Nation company restored a measure of credibility with the Super Bowl LIV music – enriched by a thoughtful female empowerment theme that is heavy on diversity.
In addition to the dynamic Latino megastars, Roc sent a message by picking Demi Lovato, an LGBT activist on the comeback trail after a heroin overdose, to sing The Star-Spangled Banner. Yolanda Adams, an African-American gospel icon, was tapped to perform America the Beautiful while backed by the heavily multicultural-as-intended Children’s Voice Chorus.
More: Opinion: Three years after partnering with NFL, Players Coalition members chalking up wins
Yes, the NFL needed Jay-Z, the first billionaire hip-hop mogul, more than he needed them (as he once rapped), given all the points lost in Black America over Kaepernick.
Yet as impressive as the musical lineup will be for the Hard Rock Stadium crowd and probably 100 million-plus viewers (the Super Bowl TV rating has declined four years in a row), the most significant signs of the NFL’s partnership with Roc Nation have come – and will come -- under the umbrella of the “Inspire Change” initiative the league rolled out in January 2019 to raise awareness and support social justice efforts.
Roc Nation was consulted but didn’t play an active role in the powerful Players Coalition ad, produced by 72andSunny, that ran during the AFC and NFC title games and is pegged for airing during Super Bowl LIV, which reenacted the fatal shooting of Corey Jones in 2015 by a plainclothes police officer in Florida while waiting for roadside assistance. Jones was the cousin of former NFL receiver Anquan Boldin, who ultimately co-founded the Players Coalition with Eagles safety Malcolm Jenkins in the wake of the tragedy.
The NFL taking on police shootings? Even with the stated desires to foster understanding, it seems so hypocritical when Kaepernick – who led the San Francisco 49ers to its last Super Bowl appearance before LIV – hasn’t been able to land another NFL job after taking a knee to ignite the movement that was largely an affront to police shootings of unarmed African-Americans.
Two weeks before LIV, Roc Nation and the NFL pushed out a riveting PSA in the digital universe that humanized Botham Jean, the 26-year-old man slain by a Dallas police officer (in uniform, off-duty) in his apartment, where he was said to have been watching football.
I’m told that Roger Goodell cried when he first watched the PSA, narrated by Jean’s mother, father and sister – who also engaged in an emotional meeting with the NFL Commissioner, as have family members of other victims of police shootings. The video -- albeit viewed by only a fraction of the audience that would have seen it if it aired during the Super Bowl broadcast by Fox – concluded with an image of The Shield, the NFL’s logo. That’s tacitly stunning.
In 2017, when the NFL’s waning protest situation was reignited by Donald Trump’s rhetoric and the crisis led to the league engaging with the Players Coalition on social justice initiatives, Goodell in his press conference comments and in a written statement didn’t even use the term “police brutality” – which was at the root of the Kaepernick-ignited movement. Instead, he awkwardly danced about “underlying issues” without naming the institution, law enforcement, that historically has had an egregious lack of accountability and culpability when it comes to misdeeds against people of color.
Yet Goodell – with his share of blemishes over the years in hand;ing crises -- is now the key figure needed to push the NFL’s social campaigns forward. That’s hardly automatic, given the politics and big business demands of working for NFL team owners, some of whom seemingly have limited inspiration to address social issues. Goodell’s leadership, though, could go a long way toward determining whether the aggressive social initiatives will extend to becoming part of NFL culture – as opposed to short-term crisis management – as we’ve seen with its Breast Cancer Awareness and Salute to Service actions.
He’s seemingly cut out for the task. Whether the NFL owners that employ him will be similarly invested – amid a climate by the way, that includes the dearth of hiring minorities as head coaches, GMs and in other leadership positions – could be another story.
The PSA on Jean was the third installment in a series, “The Responsibility Program,” that Roc Nation was involved with, after previous works illuminated the lives of police shooting victims Danroy “DJ” Henry, a former Pace University football player killed in Mt. Pleasant, NY in 2010; and Antwon Rose II, an East Pittsburgh honor roll student killed in 2019. Roc Nation collaborated with the Players Coalition on the Henry PSA and with Meek Mill and the Dreamchasers for the Rose piece.
In each of the three PSAs, the victims were spoken of in the present tense, which effectively underscored the significance of the lives that were lost. Several other PSAs shepherded by Roc Nation are already completed or in the works.
For the NFL to step into such waters represents a huge shift in approach, inviting more controversy on one hand and skepticism on the other hand. The league’s alliance with Roc Nation looks a lot like an attempt to buy street cred – remember the reports that leaked out of the 2017 meeting between players and team owners, when one owner maintained that a black figurehead was needed to lead the league’s efforts – at a cost of tens of millions of dollars.
At the same time, Carter has been accused of “selling out” – which doesn’t quite match up to his track record over many years in supporting social justice causes. Recently, for instance, Carter and the rapper known as Yo Gotti filed a federal lawsuit protesting inhumane conditions at a Mississippi prison. Not exactly the actions of someone selling out.
Of course, much will be revealed with time in addressing these issues that in the big picture are vastly more important than premium entertainment. And this much we know: The proactive efforts by the NFL in engaging with Roc Nation and other entities are vastly better than no action at all.