The Sports Paige

It has been four days since New Orleans Saints Quarterback Drew Brees gave his infamous interview with Yahoo Finance where he came out against players who have kneeled during the National Anthem. 

“I will never agree with anybody disrespecting the flag of the United States of America or our country.” said Brees. 

Many athletes and sports media personalities expressed their outrage, and they were appalled that Brees would stoop so low to express how he feels about this issue, especially when the media wants athletes to use their platforms and speak out. 

The hypocrisy by the woke sports media is shocking but at this point it’s not really surprising anymore. 

After all, these are the same people who wanted to cancel West Point Cadets for playing the freaking circle game at the Army-Navy game last fall, but have no problem with Chairman James, Comrade Kerr, and Gregg “People’s Republic” Popovich providing cover for the murderous Chinese Communist Party. 

Now you may think to yourself while reading the rest of this blog that I am an asshole, and that’s ok. I don’t care. You are entitled to your opinion just as much as I am entitled to my opinion and Drew Brees is his. 

If you’ve made it this far you can probably tell where this blog is headed. I disagree with the kneeling during the National Anthem. I think it is disrespectful to people who have fought and died for this country and their families, and also to people who have made huge sacrifices for this country like people who fought for suffrage, civil rights and equality. I also believe there are a lot of good cops who do their jobs to the best of their abilities, including members of my family who are police officers, and who are minorities. I know that they are hurting for what happened to George Floyd, and they are also pissed that their reputations and the reputations of other good police officers have been tarnished by that asshole cop in Minneapolis. 

With all that being said, I can also understand where these black athletes are coming from and their reason for kneeling. My quarrel is not with them. I’m just a white kid from Southern California. I don’t know what these men and women have gone through in their lives, and their encounters with the police, and the racism they have endured. They want to be heard and by kneeling this is their way to get their point across. That’s why Colin Kaepernick kneeled (I guess, I think he was very disingenuous, but that’s a blog for another time.) and why other players knelt, and I totally support their first amendment right to free speech, and I understand their criticism of Brees. I just wish there was a different way to go about the protesting. 

My problem is with the woke sports media and how they have decided that they are judge and jury, and that they should make an example out of Drew Brees. These are the same people who have defended Kaepernick for the past three years, and have said that anybody who didn’t agree with the mob should be shunned and canceled. 

These people who are trying to cancel Drew Brees are ignoring the fact that he has done many great things for the predominantly black city of New Orleans. He helped New Orleans rebuild after Hurricane Katrina, he led them to their only Super Bowl championship, and this past offseason he donated $5 Million to New Orleans for COVID-19 relief funds. Yet, he is called a racist for expressing his opinions.

By trying to cancel Drew Brees they are setting a really bad precedent for any athlete or media personality who wants to express an opinion that is outside the mainstream or the leftist sports media mindset. That’s why many athletes don’t speak out on issues because they are afraid of being canceled. All Brees said was that he disagreed with the kneeling because of what the flag means to him. It reminds him of his Grandfather’s who fought Nazis in World War II, and it reminds him of people who have sacrificed so much for this country like soldiers, civil rights leaders, and suffragists. You may disagree with he said, but that’s no reason to cancel him. It was wrong when the right tried to cancel Kaepernick and it’s wrong that the left is trying to cancel Brees. 

There is a great quote from Mark Twain where he says “Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.” Sports media, please pause and reflect and think about what you are doing. Check yourselves. Let’s not add another person to cancel culture’s body count. 

As for Drew Brees, he should’ve never bent the knee to the rage mob. That’s what they want. They want him to shut up and throw. When the media, or anyone for that matter, try to cancel you, tell them to go f**k themselves. This is advice for anyone reading this to follow. Drew Brees is Exhibit A when it comes to the consequences of giving in to the rage mob. They have humiliated him and his family for the past four days, making him apologize three times, making his wife apologize, and making them beg for forgiveness that they will never receive. Brees should’ve had some backbone and stood up for what he believed in instead of giving a disingenuous apology.

I wish we lived in a time where you could be able to apologize for your screw ups, but during this day in age there can never be any apologies. It only fuels the rage mob. So the moral to this story is if anyone tries to cancel you, tell them that they are number one. 

On June 6, 1944, 156,000 American, British, and Canadian soldiers marched to the gates of hell, fought the devil, and won.

Before we get to the D-Day landings on Normandy, there is some background information about the war that you need to know. Where we start our story is back in the summer of 1941. At this time the Nazis were fighting on the Eastern Front after they invaded Russia. Before the Nazis invaded Russia they were cutting through Europe like a hot knife through butter. So, Adolf Hitler assumed that he could betray his ally, Joseph Stalin, and the Soviets (yes, the Germans and Soviets were allies at the beginning of the war) and march his army into Russia and take it with ease. At the beginning of Operation Barbarossa (that’s what the Nazis called the offensive) it was working out just as Hitler had hoped. The German Army was making huge inroads in the Soviet Union, that is until they got stopped at the Battle of Moscow. Then the Russian winter hit the Germans hard and they could not advance any further. The Germans restarted their offensive on the Soviets in the Summer of 1942 at the Battle of Stalingrad. Stalingrad was where a major part of the Soviets manufacturing was and if the Germans took Stalingrad, then the Soviets would be cut off at the knees, and it would’ve only been a matter of time until the Germans marched back into Moscow. The Battle of Stalingrad was one of the bloodiest battles of the war and to make a long story short (maybe we’ll go deeper into this topic later hint hint) the Soviets were able to hold off the Nazis and defeat them at the Battle of Stalingrad in early 1943.

The Soviets were able to entrench the Germans in the east and this opened the door for an allied invasion in the west. Up until this point the allies were not able to get a foothold in Western Europe after the fall of France, although they had started an invasion into Italy. If the allies in the west could successfully mount an offensive into Western Europe, it would be the turning point in the war. If they were successful it would force the Nazis to have to fight a war on two fronts, and the allies could squeeze the Germans from two sides until the forces in the West and East could meet and sandwich the Germans.

The wheels were set in motion for an allied invasion into Western Europe in November of 1943 when U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and Soviet Union dictator Joseph Stalin met at the Tehran Conference where they decided to launch an invasion by May of 1944. The planning for Operation Overlord had begun.

The allies decided that General Dwight Eisenhower (that name sound familiar?) would be the commander of this operation. The first thing they had to decide was where they were to land for the invasion. There were four possibilities: Brittany, the Cotentin Peninsula, Pas-de-Calais, and Normandy. Brittany and Cotentin were both peninsula’s so the Germans could cut them off in a narrow isthmus. Pas-de-Calais was a good spot, but the main problem was that it was the closest point in mainland Europe to Britain, and because of that it was heavily fortified by the Germans. Normandy wasn’t a perfect spot for an invasion because some of the beaches had high cliffs and it would lead to high casualties, and there weren’t a lot of port facilities on the coast, but it was a better spot than the other three so they decided on Normandy.

The Allies then launched a naval attack (Operation Neptune) on Western Europe so they could get a secure foothold in Europe. They then launched an aerial attack on Germany (Operation Pointblank) to hit their aircraft production, fuel supplies and airfields to put Germany’s elite Luftwaffe (Air Force) out of commission for enough time to establish the Western Front. The allies were also very deceptive in the lead up to the invasion. Operation Bodyguard was designed to mislead the Germans, and the allies did this a couple of different ways like spreading misinformation about an allied invasion into Norway. Another thing the allies did was make the Germans believe that they were going to launch an invasion with the (fake) First United States Army Group under General George Patton. They actually gave Patton fake tanks to put out on the English Coast to make the Germans think an invasion was imminent. The night before the invasion, the British SAS (Special Air Service) dropped dummies dressed as paratroopers to make the Nazis think an airborne landing had occurred, and the British RAF (Royal Air Force) dropped metal foil to mess with German radar and make the Germans believe that there was a naval convoy getting ready to invade.

All the preparation and training was done, now it was time for the invasion. The invasion of Normandy was supposed to take place on June 4, but they got a bad weather report so the next day they could land with satisfactory conditions (tides, moonlight, time of the day, etc.) would be on June 6. There were five beaches where the allies landed that day and they were Utah and Omaha Beach (American invasion), Sword and Gold Beach (British invasion) and Juno Beach (Canadian invasion).

The Germans, even with all of the deception from the allies, were not as ill prepared for the invasion as the allies had hoped. General Erwin Rommel convinced Hitler to fortify the Normandy coast because he thought the allies would invade there. The Atlantic Wall as the Germans called it was supposed to fortify the French coast from an invasion. Rommel was correct, but unfortunately for him and the German army, he was in Berlin for his wife’s birthday when the invasion happened and most of the leadership was not at Normandy. Also, according to Rommel the Atlantic Wall was only 18 percent completed so they were still vulnerable to an invasion. Because of the bad weather reports the Germans didn’t anticipate an attack, so their top brass went to Germany to watch war games, and some of their military units were on leave. They thought the allies wouldn’t try anything. They were dead wrong.

Just before dawn on the Morning of June 6, 1944, a heavy barrage of aerial and naval attacks were launched against the Nazi fortifications on the beaches of Normandy. The American invasion on Utah beach and Omaha beach took place at 6:30 AM that morning. Unfortunately the visibility was not good for an aerial attack and the bombs that were supposed to soften the German military capabilities did not hit their marks. This led to higher casualties for American soldiers. Also Omaha and Utah were the two most heavily guarded by the Germans. The British and Canadians landed on Gold, Sword and Juno beaches an hour later due to a change in the tide. With the British and Canadians covering the Americans flank from a German counterattack, each army was able to push forward up the beaches and successfully overtake the Germans. While the fighting on the beaches were going on, the French Resistance was busy destroying German infrastructure. They were able to destroy the railroads to Normandy and cut all of the electrical and phone lines to Normandy, and by June 7, Normandy was completely isolated from the rest of the German war machine.

By the time the dust settled on June 6, the allies were able to successfully pull off the largest seaborne invasion in history. There were over 10,000 allied casualties with 4,414 dead, and the Germans lost over 1,000 men. Most of the allies desired objectives for June 6 were not met, but over the next several days they were able to complete their mission objectives. This battle changed the tide of the war and over the course of the next several months, close to one million allied soldiers crossed the English channel to go fight in Western Europe. Germany was now forced to fight on two fronts, and even for the mighty German war machine, it was too much for them to handle, and less than a year later, on May 7, 1945, Germany surrendered.

The anniversary of D-Day should be a reminder to all Americans that freedom isn’t free. These men went to hell and back and defeated an evil that the world had never seen before. This was our greatest generation, and not many of these men are left. They don’t make men like these anymore, but if they did the world would be a much better place. Never forget the sacrifices they made to protect the freedoms that we hold so dearly today.

Hello everyone, my name is Matt Paige and this is my blog. Before we get to the fun stuff that I will write about in this blog, I just wanted to introduce myself to you. I am currently a student at Cal State Long Beach in Long Beach, California and I am going into my third year at Long Beach State. I am a History major and I work at Long Beach State’s radio station, 22 West Radio, as a volunteer in the sports radio section of the station. I also co-host their weekly sports radio show, Beachcenter.

Some things that I do outside of school (when I’m not being swamped with assignments and papers from college classes) is I am an assistant coach on a Little League baseball team, I do the field prep at the Little League field (raking, dragging, chalking, etc.), and I am an umpire at the field. As you can tell I am a big baseball guy. I grew up around baseball since I was a baby. My dad coached teams since even before I was born. I played up until I was 13 and then I decided to switch to golf because I thought that it would be easier to hit a ball that was sitting still than a ball that is coming in high and tight (spoiler alert, it is not easier). I played golf in High School (I was a four year varsity letterman, not to brag or anything), and I still love playing golf to this day. Another one of my hobbies is I love going fishing and camping up in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, especially in Mammoth Lakes.

That’s enough about me for now. Now I get to talk about what you’re really here for. My blog, The Sports Paige (nice name, right?), will be about whatever I want to talk about. It’s mainly going to be about sports, with some history lessons and current events sprinkled in. I will also write about random, funny things that I see in the news. If you have any stories that I should write about or questions for me you can always leave comments in the comments section or you can email me at thesportspaigeblog@gmail.com. I am very excited to get this blog started, and hopefully have it grow and expand into a podcast or YouTube channel sometime down the road. I can’t wait to start on this journey and I hope you enjoy reading the blog!