The National Football League’s chronic wokeness appears to be infecting college all-star games too.
For decades, the Senior Bowl in Mobile, Alabama, the most prestigious of the showcases of football talent for the NFL draft, has included as part of its festivities a group of young high school seniors known as the Azalea Trail Maids. At this year’s game on Feb. 5, though, the young women were left out of the scheduled festivities — until public blowback got them reinvited.
The Maids, who wear elaborate, brightly colorful 19th-century-style hoop dresses and hats, are Mobile’s “goodwill ambassadors.” Chosen through a competitive application process, they represent the city year-round at hundreds of civic and charitable events. They must maintain high grade-point averages and are expected to talk knowledgeably about the city’s history and its landmarks.
The Senior Bowl, however, is particularly responsive to the NFL, which televises it on the NFL Network. Senior Bowl Executive Director Jim Nagy avoided returning media calls on the subject, but whoever decided to disinvite the Maids apparently was under the impression that their supposedly “antebellum” costumes somehow glorify the old Confederacy.
“The woke NFL and cancel culture is coming here and attacking a very diverse group of young ladies,” said Mobile County Commissioner Randall Dueitt, who did speak to Nagy, in an interview with WKRG-TV.
The Maids have been fully integrated racially since the early 1970s, and they are strongly supported by local black leaders. They have represented Mobile at Disneyworld, at Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, and at President Barack Obama’s first inauguration festivities. The idea that they represent the Confederacy is ludicrous.
Never put it beyond the NFL or its vassals, though, to engage in cheap, politically correct virtue-signaling, heedless of actual facts.
All’s well that ends well, however. After just a few days of public outrage, the Senior Bowl invited the Maids after all. Good. If they had continued blackballing the Azalea Trail Maids, the NFL and Senior Bowl officials should have been flagged for unsportsmanlike conduct.
