Over 17 years in football, you learn this football code, often disguised as a warrior mentality that relinquishes the individual. Those of us from small-town America, low-income families or struggling black neighborhoods are often most vulnerable to this dogma.

Team sports are beautiful. They provide so many life lessons to youth all over America and the world. Hoisting up a goal, larger than yourself, provides a sense of selflessness that is important in understanding coexistence. But we run aground when the goals of team sports blind the individual, robbing us of our sense of self. This is especially damaging when the sport deems you unworthy and unable to contribute to a team, much less to society.

The rapture of football sweeps us up, providing a righteous path for the otherwise statistically condemned. Professional football saves people from poverty, and the rescued tend to adopt the values and goals of the keepers of pro football: uniformity and collective profit. The system will support anything that allows itself to attain these goals and sever any player using its collectively large platform to represent anything outside of systemic servitude.

Pro football is not slavery, but like all American labor relations between the haves and have-nots in the U.S., its practices stem from the chattel economy. It’s a system set up by rich white men to fool young strapping black men into thinking they're building their own identity, their own purpose, their own moral code. In reality, that code is written and enforced by the men in suits looking down from their skyboxes.

The conception of football, as well as our country, is relatively fresh. With the beautiful creations we call America and football comes the undeniably messy accomplice of afterbirth. We’ve marveled at our magnificent creations, disregarding the importance of the placenta and improperly crediting our existence as a nation. Instead of discarding this vital accomplice, we’re now realizing how nutritious it is for us to chew on it. Hopefully we will reach a point where this country recognizes the black community as a life source and not a blemished accessory.