The NFL’s plan to add a 15-yard penalty for the use of the N-word on the field is ridiculous. It is a bad solution looking for a nonexistent problem. There is no wild epidemic of football players calling each other racial slurs on the field and the racial slurs in the locker room are often terms of endearment.
More importantly, the notion that a word representative of 400-plus years of slavery, rape and government sanctioned violence, can be assuaged by a 15-yard penalty is downright offensive.