In 1933, the National Football League suddenly became monochromatic. The gentlemans agreement to ban black players was reportedly set in motion , poetically enough, by the owner of the Washington franchise that still uses a racial slur as its team name. Baseball, then the national pastime, was conspicuously a white-only affair. Professional football was still a niche sport at the time, and thus could practice its discrimination more discreetly. Even the breaking of its color line in 1946 with two signings each by the Los Angeles Rams and Cleveland Browns seems all but forgotten in the context of Jackie Robinsons debut the following year.

Things are different now, and they are not. The NFLs 32 franchises are still owned almost universally by white people, but the percentage of black players hovers just above 70 percent . Those athletes play mostly for the pleasure of a majority-white fan base . Still, it was tough to describe the NFL before this season as unmistakably black, despite the epidermal clarity. The leagues own mechanisms for generating fan interest have aided in the distillation of the players humanity to injury reports and fantasy points. The race of its players only seemed to come up in maudlin pre-game feature segments about the rough neighborhoods from which their NFL fortunes delivered them. African American life, through the lens of pro sports, has largely been something to escape, and the playing field or the court is both the means of deliverance and the promised land.

As the 2017 NFL season ends with the Super Bowl on Sunday, its clear that something has changed. This season, NFL players have broadcast their blackness in a fashion that white people can no longer ignore.