Mike Ditka has weighed in on the recent St. Louis Rams/Ferguson protest, and as usual, he left no room for misinterpretation of his words or intent.
"I’m embarrassed for the players more than anything," Ditka said in his weekly Chicago Sun-Times column. "They want to take a political stand on this? Well, there are a lot of other things that have happened in our society that people have not stood up and disagreed about."
Ditka pushed further with harsh words for the protesters in Ferguson itself. "The shame of it is, I’m not sure [protesters] care about Michael Brown or anything else," he said. "This was a reason to protest and to go out and loot. Is this the way to celebrate the memory of Michael Brown? Is this an excuse to be lawless? Somebody has to tell me that. I don’t understand it."
From there, Ditka held forth on the entire dispute between police and the public. "I wasn’t in Ferguson. I don’t know exactly what happened," he said. "But I know one thing: If we dismantle and limit the power of our policemen any more than we have already, then we’re going to have a lot of problems in this country. What do you do if someone pulls a gun on you or is robbing a store and you stop them? I don’t want to hear about this hands-up crap. That’s not what happened. I don’t know exactly what did happen, but I know that’s not what happened."
Ditka's comments are reminiscent of Charles Barkley, who held forth with similarly scathing commentary earlier this week. "There is no excuse for people to be out there burning down people's businesses, burning down police cars," Barkley said.
St. Louis police protested the Rams players' move, but the NFL and the team indicated that no punishment would be forthcoming.
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Jay Busbee is a writer for Yahoo Sports. Contact him at jay.busbee@yahoo.com or find him on Twitter.
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