Kerri Walsh Jennings Digs Deep

It’s easy to see Kaepernick as a blowhard sports slacktivist. Until you read Kerri Walsh Jenning’s post on Facebook as to why she’s boycotting the AVP beach volleyball tour stop in Chicago. First, you had no fucking clue there is such thing as the AVP beach volleyball tour. The NFL you’re pretty sure exists. Also, as whiny as Kaepernick can be, he’s tagging on a fairly significant social issue. Jennings is protesting relatively minor game play rules changes to a sport involving chicks in bikinis to which she’s calling herself an “ambassador”. That’s never a good sign.

I cherish and take very seriously my role as an ambassador for the sport of beach volleyball. I believe in the importance of having high standards. It is my job, as a professional athlete, to help protect the integrity of our sport. That is why I am doing what I’m doing. When you are talking about something as important as rule changes, it is important for players to be on board in order to maintain the integrity of the sport.

Jenning’s dotted her Facebook post with a few quotes from Ghandi and Albert Einstein about standing up for principle. Both men clearly would have turned their life’s work to net service rules in women’s beach volleyball were they alive in 2016.

There’s no particular cry for a William Wallace of a made up beach sport that twenty people in the world play as a job. Frisbee golf doesn’t need a special envoy to the U.N. and Kill the Carrier doesn’t need Title IX protections. The dude who owns the AVP because he doesn’t mind losing money and it’s something to talk about at cocktail parties doesn’t need athlete input on game rules. It’s his game. You’ve pulled in a few million playing. Break a Clay Matthews stranglehold for a seventeen yard scramble and we can talk. That’s both sexist and honest. Which is my favorite.

_{Photo credit: Splash News}