The dying National Football League is choosing its America-hating, national anthem-protesting multimillionaire players over patriotic sports fans by funneling close to $100 million to leftist charities like those founded by admitted communist Van Jones.

The corrosive fairy tale, embraced by professional football, that police use black Americans for target practice is malicious nonsense but it is a useful lie, good for direct-mail campaigns and MoveOn solicitations.

With this new initiative, NFL Commissar Roger Goodell is affirming for the umpteenth time that it is in the business of virtue-signaling and indoctrination, not football. In addition, the NFL is embracing Black Lives Matter and Antifa as partners in the Left’s fundamental transformation of America.

Even without this money, the financial outlook for left-wing advocacy groups was already sunny, especially after depraved currency speculator George Soros shifted $18 billion of his personal fortune to his Open Society Foundations philanthropy in October. If you’re involved in the world of liberal-progressive nonprofit advocacy, life is good, and getting better by the day.

The money raised by the NFL will go to organizations promoting what ESPN calls “social justice change.” In today’s political climate, that suggests terroristic Black Lives Matter and Antifa-related groups will get a good chunk of the cash. And if somehow you’re still an NFL fan after the league has done everything it can to drive you away, the NFL will put the antisocial donations on your tab.

It is so unnecessary.

The NFL could save everyone a lot of money by simply ordering all teams to burn American flags ritualistically at the beginning of every game. The desired effect on society would be comparably deleterious and the saved money could be used to lower ticket prices for the league’s fan base which at that point would be shrinking at a dramatically accelerated pace.

Instead of doing the right thing, the most politically correct professional sports league since humans began to walk upright is tendering an undisguised bribe designed to appease the ugly protest movement launched last year by the now-unemployed mediocrity of a quarterback Colin Kaepernick. Kaepernick’s low-information anti-American activism, best exemplified by the taking of a knee during the playing of “The Star-Spangled Banner,” helped to accelerate the NFL’s downward slide that was already in progress. The anthem protests are the number one reason viewers have cited for tuning out televised NFL games.

But the corporate world, including the NFL, has never quite grasped the eternal truth that left-wingers cannot be bought off. They can be rented or leased for a time, but leftists always come back with their bullhorns, pussy-hats, and bottles of urine once they identify a deep-pocketed, soft-headed sucker. Rewarding these spoiled-brat subversives who willingly get hit on the head for a living with millions of dollars for their temper tantrums will only embolden them and alienate the league’s remaining fans.

According to ESPN, the deal looks like this:

The NFL’s multifaceted offer earmarks at least $89 million over a seven-year period for both national and local projects, according to documents reviewed by ESPN. On the national level, owners this year will allocate $5 million … growing annually and maxing out at $12 million per year from 2021 through 2023. … [O]owners will put up $250,000 annually and expect players to match that amount, totaling $500,000 for each team. … In addition, there would be other fundraising opportunities, including telethons and auctions of jerseys worn in games.

This brings to mind an old saying: Treason doth never prosper: what’s the reason? Why, if it prosper, none dare call it treason.

The NFL plan suggests the league believes undermining the foundations of the republic is a potentially profitable enterprise. They are not mistaken, as Hollywood has been proving for decades. Besides, now that they’re available, Charlie Rose or Matt Lauer could host the telethons free of charge.

Here are more financial details from ESPN:

National funding would be allocated accordingly: 25 percent to the United Negro College Fund, 25 percent to Dream Corps and 50 percent to the Players Coalition, which has filed 501(c)(3) and 501(c)(4) paperwork for nonprofit status as a fiscally sponsored project.

Dream Corps was founded by self-described “communist” and “rowdy black nationalist” Van Jones, which tells you pretty much everything you need to know about what turns out to be another left-wing hate group. It is bankrolled by members of the radical philanthropic establishment, including the Ford Foundation, San Francisco Foundation, and the Energy Foundation.

The donation page on the group’s website – which has the air of a digital shrine to Obama green jobs czar Jones – identifies its priorities using familiar leftist euphemisms:

#YesWeCode is working to transform the tech talent pipeline to increase opportunity in the tech sector

#cut50 works across party lines to reduce the number of people in prisons and jails by 50%

Green For All drives green investments into hard-hit communities

The #LoveArmy stands with the vulnerable and fights for an inclusive America

Translated, this appears to indicate Dream Corps agitates for affirmative action in Silicon Valley, letting dangerous criminals run wild, providing massive public subsidies for pie-in-the-sky green jobs scams, and giving Van Jones a blank check to pursue whatever the outrage of the day may be.

The Players Coalition is likely to mirror the giving pattern of the cesspool known as the NFL Players Association (NFLPA), a reliable underwriter of far-left causes and an AFL-CIO affiliate. NFLPA funds the so-called Resistance to President Trump.

NFLPA gives grants to the Center for Community Change, a 501(c)(3) public charity, as well as to its 501(c)(4) social welfare/advocacy arm that spent $3 million last year in a failed to attempt to make Democrat Hillary Clinton president. A Big Labor grant recipient, Working America, blew $4 million on the Benghazi bungler’s candidacy.

Obviously the National Football League has learned nothing from its self-inflicted hemorrhaging of fans and revenue. These people are uneducable. They have a death wish.

Conservatives should hand them the hemlock they need to fulfill their destiny.