You’ve heard of DEI in the workforce, but DEI in the National Football League isn’t all that different of a ball game. And after looking at the stats, BlazeTV host Jason Whitlock determines it’s been doing far more damage than good.

In 2018, 19 quarterbacks averaged more than 250 passing yards per game. Now, in 2025, there are only five quarterbacks who average more than 250 passing yards per game.

“There are five quarterbacks that average more than 250 passing yards per game: Dak Prescott, Matthew Stafford, Jared Goff, Patrick Mahomes, and Drake Maye. … What are we watching? What is going on with the National Football League?” Whitlock asks, disturbed.

“Has gambling and fantasy football distracted us so much and covered up all the flaws of the National Football League that we’re sitting here watching … quarterback play go directly into the toilet, and we’re pretending like we don’t see it at all,” he continues.

However, Whitlock has a theory as to why this is happening.

“My contention is, the hyperfocus on DEI and black quarterback play has diminished merit, has diminished competition, has undermined the pursuit of excellence for the pursuit of quotas. And everybody’s play has dropped because of the hyperfocus on DEI,” Whitlock explains.

“DEI degrades everything in sight, including the National Football League,” he adds.

In 2018, Whitlock points out that there were three black quarterbacks who had more than 250 passing yards.

“Now, we’re in this time in 2025 where there are 14 black quarterbacks who have started eight or more games, and only two black quarterbacks are averaging more than 250 yards per game,” he explains.

“So, we’ve increased the number of black quarterbacks playing, but we’ve decreased the number of black quarterbacks playing at a high level. Once you quit pursuing excellence, everybody gets hurt, even the black quarterbacks,” he says.

“DEI isn’t elevating the play of black quarterbacks. It’s actually diminishing the play of all quarterbacks,” he continues. “Coaches, organizations — they’re not thinking about, how can we be the best we can possibly be.”

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Last week, Arizona State University’s provost sent faculty another familiar message ahead of the spring semester: Ensure all digital course materials meet accessibility standards. After 25 years teaching philosophy at ASU, I’m well aware of the institution’s growth and its long-standing commitment to accessibility. That commitment, in itself, is not controversial.

But recent data should give universities serious pause.

A society can medicalize despair, bureaucratize despair, and accommodate despair. None of that answers the question despair is asking.

Two reports — one from the Harvard Crimson and another from the Atlantic — put numbers to what many faculty have observed for years. At Harvard, 21% of undergraduates received disability accommodations in 2024, up from roughly 3% a decade earlier. The Crimson notes that Harvard is now aligned with a national average hovering around 20%.

The Atlantic goes further, describing what it calls an “age of accommodation” at elite schools. At Brown and Harvard, more than 20% of students are registered as disabled. At Amherst, the figure reaches 34%. The most common accommodation, professors report, is extra time on exams.

When disability becomes elastic

To be clear, accommodations for genuine physical disabilities are not in dispute. A wheelchair ramp is not a moral scandal. A student with a real impairment should not be excluded from education. That principle remains sound.

What has changed is the nature of disability itself.

Both articles describe a shift away from visible, physical impairments toward diagnoses that are invisible, elastic, and difficult to distinguish from ordinary hardship in a competitive academic environment. ADHD, anxiety, and depression now dominate accommodation requests, treated as qualifying disabilities under the Americans with Disabilities Act framework. The Crimson ties much of this surge to the COVID era, quoting one professor who described the pandemic as a “mass disabling event.”

That explanation may be partly true. Many students are not gaming the system; they are shaped by it. But even granting that, the trend raises three problems universities can no longer dodge.

The fairness and standards problems

First is fairness. When extra time becomes widespread — especially among high-performing, well-resourced students — faculty are right to wonder whether accommodations are providing access or advantage.

The Crimson acknowledges faculty suspicion that accommodations are used to “eke out advantages.” The Atlantic warns that a system designed to level the playing field can begin to distort the very meaning of fairness.

Second is standards. If a significant share of students receive individualized modifications — extra time, deadline extensions, alternate testing environments — then faculty must ask an uncomfortable question administrators prefer to avoid: Is the course still the same course?

Exams exist to measure knowledge and skill under shared constraints. Remove those constraints for many students, and results no longer mean the same thing. At best, the system becomes two-track. At worst, rigor is quietly redefined as cruelty and education collapses into credentialing.

The deeper crisis

Third — and most important — is meaning.

If vast numbers of young adults now pass through education labeled as anxious and depressed, and if that diagnosis becomes the gateway to academic survival, we should ask what kind of culture we have built. What account of life, purpose, and human flourishing are students receiving in K-12 and college?

For years, students have been immersed in a worldview that frames them primarily as victims — of structures, systems, identities, and histories beyond their control. They are told meaning is socially constructed, morality is relative, and human beings are little more than biological accidents shaped by power. Hardship, in this framework, becomes pathology. Suffering becomes injustice. Endurance becomes oppression.

At that point, anxiety and depression cease to be merely medical categories. They become rational responses to a life stripped of purpose.

Education with meaning

Here the philosopher cannot remain silent. A society can medicalize despair, bureaucratize despair, and accommodate despair. None of that answers the question despair is asking.

Have we taught students how to face difficulty? To endure frustration? To pursue excellence despite pain? Or have we trained them to interpret hardship as harm — and then rewarded that interpretation with institutional permission slips?

The philosopher Westley (disguised as the Dread Pirate Roberts) said, “Life is pain, highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something.” But there is suffering, and there is suffering well to attain what is good. We stopped teaching this, and the young adults are experiencing the consequences.

RELATED: Christian students are pushing back — and universities are cracking

simpson33 via iStock/Getty Images

Universities love to talk about “student success.” But education is not merely success. It is formation. And formation requires truth: truth about what a human being is, what suffering is for, what excellence demands, and what life ultimately aims at.

When universities exile God, moral realism, and any shared account of human purpose, they should not be surprised when students seek refuge in medicalized identities that turn pain into paperwork.

This crisis is not simply about abuse of accommodations or even about mental health statistics. It is about whether higher education can still tell students the truth: that limits are not always oppression, that hardship is not always injustice, that discipline precedes freedom, and that meaning is discovered, not administered.

If universities cannot say why education aims at the highest good, then they should not be shocked when students conclude it means nothing — and despair follows.

It is time to return education to what it was meant to be: the formation of souls ordered toward wisdom and virtue.

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President Donald Trump said the 250th anniversary celebration of the U.S. founding will include “Patriot Games” between high school athletes.

The president made the announcement in a video posted to social media on Thursday that also listed several other events and structures planned for the national celebration.

‘Frankly, you’ll never see anything like it.’

“In the fall, we will host the first-ever Patriot Games, an unprecedented four-day athletic event featuring the greatest high school athletes,” Trump said.

“One young man and one young woman from each state and territory, but I promise, there will be no men playing in women’s sports,” he added. “You’re not going to see that. You’ll see everything but that.”

He said that construction would begin on the “National Garden of American Heroes” that would include “statues of all-time greatest Americans,” as well as a “triumphal” arch.

“We are the only major city, we are the only major capitol, we are the only major place without a triumphal arch, a beautiful triumphal arch, one like in Paris, where they have the great and beautiful arch — they call it the Arc de Triomphe,” he added. “And we’re gonna have one in Washington, D.C., very soon.”

The administration is also organizing a “Great American State Fair” that will include exhibits from each of the states on the National Mall. That event will run from June 25 until July 10.

“Frankly, you’ll never see anything like it, and you’ll never see anything like it again,” he added.

A new public-private partnership called Freedom 250 was formed for the purpose of planning and funding the events, and it includes companies and corporations across the country.

RELATED: Trump touts his economic record in live prime-time speech to the nation: ‘I inherited a mess’

“This will be a time like you’ve never had in your lives!” he concluded. “America 250! Thank you! I love you all.”

Critics of the Patriot Games mocked the idea as being far too similar to the “Hunger Games” books and movies series.

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FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino has announced that he’s stepping down from the FBI, and the rumor mill is now swirling as to why he decided he was no longer right for the job.

“When I woke up this morning, I saw a Daily Mail article that said, ‘Dan Bongino set to quit the Trump administration after FBI job put strain on his marriage,’” BlazeTV host Sara Gonzales recalls, “and that was the only thing. It was, like, it was just a rumor, right?”

“It also said Bongino’s reported intention to step down just comes two days before the deadline to release the Epstein files on Friday, which I found interesting. But we did know, I mean, there were some signs of this,” she continues.

In an interview on “Fox and Friends” months ago, Bongino did mention that he was struggling with the distance his new job put between him and his wife.

“I gave up everything for this. I mean, you know, my wife is struggling, and I’m not a victim. I’m not Jim Comey, it’s fine. I did this, and I’m proud I did it. But if you think we’re there for tea and crumpets …” Bongino said.

“I stare at these four walls all day in D.C., you know, by myself, divorced from my wife. Not divorced, but I mean, separated, divorced. And it’s hard. I mean, you know, we love each other, and it’s hard to be apart,” he added.

President Trump echoed this sentiment when he commented on Bongino’s departure, saying, “Dan did a great job. I think he wants to go back to his show.”

“I think he wants to go back to podcasting,” Gonzales repeats. “I am rendered speechless. One of the only moments in my life.”

“He’s done so much for the country,” she says. “And, by the way, I appreciate the sacrifice that he mentioned, but it’s like, yeah, we know. Can you stop complaining? Do your job.”

“This is my take on it,” BlazeTV contributor Matthew Marsden chimes in. “Dan is a patriot. We all knew when he gave up his show that he was sacrificing millions of dollars for the country.”

“It’s not like he’s someone that came out of something completely different to go into the FBI. He knows the job. He knows the job. So, he knew what the strain would be on his marriage. And I’m not saying that it’s not having a strain on his marriage, but what I will say is, those difficulties are worth it if you are seeing a change and if you are seeing results,” he continues.

Gonzales points out that through his social media posts, Bongino often alluded to uncovering major details regarding the Epstein case — which she believes may have led to him being frustrated that he couldn’t share them later.

“He’s leaving all of these nuggets to make it sound like, ‘Oh, we are uncovering all sorts of crazy things. I can’t wait to share it with you.’ And then we never quite got the other part of that, right? We never were told really what it is,” Gonzales says. “And so, you have to wonder, like, okay, he must be very frustrated.”

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