I like Manny Pacquiao, a good man and the best pound-for-pound fighter in the last 20 years. And I'm not a particular fan of Nike, which has never made a shoe I could comfortably wear -- much less afford, seeing how they're outrageously overpriced.
Plus, they put the Oregon football team in so many bizarre unis the Ducks no longer have a traditional look. And I'm all about tradition when it comes to my college football.
All that said ...
I applaud Nike for handing Pacquiao his walking papers.
Whatever excuse you make for it -- and Pacquiao's cover is that he's a devout "Christian" -- you don't get up and publicly compare gay couples to animals. Not in polite society. It's never been right, and it's especially not right in 2016, when most of us long since decided that LGBT people were not evil freaks bent on destroying Western civilization, but human beings trying to live their lives the way most of us do: decently and without trying to inflict needless pain on others.
This being the age of pushback, of course, no doubt Pacquiao will be held up now as martyr to political correctness by other like-minded "Christians." As a Christian myself, I've never gotten what using the Bible to justify hurting innocent people has to do with the teachings of Christ. But that's just me.
In any case, kudos to Nike, a private company which has a perfect right to hire or fire anyone it likes. And shame on Pacquiao, or at least his apologists, for passing off bigotry as religious conviction.
Although, Nike ... you really do need to settle on a look for those Ducks.
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