By Graham Lilley — February 7, 2012 | ONLINE ONLY

By now we must all be used to the fact that football does not exist in the same world as the rest of us. Governed by both money and the greedy back-slapping TV executives that crave it, what was once the beautiful game is now so far removed from reality that we watch it with the same zombiefied doltishness as we do The Jeremy Kyle Show. The soap opera has outstripped the sport with players gaining more credit for a witty post on twitter than for a net-busting 30 yard volley, more eyes on a pre-match handshake than a mid-match moment of brilliance.

The truth is though, that all this shouldn’t matter. Just like we have to tolerate the unerringly moronic presence of the cast of TOWIE on our screens, we can tolerate the papers will be full of Joey Barton’s latest genius outbursts, pretending to understand ancient Chinese proverbs or the words of Oscar Wilde. And just like we grudgingly submit to existing in the same universe as Katie Price and Peter Andre, we can do the same with Robbie Savage and his stupid hair.

But it does matter. Because occasionally, when you’ve picked through all the endless, mindless and pointless drivel, you’ll find a piece of news with very real and harmful reverberations right here in the real world.

For months the papers have been full of accusation, rumour and speculation about what may or may not have happened between John Terry and Anton Ferdinand. Without going over the same ground that has been trampled to death by the mainstream media, suffice to say, the issue of race has once again reared its contextually ambiguous head and it seems everyone simply must open their traps about it. From journalists to ex-pros, to the PFA, to the panel of Loose Women (whose opinion we should apparently care about), everyone with a mouth or a keyboard has had to share their thoughts on an incident they were not present to, and have no true knowledge of.

Of course, people pretending to know more than they clearly do has long been common place in football, but this is different. We’re not deciphering the intricacies of the offside rule or questioning the merits of the zonal-marking; we’re debating whether a man has committed a serious criminal offense and re-opened an incredibly delicate can of worms that we thought football in our country had long ago sealed.

By taking the armband from the England captain, The FA has blatantly and gutlessly succumbed to media pressure. If Fabio Capello had made the decision to take the captaincy off Terry, had he cited the need for calm in the build-up to the Euros, had he assured us all that it was a football decision taken to give us the best chance of success while at no time punishing Terry or implying his guilt it would have been somewhat understandable. The travelling circus that accompanies England to every tournament is plenty distracting enough without a captain with a race charge hanging over his head, and it could be easily accepted that for the sake of the team, a change has been necessitated.

But when the FA stick their nose in, when they read the red tops and use the headlines as some sort of opinion poll and then declare they are taking these actions to preserve the stature of English sport’s most revered position, they make a mockery of that position and the so-called principles they say that it stands upon.

I do not know if John Terry did the things he’s been accused of. I don’t know if he is a racist, or if he said a racist thing. I don’t know if I should believe his word, or Ferdinand’s, or even, God help us, Joey Barton’s. But then again, neither do the FA.

What we do know, is that at this exact moment in time, as I type this and as the FA took their decision, John Terry is still an innocent man. He remains as such until proven otherwise, and any punishment administered before that time is every bit as unjustifiable as his alleged crime would be.

It’s hard to criticise an organisation for taking a stand against racism and it would be lovely to think the FA had done this with only noble intentions at heart. But they didn’t. And as long as our game’s governing body seek approval from a media that cares only about ratings and readerships, their crusade will mean even less than the unfounded nonsense that gets spouted about it.