# NFL Protests, My Old Man The General, Etc, et al **URL:** \ **Category:** The Game Room\ **Created:** [December 27, 2017, 1:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nfl-protests-my-old-man-the-general-etc-et-al/805365 "2017-12-27T01:23:08Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 13\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![Procrustus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/procrustus/32/2994_2.png) [@Procrustus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Procrustus)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2018, 3:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nfl-protests-my-old-man-the-general-etc-et-al/805365/81 "2018-05-24T15:11:25Z")
> [@iiandyiiii](#): > > Twitter reports that Jets co-owner Christopher Johnson says he will pay any fines for his team if players kneel for the anthem. Hopefully there are more well-meaning rich folks out there like him who will support peaceful player protests. I guess I’m a little confused about the policy. The article I read said the NFL will _fine teams_ if players “show disrespect” So, the players should be okay. If a team doesn’t want to fine the players, I don’t think they have to. ---
**Author:** ![AlsoNamedBort](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alsonamedbort/32/3213_2.png) [@AlsoNamedBort](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AlsoNamedBort)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2018, 3:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nfl-protests-my-old-man-the-general-etc-et-al/805365/82 "2018-05-24T15:15:16Z")
> [@Procrustus](#): > > I guess I’m a little confused about the policy. The article I read said the NFL will _fine teams_ if players “show disrespect” So, the players should be okay. If a team doesn’t want to fine the players, I don’t think they have to. Yeah, what the Jets owner said was basically that he won’t fine his players at all. ---
**Author:** ![ElvisL1ves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@ElvisL1ves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElvisL1ves)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2018, 3:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nfl-protests-my-old-man-the-general-etc-et-al/805365/83 "2018-05-24T15:35:15Z")
The NFL may impose fines on Jets players, but the owner will pay or reimburse them. ---
**Author:** ![AlsoNamedBort](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alsonamedbort/32/3213_2.png) [@AlsoNamedBort](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AlsoNamedBort)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2018, 3:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nfl-protests-my-old-man-the-general-etc-et-al/805365/84 "2018-05-24T15:40:03Z")
> [@ElvisL1ves](#): > > The NFL may impose fines on Jets players, but the owner will pay or reimburse them. The NFL is not going to fine the players. They’re going to fine the teams. This is what he specifically said: > [@](#): > > There will be no club fines or suspensions or any sort of repercussions. If the team gets fined, that’s just something I’ll have to bear. ---
**Author:** ![storyteller0910](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecae2f/32.png) [@storyteller0910](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/storyteller0910)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2018, 4:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nfl-protests-my-old-man-the-general-etc-et-al/805365/85 "2018-05-24T16:21:10Z")
> [@Orwell](#): > > 1. I don’t agree with your analysis. I don’t care how talented they are, what publicity their job entails, or how different it is from what most of us do. They are still employees of someone else’s company and play in someone else’s league. Therefore, they have to abide by whatever rules those companies and that league implements, or they can go find another job. So, even though it’s different, employment rules still apply. If they want to start up a football league where political protests are part of the program, they are free to do so. Professional sports leagues, rather uniquely, are entitled to operate free of typical restrictions on collective behavior. The very fact that the separate teams can agree to a binding policy that affects their respective workers _at all_ makes their industry fundamentally different from the one that employs me. If Pfizer and Eli Lilly and Roche all sat down and explicitly collaborated on binding rules to govern their respective employees, it would not be legal. It is legal for the Cowboys, Bengals, and Chiefs because the ordinary rules don’t apply to them. You can’t appeal to the ordinary standards that govern the employer-employee relationship to the benefit of the league when those standards are _already suspended_ to the benefit of the league. > [@](#): > > 1. I agree these are legal issues that I cannot and don’t care to evaluate. Cool. > [@](#): > > 1. You’re right. It is a calculated risk. But I think the NFL and the owners’ evaluation of their fan base is probably correct, and counter to your viewpoint and those like you who NOW want to withhold your money and support. They are dealing with distractions and fan leakage that has already occurred. I guess we’ll see. I suspect this will not go the way they want it to. My expectation is that two things will happen: (1) This new policy will do relatively little to actual curb player protests. Enough teams will react like the Jets to mean that a fair number of players will be kneeling every week (and this policy will, I would guess, inspire some players to kneel who might not have done so otherwise, just to thumb their nose at the league or make a point). So the folks who were so offended by the kneeling that they tuned out will continue to tune out, because the kneeling continues. (2) People like me - and I promise, there are a lot of people like me - will tune out completely. I have spent a lot of money over the years on the NFL and associated products, and all of that is over effective immediately. Further, I’ll be aggressively advocating that others stop spending their money on it. I’m not alone, nor even close to it. Do you really think this won’t have an impact? > [@](#): > > I also disagree with you that it’s a racist policy. Players are paid to show up, practice and play the game, and paid handsomely, at that. Players are regularly fired for lots of reasons, including being general pains in the ass and troublemakers. If they want to protest, they have ample free time to hold protests or lend their names and faces to whatever causes they want to support. You are free to your opinion, though I think it’s astonishingly naive. This is the strongest stand the NFL has taken in the last twenty years. It’s not against spousal abuse, or drug abuse, or “being general pains in the ass and troublemakers.” It is against predominantly black players in a predominantly black league engaging in unthreatening activity in support of black people. If you truly believe that racism isn’t at work here, I would like to discuss real estate transactions with you. ---
**Author:** ![Covfefe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ee7513/32.png) [@Covfefe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Covfefe)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2018, 4:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nfl-protests-my-old-man-the-general-etc-et-al/805365/86 "2018-05-24T16:46:08Z")
Is the NBA’s policy that players have to stand for the anthem racist? ---
**Author:** ![Atamasama](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/atamasama/32/12961_2.png) [@Atamasama](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Atamasama)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2018, 5:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nfl-protests-my-old-man-the-general-etc-et-al/805365/87 "2018-05-24T17:04:07Z")
> [@Enginerd](#): > > This rule looks to me like an end run around the CBA to let the league punish players for protesting. The current CBA doesn’t let the league fine players for this (or at least, the league isn’t so confident in their ability to prevail in court that they’ve tried it)… but it does allow teams to punish players for conduct detrimental to the team. I’d imagine that now includes an anthem protest, since your team can be fined for your actions. I have no idea how well that would stand up to a challenge from the NFLPA. I have the feeling that this is not as much about ratings (okay, maybe somewhat) or national politics. This change is about NFL politics. This is trying to find a way to control players without violating the CBA. If the NFL really wanted to avoid controversy they’d go back to the pre-9/11 status quo and not bring out players until after the anthem. (I don’t think eliminating the anthem would help; I agree that it seems silly in a domestic sports game to play it but you remove it at this point and even more people will get angry.) I feel like they are making this an opportunity to exercise muscle on players. ---
**Author:** ![storyteller0910](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecae2f/32.png) [@storyteller0910](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/storyteller0910)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2018, 5:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nfl-protests-my-old-man-the-general-etc-et-al/805365/88 "2018-05-24T17:07:00Z")
> [@Covfefe](#): > > Is the NBA’s policy that players have to stand for the anthem racist? I don’t know. Was it conceived and created explicitly, with great fanfare and publicity, in response to mostly black players protesting violence against black citizens - basically forbidding a previously permitted act in order to cut off an avenue of protest? Or is it an administrative rule predating the current uproar? Again, “this thing is like that thing if you ignore the ways they are different” is not as effective an augmentative tactic as it may seem. ---
**Author:** ![Omniscient](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/omniscient/32/3290_2.png) [@Omniscient](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Omniscient)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2018, 3:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nfl-protests-my-old-man-the-general-etc-et-al/805365/89 "2018-05-26T03:37:37Z")
> [@Jasmine](#): > > My brother is an Air Force veteran, and he says Free Speech is just one of things he feels is worth dying for. He doesn’t believe in bringing politics to the work place because he believes that one has to earn one’s contracted salary by coming to work and performing the agreed upon duties, not using one’s work place as a political platform or to promote any kind of personal agenda. He has no problem at all with the message itself, however. This work place is bringing politics into it every time the play the anthem, trot out some veteran for genuflection, or have a fly over. I’d say at worst they are making it a 2-way conversation. Is the NFL interested in banning all the kneeling to god in the endzone or at midfield after the game? If players are allowed to “praise Jesus” at the start of every post game interview, I figure others ought to be able to chat about MLK or their feelings about equality in America. Your brother may be a fine person, but he’s a hypocrite. ---
**Author:** ![DSYoungEsq](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/c6cbf5/32.png) [@DSYoungEsq](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSYoungEsq)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2018, 4:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nfl-protests-my-old-man-the-general-etc-et-al/805365/90 "2018-05-26T16:39:01Z")
I hate the fact that this issue plays out so often as a dichotomy: either it’s wrong of the players to kneel, or it’s a violation of “free speech” to keep them from kneeling. The issues are more complex than that. Any analysis has to take into account that these are paid employees of (with one exception) private corporations/partnerships. As employees, they have no “right” to be able to protest in the workplace, any more than any other employee has such a right. Do you think that, if every morning at Walmart, the check-out employees refused to check out anyone during the first, say, 15 min. of the day in protest of social injustice, that Walmart wouldn’t be entitled to fire those employees? Or if the secretaries at a law firm insisted upon protesting gender discrimination by wearing buttons visible to the firm’s clients complaining about women’s rights, the firm wouldn’t be allowed to take punitive action? It is chic in the last few decades to think of employment as some sort of right you have, putting limitations of what employers can do to address activities in the workplace. But the truth is that employees and employers are (generally) contracting private parties, and that contract governs what can and can’t be done with regard to employees’ actions. The analysis **also** has to take into account the fact that the employers are corporations/partnerships that have enormous value, value which the league has worked for the last almost 60 years to maximize at every turn. Each individual team’s ownership will have different goals for that team. Clearly, the owner of the Jets is perfectly happy to take a loss to the bottom line from letting players protest. Clearly, the owner of the Cowboys is not. If a team’s actions in response to player protests is informed by the desire of ownership to maximize profits and/or value, how can the employees of that team expect that the team is going to let them jeopardize profits/value?? Whether or not an individual team, or the teams as an aggregate (the NFL) should act in a certain way regarding the desire of some players to protest during the anthem is, of course, in the eye of the beholder. Ultimately, if you dislike what the NFL, or its teams, is doing, you can choose to take action designed to communicate your dislike to the NFL and its teams. The most obvious way to communicate that is to stop watching, stop betting on, stop talking about, and stop buying merchandise related to the games. If you can’t be arsed to do that, then the issue obviously isn’t that upsetting to you (you can always send a strongly-worded letter, I suppose :rolleyes:). This holds true for those who dislike the protests as well as for those who dislike the response to the protests. But stop conflating issues such as “free speech” (not applicable to corporations) and employer/employee relations, please. ---
**Author:** ![k9bfriender](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/k9bfriender/32/3283_2.png) [@k9bfriender](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/k9bfriender)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2018, 6:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nfl-protests-my-old-man-the-general-etc-et-al/805365/91 "2018-05-26T18:02:00Z")
> [@DSYoungEsq](#): > > Do you think that, if every morning at Walmart, the check-out employees refused to check out anyone during the first, say, 15 min. of the day in protest of social injustice, that Walmart wouldn’t be entitled to fire those employees? Or if the secretaries at a law firm insisted upon protesting gender discrimination by wearing buttons visible to the firm’s clients complaining about women’s rights, the firm wouldn’t be allowed to take punitive action? Those are two entirely different scenarios. The first is actually directly affecting work productivity, the second not so much. ---
**Author:** ![Omniscient](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/omniscient/32/3290_2.png) [@Omniscient](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Omniscient)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2018, 10:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nfl-protests-my-old-man-the-general-etc-et-al/805365/92 "2018-05-26T22:05:46Z")
> [@DSYoungEsq](#): > > I hate the fact that this issue plays out so often as a dichotomy: either it’s wrong of the players to kneel, or it’s a violation of “free speech” to keep them from kneeling. The issues are more complex than that. That is so fucking reductive. You totally misunderstand the point. You also should realize that it may in fact [illegal](https://www.vox.com/the-big-idea/2018/5/25/17394422/nfl-knee-kneeling-labor-law-kaepernick-free-speech-protest-owners)to ban this behavior…these armchair lawyers flatly claiming it’s not need stop. But that’s not the most compelling reason why it’s worth getting the pitchforks out over, this type of forced nationalism is Fascist style shit. This is not a simple workplace behavior issue, it’s public, politicians have been heavily involved, and they are using nationalism as a excuse to squash dissent about one specific form of authoritarianism. Whether this is the federal government outright banning speech isn’t really the point…the GOP and their white nationalist supporters are pressuring a private industry to comply, not that these scumbag owners needed much of a push. This is exactly the kind of thing American patriots used to get outraged about when it happened in other countries. The saddest part is that no one even talks about the police murdering citizens on a regular basis any more. All because of the way these bigots and fascists made it about “Merica”. ---
**Author:** ![Atamasama](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/atamasama/32/12961_2.png) [@Atamasama](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Atamasama)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2018, 2:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nfl-protests-my-old-man-the-general-etc-et-al/805365/93 "2018-05-27T02:02:50Z")
> [@Omniscient](#): > > The saddest part is that no one even talks about the police murdering citizens on a regular basis any more. All because of the way these bigots and fascists made it about “Merica”. That’s because it’s not happening. Not in the USA. The incidents that involve the police murdering people or otherwise abusing their position to commit crimes while pretending to serve and protect are horrific and those scumbags deserve to be punished more than if aanyone else had committed those crimes. But those incidents are exceptions rather than the norm, and asserting otherwise is a massive disservice to those police who do serve properly. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nfl-protests-my-old-man-the-general-etc-et-al/805365.md?page=4)