If this was all about the game, then the NFL could just stop playing the anthem at games, which has nothing to do with football. But this is politics and business, and the NFL decision makers have decided that it’s best for their business to be perceived to have sided with Trump, and therefore they should sanction players (or their teams) for making a political protest during an explicitly political ritual (playing the anthem).
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.
Huh??? Have any owners mentioned wanting to side with Trump? It seems to me they want to put this controversy behind them to stop the leakage of fans (watching on TV and coming to games). I suspect NFL fans skew a bit heavy Republican and perhaps towards Trump, but I don’t see this as siding with Trump. I think you’re giving him more credit than he deserves in the matter. Of course, I see Trump come up in just about every thread here on TSD, so it certainly isn’t surprising. Kind of an obsession.
I think there’s a much lower chance that this new policy would have been put into place had not the President made a big political stink about the protests.
It’s a significant chunk of the fans who are pissed off by the anthem antics, and who then aren’t buying tickets, merch, and—most importantly—aren’t watching the NFL on TV like they used to. If you buy that the anthem issue has significantly affected the above purchasing and viewing habits, then Kaep has cost the owners billions. With a B.
Accordingly, the owners are trying to placate the fans, who, Republican leaning or not, don’t like it when their entertainers are perceived to be disrespecting the Flag, patriotism, apple pie, etc…and would just as soon not have to think about social issues when indulging in their three plus hours of escapism on the weekend.
Frankly, I’m surprised the owners and their representative, Goodell let this drag on as long as they did. I think either Rozelle or Tagliabue would have acted to resolve the issue much more quickly.
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.
The NFL has seen declines in TV viewership for the past two seasons – this happens to coincide with the protests, but also happens to coincide with a number of other potential causes: ever-lengthening games, more commercials and more invasive ad messages during games, younger fans being more likely to be “cord cutters,” and not having easy access to live games, over-saturation of NFL games on any particular weekend, concerns over brain injuries, etc., and it’s exceptionally hard to tease out the relative impact of these factors.
And, yet, this is the one thing on which the league decides to take a stand. shrug As several of you have noted, if players stay in the locker room (or kneel anyway), the howls will continue.
Yep, they sure do. And “you can refuse to participate, as long as you do so out of sight” certainly makes the requirement legally appropriate.
But, at least to me, having a rule about it at all just reinforces the fact that what we’re witnessing isn’t true patriotism (or if it is, it’s only accidentally so), but a job requirement. And the idea of people being paid to stand for an anthem runs 100% counter to what Democracy stands for. Hiring people to act as political mercenaries blurs the line between true expressions of national pride and national pride as a marketing ploy.
The owners are saying “we don’t actually care about patriotism, but we do care about what sells.” Which is their prerogative, but it doesn’t look good, nor is it admirable.
I agree with getting rid of the anthem altogether. Someone once pointed out that these aren’t international games; it’s not like USA vs. Spain. There’s no reason to play the national anthem when it’s only two American teams going against each other; it’s quite pointless.
IIRC, playing the national anthem at sporting events came into vogue during WWII; it wasn’t until after 9/11 that the NFL changed the order of pregame events in order to put the players on the field during the anthem (prior to that, the anthem was typically performed before player introductions).
If you thought that the complaints about “disrespecting the country” were loud when players kneeled, if the NFL got rid of playing the anthem entirely, Fox News would have to start another channel just to carry all of the patriotic anger.
This will all be for nothing if they allow cameras in the locker rooms pre-game. Every NFL game in the country would would be showing the players inside the locker room over the pregame show. :rolleyes:
Oh, I agree with you that there are a multitude of causes for the decline. I’m just saying that Kaep is one of those significant causes, based on admittedly anecdotal evidence from people I know who watched football and are now irritated with the NFL. And yes, the plural of anecdote is not data, and Texas is not either coast, but I think there’s good Venn overlap between pool of NFL fans and pool of people irritated at entertainer ‘disrepecting the flag’.
To the rest of your reasons: Are the games that much longer than they were in, say, the 80s or 90s? No idea about increased commercials, but I’ll take your word for it. Cord-cutting is probably the biggest reason, but, IIRC, OTA broadcasts’ ratings are also down.
I think the CTE issue is the one that’ll ultimately doom the League, and what we’re waiting on is a good en vivo test for it, and also for good epidemiological and developmental data that shows that playing Pop Warner and high school football decreases players’ IQs by, e.g., 10 points over those that don’t play. That’ll kill professional football about as dead as professional boxing.
I’ll defer to opinions that the CBA does not prohibit the kind of anthem protests we’ve seen, but it is strange, given the CBA allows sanctioning players for wearing non-standard uniform pieces, regardless of whatever reason the player cites.
The question is (and I don’t have an answer for it): has that irritation actually led to people watching the NFL less often?
Yes, though it’s not quite as pronounced as the issue is in MLB, and it’s hard to find good data that goes back further than around 1999. Anecdotally, a generation ago, games almost always ended within 3 hours; the average now is about 3:09, and the league had to change the start time of “doubleheader” games from 4:15 ET to 4:25 ET, because the early games ran past 4:15 so often.
Bear in mind that many cord-cutters (particularly younger ones) aren’t watching OTA channels (via an antenna), either – they’re solely using streaming services and the like for TV (and live sports is among the content areas which is hardest to access in that way). As per this article, from 2016 (I’ve bolded the relevant numbers):
I’ve been going back and forth about whether to start a Pit thread about this, or just add on to this one. I guess I’ll start with this for now, and we’ll see how it goes. Some things:
If you have the urge to compare this to other jobs, resist it. This “oh, in what job would you be allowed to…” stuff is dopey. The NFL is not like other jobs. In my job, I am an individual under contract to a single private entity which is subject to the full range of US monopoly laws, for example. My actions at work are not filmed and broadcast to the world. They don’t play the National Anthem at my job, literally ever (and if they did, the idea that my bosses would compel me to stand for it is hilarious. My boss’ boss is an elderly genius MD/PhD from Poland and we can’t even get him to walk down the hall for a meeting he doesn’t want to attend). If you can’t make an argument about a thing without referencing another, completely different thing, you don’t have an argument, you have a crappy metaphor.
The owner’s new “policy” may or may not violate the collective bargaining agreement, and if it does, they’ll be sued and lose and have to reverse this policy. But I have no idea whether it does, because I don’t have the legal background or information to understand that topic well enough to have an opinion. Fortunately, it doesn’t matter, because:
The owner’s legal right to compel player behavior is not the key issue here. I am willing to stipulate (absent other evidence) that the owners have the legal right to issue and follow this policy. The question is whether they should. In my opinion, the policy is gross and runs counter to what I view as the essential principles of the country I love. And the NFL has no particular right to my money or attention; they will now get none of either. They are taking a gamble that the number of people willing to stop watching over Colin Kaepernick and Eric Reid kneeling is larger than the number of people willing to stop watching over 32 billionaires enacting what we believe to be a racist policy. It’s a big gamble; we’ll see how it plays out.
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.
I agree these are legal issues that I cannot and don’t care to evaluate.
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 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 protest where your protest can have an impact.
Rights aside, if you’re already going to be on national TV, that’s the place to protest. Not sometime when there’s nobody around.
If a player kneeling on the sideline is going to diminish someone’s enjoyment of the occasion, then they are snowflakey beyond belief, and desperately need the NFL to be a ‘safe space.’
Kinda ridiculous for anyone else to cater to them, though.