Posted on 10/08/2017 9:34:25 AM PDT by Excuse_My_Bellicosity
The NFL's players and owners find themselves trapped in a collapsing pocket of their own creation — and at risk of getting sacked by millions of fans across the country.
Two weekends ago, many team owners appeased their players by participating in national anthem demonstrations after President Trump's rather profane demand on Sept. 22 that owners fire any players who kneel. These demonstrations didn't go over well with many NFL fans — millions of whom are white, older, and conservative, and see any demonstration during the national anthem as fundamentally unpatriotic. So last weekend, some teams tried to innovate solutions — to no avail.
The New Orleans Saints knelt during the coin toss in their London game against the Miami Dolphins, which mostly puzzled fans. Were they protesting random chance? Baltimore Ravens players took a knee prior to the anthem, prompting a cascade of boos from their hometown fans who assumed that they would continue the protest through the performance of the song itself. Other teams stood — but demonstrated by linking arms and having statements read by the public announcer.
The nadir of this effort came on Monday night in Kansas City. The visiting Washington Redskins stood for the anthem, but three Chiefs players protested. Marcus Peters and Ukeme Eligwe sat on the bench, while Justin Houston knelt on the field. Unfortunately for the Chiefs, ESPN decided to carry the anthem live rather than sticking with pre-game analysis because of the mass shooting event in Las Vegas. The demonstrations infuriated many fans all over again.
Now obviously, millions of Americans are very much in favor of these demonstrations, which were originally intended to raise awareness of racial inequality, particularly with regard to minorities' treatment by law enforcement. But this is an extremely divisive issue — and millions upon millions of the NFL's core fans are furious.
The league's confusing and contradictory response to fan outrage demonstrates a lack of comprehension over precisely how they have offended their customers. Fan anger over the protests has eroded the NFL brand over the last year, but quantifying that has been complicated. The league has a number of issues that have contributed to that damage, including concerns over the long-term health of players, a perceived decline in game quality, and the NFL's mishandling of players' domestic violence incidents. The polling on protests has been almost universally terrible, however, and correlate with significant drops in ticket sales and television viewership since the 2015 season.
Owners seem to have assumed that fan anger was entirely focused on kneeling during the national anthem itself. In response, they pushed players to come up with different forms of demonstration — locking arms, kneeling just before the anthem, not showing up at all. None of it has calmed the fans' wrath, because none of it addresses the main points that have most angered them about the demonstrations.
First, the protests have become explicitly partisan. That isn't all the fault of the league and its players; President Trump criticized them sharply two weeks ago, telling a rally that the owners should fire anyone taking a knee. However, Trump was only responding to fan anger that had already built. Rather than simply responding in the press to Trump by telling him off, every team coordinated a massive demonstration during the national anthem that weekend, transforming a social protest that had involved fewer than a dozen players the previous week into an inescapably partisan demonstration.
NFL fans expect Sunday football to be an escape from the politicization of all things. There are many reasons for this — but a not insignificant one is that taxpayers provide publicly funded stadiums to billionaire owners and millionaire players for almost every team in the league. We are all footing the bill for NFL players' workplaces. Why should they become venues for partisan protest?
Furthermore, just as much as they value sportsmanship between competitors, fans value that moment of unity when we can put aside all of our agendas and come together simply as Americans. Any demonstration — kneeling, sitting, arm-linking — distracts from that unity. It steals that moment from fans, who wonder with some justification why athletes can't use their celebrity power to pick some other time for their protest rather than shove it down our throats after all the support fans already give these players and teams.
>Not really. There are some 40 million blacks in the country. I would be that a sizeable percentage of them LOVE what the players are doing.
The number of blacks who watch football is way down as well. Despite the media portray, BLM has only about 30-40% support within the black population.
So how come they made no effort to call out the Democrat party, who runs the cities where all of this is happening?
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Because it’s about hating this country in general.
Besides cops do not mistreat minorities over all. There are idiot cops who probably are power tripping and are not fit to be a cop who definitely abuse their authority, but those kind of cops are not discriminatory. It’s just they have more contact with blacks, because well, blacks commit more violent crime than any other group in this country.
How come we can’t talk about that?
I don’t deny that...I was just defending the millions number. Like it or not, there are millions of blacks and certainly millions of others who just LOVE these protests.
We are the majority, but there also big swaths of this country that simply hate what the country stands for.
The reality is that Afro-American studies is a really stupid history of America.
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Besides the fact it’s riddle with supreme exaggerations of all this black African accomplishment pushing how much better they are than whites or co-op other cultures like Egyptians. It’s utterly lubricious how you can promote victim-hood and superiority all at the same time, but there you have it.
don’t know what the word lubricious is but obviously I meant ludicrous.
...so many words aren’t needed to explain. Simple.
The Left thinks they are in the majority, and they hang around in no groups with conservatives...thus they don’t understand us, and the hate profit, except their own, so they don’t get economics nor customer satisfaction basic lessons. Their arrogance limits their ability to see past their unicorn and rainbow projections.
What these NFL players and owners fail to understand is that this is NOT President Trump vs them. He merely gives voice for the majority of US citizens who agree that protests against OUR flag and anthem is wrong on many levels.
Not sure if the NFL uses these yet but now a yellow, pink, light blue, and orange flags are now the same. Light blue is to support fighting prostate cancer. Orange is used in Canadian football.
Only other flags are royal blue ( dark ). Still used for a loose ball. Red are for coaches’ challenges.
It is crappy rice-beer. Worthless.
Regarding slavery, the afro-Americans like to put on this air that they personally were in it and suffered from it. What a joke that is. It’s like me complaining about the Spanish Inquisition ruining my life, where’s my reparations? Freakin’ idiots.
Exactly, that kind of cop is just as happy to slam a white guy’s head onto a car hood for mouthing off. It’s not like he’s going to investigate your genealogy before deciding to smack you around or not.
img height=150, src=https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4460/36615212023_b183100c07_b.jpg:small
or 300
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Stopped reading Ed Morrissey and the lame-brains at Hot Air years ago. FR is all I need. Morrissey needs to go back to running a telemarketing call center.
Gravy train derails......massive cleanup needed
Details at 11
racial inequality preached to us by a bunch of black millionaires, and are paid by mostly white blue working class people . The irony is staggering.
I saw a friend of mine post on FB that he was no longer watching games or buying any Vikings gear. This is a man who has been watching faithfully every single week for decades. I have never seen him as particularly conservative, so for him to take a stand like this, surprised me. The NFL is not only losing die hard patriots and conservatives. They are losing some who just do not like the disrespect of their country, their flag, their anthem and themselves.
Black soldiers of the Massachusetts 54th held the flag high at the 2nd Battle of Fort Wagner. Memories are short.
Krapernick needs that lawnmower to take a few passes over that hairdo of his. Nah, on second thought keep it. He needs to keep looking like the idiot that he is.
The NFL keeps showing their resolve every week on how unified they are—against their customers. It’s the Dixie Chicks business plan. Works for me, burn baby burn.
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