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The NFL likely hoped for a return to normalcy for Week 6, especially after Commissioner Goodell’s call to “move past the anthem controversy,” and address the issue in detail at league meetings on Tuesday. Instead, what the NFL got was a return to what has become the “new normal” in the age of anthem protests: empty seats.

A group of Georgia cheerleaders say they'll take a knee in the stadium tunnel when the national anthem is played at Saturday's homecoming game since their university moved them off the field after an earlier demonstration. Kennesaw State University cheerleader Shlondra Young tells The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that the so-called "Kennesaw Five" will kneel until the U.S. flag "represents what it should." The cheerleaders say they've paid attention to the nationwide debate over NFL players kneeling during the anthem, and they prayed before doing so at a Sept. 30 game. Cobb County Sheriff Neil Warren tells The Marietta Daily Journal he...

The national anthem football controversy continues to have an impact at the high school level. The Des Moines Register reports 13 members of the Ames High School band walked off the field before playing the national anthem on Friday night. This happened before the school hosted Lincoln on the football field. Earlier on Friday, student leaders read a statement to their classmates saying, "the decision to change from a patriotic USA to pink-out theme for the student section was the decision of the Ames High student body alone. Is this political? Maybe. But we are proud of how our students...

FULL TITLE: Colin Kaerpernick 'has hired celebrity lawyer Mark Geragos to sue NFL owners for colluding against hiring him' Colin Kaepernick will sue NFL owners for not hiring him after he kicked off the controversial practice of kneeling for the national anthem, reports claim. 'I am told that @Kaepernick7 has filed a grievance under the CBA for collusion against the owners. If accurate, this is huge,' Bleacher Report's Mike Freeman wrote on Twitter. Kaepernick, 29, has retained Mark Geragos, who has represented Michael Jackson, Chris Brown and Winona Ryder, among others, and is expected to release a statement soon. Scroll...

Colin Kaepernick has filed a grievance under the collective bargaining agreement for collusion against NFL team owners, reports Mike Freeman of Bleacher Report. Kaepernick has hired high-profile attorney Mark Geragos and is preparing to release a statement about his grievance soon, added Freeman. The free-agent quarterback has remained unemployed since his release by the San Francisco 49ers in March and has garnered little interest from teams around the league. This has caused some to suggest he's being blackballed for his national anthem protests during the 2016 season.

Donald Trump isn’t exactly on a winning streak, but he is beating the NFL in a rout. The league’s commissioner, Roger Goodell, signaled the beginning of a messy, divisive retreat with a memo stating, “Like many of our fans, we believe that everyone should stand for the National Anthem.” Now he tells us. The climbdown comes only weeks after a clueless bout of self-congratulation by the NFL and the media over widespread anthem protests. Donald Trump doesn’t play three-dimensional chess, as his supporters insist. But he does have an instinctive cunning and a grasp of a nationalistic cultural politics that...

Let me tackle this because last night there was a football game in Charlotte. It was the Carolina Panthers hosting the Eagles of Philadelphia. The Panthers all stood. Two players for the Eagles kneeled or linked arms and gave a black power salute, I think. But nobody saw it ’cause it wasn’t televised. CBS/NFL Network didn’t televise the anthem last night. I wonder why that might be? It’s obviously the league has gotten together with its so-called broadcast partners and said, “Hey, you know what? “The solution here, at least immediate, is don’t televise it.” Trent, if this keeps up,...

Even before Saturday’s huge slate of games had begun to commence, we knew college football Week 7 was offering something unique. It started Friday night when both Syracuse and Cal knocked off Clemson and Washington State, respectively. That’s the No. 2 and No. 7 teams in the nation saying goodbye to their undefeated records. And let’s be honest, nobody saw either of these upsets coming. Saturday was just as crazy. LSU upset Auburn. Boise State upset San Diego State. Arizona State put Washington down in a stunner almost as big as the Syracuse win over Clemson. Michigan, Miami, Oklahoma, USC...

The protests by NFL players during the National Anthem have been hurting the league's television ratings since last year. This season, as the protests have continued, the television ratings and ramifications for broadcasters have worsened. More bad news for the NFL: an analyst for Credit Suisse yesterday downgraded his price and earnings per share targets for 21st Century Fox in part due to NFL ratings that are coming in below market expectations. "We trim our 2018/19 EPS forecasts … ahead of Q1 earnings," analyst Omar Sheikh wrote in a note to clients Thursday. "The key near term headwinds are soft...

Any television show or any sporting event would take a rating of 30.0 in the Dallas-Fort Worth market and laugh all the way to the bank. It's a terrific number. It means that an average of 30 percent of all homes with televisions in the area were tuned in at any moment. That translates to approximately 794,550 homes. Relatively speaking, however, those are low numbers for a Green Bay Packers-Dallas Cowboys matchup. But that's what Sunday's down-to-the-wire Packers 35, Cowboys 31 at AT&T Stadium scored locally for Fox on KDFW (Channel 4). Consider this: Last season's Cowboys at Packers game,...

Now in the first two weekends of October, the No. 2, 3, 7 and 8 teams have fallen to middle-of-the-pack conference opponents: Last week Oklahoma fell to Iowa State before Michigan lost to Michigan State; on Friday night Clemson suffered a 27–24 loss to Syracuse that sent shockwaves through the college football world, and before anyone could fully process the impact of that result, Washington State laid an egg on the road at Cal, dropping from the ranks of the unbeaten with a 37–3 loss. Let’s take a look at the ripple effect of Friday night’s upsets from three different...

A Nassau bagpipe band has passed on the Jets’ invite to play during halftime over NFL players taking a knee during the national anthem, officials said Friday. A Jets group sales representative asked the Nassau County Firefighters Pipes and Drums Band early this week to entertain the crowd during the Nov. 2 game against the Buffalo Bills at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey, said band manager Bobby Hughes, an original member of the band and an East Meadow volunteer firefighter. “We don’t feel we belong there,” said Hughes, a longtime Jets season ticket holder. “We cannot in good...

CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- A video posted to social media from Thursday night's Carolina Panthers game against the Philadelphia Eagles is gaining national attention. Warren Carrigan posted a video to Facebook and Instagram early Friday morning that shows a bloodied altercation between a Panthers fan and another man sitting behind him. Carrigan said the incident happened in section 541. In an Instagram post Carrigan said a man wearing a Panthers jersey and the woman next to him were standing for the entire game. "The dude took offense to the couple never sitting down and obstructing his view," Carrigan wrote. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police...

The NFL said on Friday it has no plans to mandate players stand for the U.S. national anthem, but will rather present a possible solution on how to end the controversial protests when it meets with team owners next week.

If you watched the Philadelphia Eagles 28-23 win over the Carolina Panthers on Thursday Night Football last night you would have seen the home turf team’s Luke Kuechly exit the game in the second quarter due to a possible concussion. However, despite a potential move by the NFL to disallow protest by players during the national anthem, one thing you would have not seen on TNF on CBS and the NFL Network last night was the playing of the national anthem.

The wife of National Football League Commissioner Roger Goodell has admitted running a secret Twitter account to clap back at his critics during the anthem kneeling controversy. Jane Skinner Goodell on Thursday admitted to running the now-deleted Twitter account @forargument under the name 'Jones smith', using it to clap back at unflattering NFL coverage.

Bossier Sheriff Refuses to Support Those Who Show Disrespect Bossier Sheriff Julian Whittington sends a letter to a Ford Motor Company dealer - NO MORE FORD MOTOR COMPANY VEHICLES. Sheriff Whittington calls on other law enforcement agencies and leaders to take a stand against Ford Motor Co. and the disrespectful National Football League. Sheriff Whittington - "The recent events surrounding the NFL, its players and their audacity to thumb their collective noses at the American flag, the American military as well as the obvious disdain for the profession of law enforcement in general forces me to take a stand." "NFL...

I took data from SportsMediaWatch.com to look at television viewership at NFL games 2014-2017. Most of the data in news reports compares same day games from last year to this year, (ie; MNF from one year to the next). I decided to look at the aggregate of each week's data over the last four seasons to get an idea of trends. So what you are seeing is the TOTAL viewers for Nationally Televised games, each week, Year-Over-Year(From Thursday Night - Monday Night). Below is the data for Games 1 - 5 of seasons 2014 through 2017.It's interesting to note, each...

For like the fifth weekend in a row, college football’s got a light-looking schedule. We’re really piling up big games for the latter half of the season, it seems! That’s OK, though, because we’ll keep having fun along the way. Week 7 also feels totally out of order, and not just because Oklahoma-Texas/Texas-Oklahoma/the Red River Rivalry/the Red River Shootout/the Red River Showdown/etc. isn’t an 11 a.m. local kick. Most of the best games are in Saturday’s early half, so be sure to clock in early.

Back in the early 1980s, some conservatives began raising the alarm about the rising tide of anti-Americanism in primary and secondary public schools. "History" textbooks became "social studies" textbooks. Teaching the incredible story of America's founding was given short shrift, inspiring stories of individual Americans were omitted in favor of highlighting our many faults and teaching a form of "social history" that concentrated on those who were oppressed in the past. There is nothing wrong with teaching the complex and problematic history of America's past. But not at the expense of the truth. In fact, the amazing story of our...