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More After sitting down with Colin Kaepernick for several hours, @JasonLaCanfora says the QB is still actively trying to play in the NFL.

Quarterback Colin Kaepernick has told CBS that he would stand during the national anthem if given a chance to play football in the NFL again. According to a report by Jason La Canfora on Sunday, Kaepernick has been living in New York and working out privately in New Jersey with the hope of signing with a team this season. Kaepernick kneeled during the national anthem last season to bring more attention to the killings of black men by police officers. The protests spread this season after the former San Francisco 49er was unable to sign on with another team.

If any Dolphins were kneeling during the national anthem on Sunday, they could not be seen. The three Miami football players who had been protesting during “The Star-Spangled Banner” were not on the field for the ceremonies before their home game against the Titans, after the team’s owner changed his position and said his team had to stand. Owner Stephen Ross, who had been supportive of players protesting against racial inequality in the U.S., signaled that President Trump had influenced him into believing a perceived lack of patriotism would not be tolerated. Kenny Stills, Julius Thomas and Mike Thomas, who...

NFL Game Pass stopped working for thousands of football fans across the country, sending us all back to the dark ages of football consumption. If you tried logging into NFL Game Pass on Sunday to watch football, then you already know why you’re here. The one job Game Pass has is to work on one day of the week so that we can all watch football. When it glitches out, that’s bad news. Game Pass glitched out hard on Sunday and left fans without a way to consume out of market games. The world has changed in so many ways...

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...

Just heard that VP Pence walked out of game when players took a knee and said he and POTUS would not support disrespect of our military, flag, etc. Story in print will likely follow shortly.

INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. – Vice President Mike Pence decided to leave the Indianapolis Colts game Sunday because some 49ers players kneeled during the national anthem. In a tweet, the former Indiana governor said “I left today’s Colts game because @POTUS and I will not dignify any event that disrespects our soldiers, our Flag, or our National Anthem.” It was announced Friday that Pence would attend the game with the second lady. The game is special, because Peyton Manning’s jersey will be retired at halftime and he will be inducted into the Ring of Honor. Before the game, he tweeted that he...

With NFL season in full swing, fans should be packing into sports bars on Sundays — so why are so many streaming the game at home instead? Recent research from Foursquare found that in 2016, Sunday sports bar foot traffic dropped by 12 percent in cities with NFL teams; cities without their own teams saw a 13 percent drop. Furthermore, there was a 10 percent decline in people who went to a sports bar more than three times during the 17-week season, while only 40 percent of fans who had been to sports bars more than six times during the...

KIRKLAND, Wash. — Dub Pub is a sports bar in Kirkland which caters to the college crowd. In the past, they’ve always had large, standing room only crowds on Seahawks game days, but that wasn’t the case on Sunday. Protests during the national anthem continued into week four of the NFL's regular season. At least a half a dozen customers stood inside the Dub Pub sports bar in Kirkland watching, and to some extent, still supporting the nine players sitting on the Seahawks sideline Sunday. Dub Pub owners don't mind what stance customer's take on the protests. It's what you...

JANUARY 4, 2017 —Fans in the stands at the Allstate Sugar Bowl in New Orleans Jan. 2 might have wondered where everybody went. The announced crowd of 54,077 fell far short of the seating capacity of the cavernous Mercedes-Benz Superdome, which holds more than 76,000. Vast swaths of seats sat empty. The attendance figure was the lowest for the Sugar Bowl since 1939. But it was hardly alone. The Camping World Independence Bowl, held each year in Shreveport, La., brought just under 29,000 fans through its turnstiles, its worst attendance since 1988. The Goodyear Cotton Bowl Classic in Arlington, Texas,...

Favorable ratings for the NFL have dropped from 57 percent to 44 percent from the end of August to the end of September Meanwhile, the unfavorable rating for the league is the highest among any big sport - 40 percent - according to the Winston Group survey In August and September, baseball had the highest favorable rating than any other sport at 63 and 65 percent The National Anthem protest along with criticism from Trump has caused core fans, men aged 34-54, to turn their attention elsewhere Donald Trump predicted on September 27 that the National Football League will 'go...

Over just one month of player, coach and owner protests of the flag and National Anthem, the National Football League has gone from America's sport to the least liked of top professional and college sports, according to a new poll. From the end of August to the end of September, the favorable ratings for the NFL have dropped from 57 percent to 44 percent, and it has the highest unfavorable rating -- 40 percent -- of any big sport, according to the Winston Group survey provided exclusively to Secrets. Worse for football, which was already seeing lower TV ratings and...

Four weeks into the current NFL season television ratings are down nearly 10% overall compared to the first four weeks of last season. Sunday’s games in Week 4, according to Nielsen, had the smallest audience of any season so far: an average 14.2 million viewers. Add that ratings dip to the ongoing controversy around player protests, and you might reasonably wonder how official NFL sponsors, as well as brands that buy advertising during NFL games, feel right now about the league. The answer: “They’re nervous,” says Brian Cristiano, CEO of ad agency Bold Worldwide. “Everyone is looking at the numbers,...

It seems like everyone is mad at the NFL, whether you are young and old, male or female, and just about any ethnic identity you could think of. Pick a reason – game quality, protests during the national anthem, support for exiled quarterbacks, support for the President – and it will likely be used as someone’s cause for tuning away from the league this season.Because we’re all just grasping at straws a bit, it’s important to get an honest look at the NFL’s television viewership through the first four full weeks of this season, to go beyond P.R. puffery and...

One of the most meaningful games of the 2018 season ― not this season, but next season ― might very well be played this Sunday at FirstEnergy Stadium in Cleveland, where the woebegone 0-4 Browns face the less-woebegone New York Jets, who were expected to be 0-4 but are somehow 2-2.Tickets were available Friday on StubHub, the resale site, for as low as $12, down from $15 earlier this week. Face value of full-price tickets on the Cleveland Browns' ticket site is $40 minimum. Tickets to the game are available on the NFL’s official resale site, run by Ticketmaster, for...

The Los Angeles Rams are arguably the most surprising story of the first quarter of the NFL's season, jumping out to a 3-1 record and looking like an entirely different franchise from the lethargic team we saw in 2016. On Sunday, they went on the road and beat the Cowboys in Dallas, serving notice for their candidacy to surprise in the NFC this season. Now they just need the fans of Los Angeles to show up to the games. Running back Todd Gurley, who is a viable MVP candidate through the first four weeks of the season, appeared on the...

... Maryland is one of 14 states where participation in football was down over 10 percent or more over the last five years, according to NFHS data. In all 41 states saw a decline between the 2010-11 and the 2015-16 school years, and just nine states and the District of Columbia saw increases.

The National Football League is a glass house that was cracking well before Donald Trump's criticism of players who refuse to stand during the national anthem. The NFL earned an estimated $14 billion last year. But 500-channel television, internet live streaming, video games and all sorts of other televised sports have combined to threaten the league's monopoly on weekend entertainment -- even before recent controversies. It has become a fad for many players not to stand for the anthem. But it is also becoming a trend for irate fans not to watch the NFL at all. Multimillionaire young players, mostly...

The owner of one of New Jersey’s largest car dealerships is pulling his television advertisements during NFL games due to players’ protests during the national anthem. Steve Kalafer sells 16 brands of cars in dealerships in Flemington, Clinton and Princeton. He says that he is unhappy with the protests. “It personally was like a stomach blow to me. This did not need to happen,” he says. Kalafer says that customers have also been questioning what has been going on. “Customers and employees said, ‘Are we supporting the NFL and its owners?’ I said, ‘We cannot,’” Kalafer says. The car dealer...

On a typical Sunday at Shark Tales Waterfront Restaurant on St. Pete Beach, bar patrons are hooting and hollering at television screens while watching NFL football. This Sunday, those same screens were playing “Courage the Cowardly Dog” and sports not involving pigskin or gridirons. As various NFL players continue protesting racial injustice by taking a knee during the national anthem, Shark Tales owner Craig Munroe has decided to no longer show NFL games at his bar. Munroe released a statement on the bar’s Facebook page last Monday. “I will not show another NFL game at Shark Tales until these players...