Posted on 05/24/2018 3:32:27 PM PDT by GuavaCheesePuff
On Monday, the NFL announced a new national anthem policy that allows players to stay in the locker room but leaves open the possibility of fines for players who choose not to stand during the anthem. Former Patriots defensive end Chris Long said the new rules reflect the owners’ fear of their bottom line, as well as President Donald Trump, not concerns about patriotism.
“Don’t get it confused,” Long wrote on Twitter. “These owners don’t love America more than the players demonstrating and taking real action to improve it.”
And if enough of us hurt the NFL bottom line maybe they will cut the salaries of these prima donas.
Howie Long’s kid is a real disappointment.
how about not hiding in the locker room during the anthem
College players don’t stand for the anthem either, they hide in the locker room.
“Chris Long said the new rules reflect the owners’ fear of their bottom line, as well as President Donald Trump, not concerns about patriotism. “
chris is absolutely right ... not that there’s anything wrong with that ...
Simple solution : have any of these players who want to insult the country HAVE TO stand in a designated area where the spectators are allowed to throw cupcakes at them.
This “fix” is a sham from start to finish. I guarantee someone will kneel during the first national anthem. The team getting fined instead of the players is what pulls any teeth out of the agreement that it may have had. Hiding in the locker room to deliberately avoid the anthem is unacceptable. I wish President Trump would pull Dept of Defense support for the NFL for a season to drive home his point.
The fans (dupes) don’t fit into his equation, much less the Service members they pretend to honor.
Howie Long is a Social Justice Warrior himself.
I knew that you knew my underlying point and was simply engaging in kind ribbing.
-PJ
Amen. He and his ilk are the reason the NFL is losing face big time. The owners are phony bastards too, who are out of touch with reality in an effort to promote team unity amongst the predominately racist players. The NFL is killing itself. Sad.
Sit your butt in locker room.
I wish I could give a rip. I live in the Philly area and didn't watch them once this season, including the Super Bowl. I can't get enthused by morons like Malcolm Jenkins & Chris Long. But even more that that, the NFL game is slipping in quality. It's glorified flag-football now.
Howie’s a big coward, too. He’s sat with his mouth shut while the black hosts brow beat anyone uttering a conservative opinion.
Oh go get yourself another lame tattoo, cuck long. Any room left?
I know! It just figured the Eagles pick the one year I cared the least about football to win it all!! But I enjoyed it just rooting for Nick Files and Wentz. Both Godly men and awesome role models for my kids. It was all about them for me. Always loved Files and thought he got a bum deal.
Too little, too late.
“Chris Long on the new NFL anthem rules: ‘This is not patriotism’”
Actually, I kinda agree with him in the sense that patriotism is not something to be legislated but is a natural reaction to ones love of country.
Anyone who has watched the NFL for much of their life knows there has never been a time when players all stood uniformly for the anthem. I have watched over the years and see quarterbacks warming up during the anthem, other doing calisthenics and such my entire life.
What makes this different is now there are some openly in protest during the anthem and it leaves a bad taste seeing that disrespect. The NFL has no patriotic intents whatsoever in making a new rule, its just about the bottom line for them.
If it had never been for Kaepernick’s antics, no one would care today that Big Ben and his receivers were tossing the ball during the anthem as it was not done in a disrespectful way.
Let me first repost excerpts from an article I posted several times last year, just to set the context.
Why the National Anthem is played at sporting events:From the Sept. 19, 2011 issue of ESPN The Magazine:
THAT STORY BEGINS, as so many tales in modern American sports do, with Babe Ruth. History records various games in which "The Star-Spangled Banner" was played dating from the mid-1800s, but Ruth's last postseason appearances for the Boston Red Sox coincided with the song's first unbreakable bond with the sports world, in 1918. Game 1 of that year's World Series was notable for many reasons...There was also World War I, which blackened everything, including the national pastime. The U.S. had entered the war 17 months earlier, and in that time some 100,000 American soldiers died. Veterans who survived often came home maimed or shell-shocked from encounters with modern warfare's first mechanized mass-killing machines. At home, the public mood was sullen and anxious. The war strained the economy and the workforce, including baseball's. The government began drafting major leaguers for military service that summer and ordered baseball to end the regular season by Labor Day. As a result, the 1918 Series was the lone October Classic played entirely in September.
World War I wasn't the only issue weighing heavily on fans. On Sept. 4, the day before the first game, a bomb ripped through the Chicago Federal Building, killing four people and injuring 30. The Industrial Workers of the World were thought to be behind the attack, a retaliation for the conviction of several IWW members on federal sedition charges...
Although the Cubs festooned the park in as much red, white and blue as possible, the glum crowd in the stands for Game 1 remained nearly silent through most of Ruth's 1-0 shutout victory over Chicago's Hippo Vaughn. Not even the Cubs Claws, the forerunners to Wrigley's Bleacher Bums, could gin up enthusiasm...
With one exception: the seventh-inning stretch. As was common during sporting events, a military band was on hand to play, and while the fans were on their feet, the musicians fired up "The Star-Spangled Banner." They weren't the only active-duty servicemen on the field, though. Red Sox third baseman Fred Thomas was playing the Series while on furlough from the Navy, where he'd been learning seamanship at the Great Lakes Naval Training Station in Chicago...
Upon hearing the opening notes of Key's song from the military band, Thomas immediately faced the flag and snapped to attention with a military salute. The other players on the field followed suit, in "civilian" fashion, meaning they stood and put their right hands over their hearts. The crowd, already standing, showed its first real signs of life all day, joining in a spontaneous sing-along, haltingly at first, then finishing with flair. The scene made such an impression that The New York Times opened its recap of the game not with a description of the action on the field but with an account of the impromptu singing: "First the song was taken up by a few, then others joined, and when the final notes came, a great volume of melody rolled across the field. It was at the very end that the onlookers exploded into thunderous applause and rent the air with a cheer that marked the highest point of the day's enthusiasm."
The Cubs front office realized it had witnessed something unique. For the next two games, it had the band play "The Star-Spangled Banner" during the seventh-inning stretch, to similarly enthusiastic crowds. By Game 3, a bigger crowd of 27,000 was in attendance. Not to be outdone, the Red Sox ratcheted up the pageantry when the Series relocated to Boston for the next three games. At Fenway Park, "The Star-Spangled Banner" moved from the seventh-inning stretch to the pregame festivities, and the team coupled the playing of the song with the introduction of wounded soldiers who had received free tickets.
Like the Chicago fans, the normally reserved Boston crowd erupted for the pregame anthem and the hobbled heroes. As the Tribune wrote of the wounded soldiers at Game 6, "[T]heir entrance on crutches supported by their comrades evoked louder cheers than anything the athletes did on the diamond..."
Still, the Series' most enduring legacy belongs to a song. Other major league teams noticed the popular reaction to "The Star-Spangled Banner" in 1918, and over the next decade it became standard for World Series and holiday games. In subsequent years, through subsequent wars, it grew into the daily institution we know today...
Congress didn't officially adopt the "The Star-Spangled Banner" until 1931 -- and by that time it was already a baseball tradition steeped in wartime patriotism. Thanks to a brass band, some fickle fans and a player who snapped to attention on a somber day in September, the old battle ballad was the national pastime's anthem more than a decade before it was the nation's.
My complaint is based on the idea that American culture, if you will, over the past 100 years through spontaneous, and then social acceptance, chose the moments before sporting events to recognize the sacrifices of those in military defense of our country as a symbolic substitute for the non-violent, but still competitive, rivalries of intercity competition that substitutes for more aggressive displays of superiority (aka combat and war).
If we compare and contrast America with Europe, we immediately ask why the States didn't Balkanize into rival sovereignties the way that European countries did, resulting in a continuing series of border-shifting wars of dominance. A common culture arising from the declaration of independence from Europe would be the foundational fabric that weaves us together as a collective society. The desire to exalt those who were called to sacrifice on our collective behalf is strong.
Fast-forward to today, and I see a protest movement that is trying to usurp a 100 year national tradition to honor those who were called to sacrifice for the country, for their own immediate purposes. Instead of laying their own groundwork to establish a platform for their own messaging, they are stealing the traditional honorific dedicated to those who defended our country and warping it into a protest of our country.
People rightly ask, why choose the historic time of national spirit to demand we invert it to the opposite meaning, instead of finding another time such as halftime, or third quarter break, or something else? Why does the feeling of a few aggrieved players have to REPLACE a national tradition instead of finding an additional time for another perspective?
When the residents of a city, in whose name a sporting team claims the honor of winning, chooses to no longer attend the events where the team purposely defiles their host traditions, rejecting those athletes who put their own causes ahead of the residents in whose name they claim to represent is not unreasonable. The affront that these athletes feel is misplaced, and continuing to insist their own self-righteousness will only further alienate the loyalties of their host city residents.
-PJ
Won’t work. Damage has been done forever. Lotsa old farts like me and some patriotic young ones are gone..
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.