Posted on 09/26/2017 11:05:00 AM PDT by Oldeconomybuyer
The image was striking - several owners of NFL teams locking arms with their players on the sidelines Sunday in a dramatic statement of defiance to a president who ridiculed their sport and condemned players for refusing to stand during the national anthem as a protest against racism.
Beyond the appearance of unity, though, is a far different reality: The owners have done little to support players who protest to fight social injustice. A few owners have told their players that kneeling for the anthem is inappropriate.
The owners by and large are a white, conservative group of billionaires, several of them big-dollar donors to President Trump. They have generally discouraged their players, about three quarters of whom are African-American, from anything that overshadows throwing passes and making tackles.
These are the same owners who allowed junk science produced by league-sponsored doctors to paper over the growing scientific consensus that repeated head hits are linked to long-term brain damage.
The owners, stewards of a $14 billion league, the richest and most powerful in the United States, have tried to tread carefully. They did not ask for this moment in the political spotlight and seem in a hurry to leave it.
Then again, with calls for boycotts of the NFL over Mr. Kaepernick’s not being hired, it is fair to say objections are coming from the right and left.
NFL owners are nothing if not businessmen, so until attendance declines precipitously, or it can be determined that the protests have directly led to a decline in television ratings, they are unlikely to clamp down on the protests. Indeed, the league got a pat on the back on Monday when Ford and Nike, two big NFL sponsors, issued statements backing the players’ right to protest.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
"I haven't seen this many cowboys kneeling since 'Brokeback Mountain'."
Don’t buy Ford.
Would love to be on the inside at their strategy meetings on how to handle this mess they’ve allowed.
Don’t buy anything.
It has got to be similar to HRC’s inner circle realizing that they lost the election, and figuring out who had to tell the beast she lost...
There is no pleasing the THUGS! They should have never tried.
Now they have PO’d their fans and the thugs. HA!
The NFL bows to the president. Reminds me of Obama bowing to the King of Saudi Arabia.
Oh, wait! This is the NYT. I missed that at first. And that tells you more about which way this article is going.
Let me help. Standing for the National Anthem is unpatriotic. Now you don’t have to read the article.
Who had "third paragraph" in the pool?
I figure their first instinct was to go along with it to protect their investment, and it would all blow over in a week or two and business as usual would resume.
We gonna forget these millionaire game players get away disrespecting our nation that easily?
They have generally discouraged their players .... from anything that overshadows throwing passes and making tackles
That is what the owners need to focus on...protest while at work and your traded tomorrow; protest at home, write letters to the editor, start you own league, fine.
I've thought the same thing, and my conclusion is - they aren't even close to that stage yet. Goodell is a powdered and puffed-up insider, who is steeped in the leftist, elite cocktail circuit and its media attitudes. The owners are 32 billionaires who likely all have egos the size of Mt. Everest. They let Kaepernick bring in his poison politics for 2 years, and did nothing, because there was no PC answer. Even now, they are still trying to figure out how this hurricane hit them - and that Hurricane is named TRUMP.
You can’t call them thugs. That’s racist! /s
Hysterical!
IMO, thugs come in all colors, shapes and sizes :-)
My Titan is made in the south which all are a right to work state
If all the owners are on the same page, where would a player be traded to? And to fire them means they’d have to pay them. What they need to do is get the lawyers to start studying the actions that cause harm to the team “clause”.
That is a disgusting picture and does not speak well for the Cowboys. Jones can try to explain this anti-American picture with words of BS, but it is always BS. Sad day for the owner, the team players, the fans and Dallas. May God have mercy on their misguided souls.
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