Posted on 08/14/2017 7:31:19 AM PDT by Red Badger
Several players plan protests following violence in Charlottesville Colin Kaepernick still without a team after protest last season Bennett says protest is not a sign of disrespect for military
The day after Oakland Raiders running back Marshawn Lynch sat out the national anthem, his former team-mate Michael Bennett has followed his lead.
The Seattle Seahawks defensive end, who is known for his strong views, sat with a towel draped over his head during the anthem before Sunday’s game against the Los Chargers. Bennett said he plans to continue the protest for the rest of the season, and his stance was influenced by the far-right violence in Charlottesville over the weekend. Colin Kaepernick attracted attention when he chose to kneel for the anthem last season as a protest at racial injustice in the United States.
“The last week, with everything that’s been going on in the last couple months—especially after the last couple days seeing everything in [Charlottesville] Virginia ... [I] just wanted to be able to continue to use my platform to be able to speak on injustice,” Bennett said after Sunday’s game.
Here’s the goal:
LOOK AT ME!...LOOK AT ME!...LOOK AT ME!.....................
Football is a sport you can actually watch with no sound at all......................
“Sing the anthem while the players are standing in the tunnel before they run on to the field.”
Agreed - don’t offer the opportunity for a “statement” and they have to find another forum to air their views. This is the practice at my college’s games where both teams are still in the locker room while the band does pre-game opening things like the anthem, the alma mater, and some fight songs in preparation for the team’s entrance.
I do not like Jerry Jones, but that is ONE thing he did very well. He told the Dallas Cowboy players that they will stand for the National Anthem, or they will sit somewhere else, off the team!
Excellent.
Football in an American game.
Anti Americanism is unwelcome.
NFL: Negros, Felons, and Liberals. Whites and Americans not welcome.
That’s it, I’m done with football for this year
The players and the league are playing a losing hand.
Waiting for the BLMers in the NFL and their fans thugs to start harrassing Brady as a prime example of white privilege!
I can definitely live with NFL being only on premium “on demand” channels.
goodbye, NFL!! Hello, RUGBY!!! rugbychannel.com Denver (Glendale) is called “Rugbytown, USA.” It has a gorgeous, modern, dedicated field especially for rugby matches. Several teams, including womens’ sevens. Find a match on Youtube and you will see why I love it. No hard plastic padding. No stopping the game every time the ball hits the ground. 80 minutes of hard play.
Golf, it’s on all year and the participants are mostly America Loving good patriots.
Channeling your Inner Lombardi? If so, well said!
“Winning is a habit. Watch your thoughts, they become your beliefs. Watch your beliefs, they become your words. Watch your words, they become your actions. Watch your actions, they become your habits. Watch your habits, they become your character.” ~ Vince Lombardi
The NFL is going into a death spiral. The more business savvy owners like Jerry Jones and Robert Kraft realize this, but the pill-popping morons like Jim Irsay do not. For many years, the NFL business model was:
1. Escalating TV Contracts
2. Public purchased playgrounds and subsidies.
While #2 is not yet threatened, #1 is. The players salary cap is tied to the TV contracts, and so long as the TV contracts keep going up, so do players’ salaries. However, the TV contract must have viewers to watch in order to generate the ad revenue to support the contract. ESPN is finding out that all of their escalating long-term sports contracts are not sustainable because their viewership is actually declining. That’s why they are bleeding money.
Many reasons for this. One is that fans are “cutting the cord.” Cable services have outpriced their market in the Stalinist belief that “quantity has a quality of its own.” Yes, you get lots of channels with cable, but they are mostly crap. Sports fans are now moving to direct streaming through the league’s packages, like NHL Gamecenter (now if I can figure out how to get a credit card with an Alaska zip code, I’ll never be blacked out of a Blackhawks or Bluejackets game).
The other reason is what’s obvious here; people have become turned off by the product itself. Even before the politicization of sports, NFL games are virtually unwatchable due to the commericials and lack of continuous play. I describe the NFL as combining the two worst things of American life; sudden acts of violence punctuated by committee meetings.
So, watch what happens when the current network contracts expire, and this time they come to the league with less money, and that means less money for the players. Let’s see how the Michael Bennetts of the league react to that. Jones and Kraft know this is the future, and they need to do everything to mitigate it, and that includes avoiding the politicization of the sport.
And of course the players will be the last ones to realize they’ve killed the golden goose.
College ball is all over ESPN which is just as bad. Better off with just HS or Div 3 college (non scholarship).
Make no mistake about it, THIS IS ABOUT BLACK PLAYERS HATING WHITE PEOPLE.
You can dress it up, call it what you want, but this is nothing more than black on white racism pretending to be something else.
Look what has happened to network television and to the entire movie industry. This is going to be repeated through the entire entertainment sector of our economy.
The NFL's problem is magnified simply because it is so big that it has much farther to fall than most other entertainment options.
This is getting Ridiculous. Now I have to boycott all the NFL!!! Unamerican SOB’s. Guess I’ll just continue to attend and sponsor my local high school football program. At least they all stand for the Pledge of Allegiance. I suggest all fellow Freepers do the same. Viewership and ad revenue declines are the only thing that they’ll respond to.
You’re suggesting stopping the Natinal Anthem before sports events? How un-Freeperish of you! How Kaliforniash! How San Franciscoish! Unedited. Say it ain’t so?
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.