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Houston Texans players are planning to protest as a unit before Sunday's game against the Seattle Seahawks in the wake of team owner Bob McNair's controversial "inmates running the prison" comment, a league source told ESPN's Adam Schefter. The Texans held a players meeting Saturday in Seattle to decide how to handle Sunday after McNair's comments surfaced, the source said. Texans left tackle Duane Brown told ESPN's Josina Anderson on Sunday morning that he anticipates that "up to 65 to 70 percent" of the team's players could kneel. He said the players would not remove the team's decals from their...

The National Football League is taking some hits these days. A new Fox News Poll finds that since 2013, the league’s favorable rating has dropped 18 points. Today, 46 percent of voters have a positive view of the N.F.L. while 41 percent view it negatively. Four years ago (the last time the question was asked), 64 percent had a positive view of the league and 19 percent were critical.

Mandatory Title: NFL LIVE THREAD Week 8 Thursday, Oct 26, 2017 Miami at Baltimore 8:25 pm CBS M&T Bank Stadium Sunday, Oct 29, 2017 Minnesota at Cleveland 9:30 am NFLN Twickenham Stadium Atlanta at N.Y. Jets 1:00 pm FOX MetLife Stadium Carolina at Tampa Bay 1:00 pm FOX Raymond James Stadium Chicago at New Orleans 1:00 pm FOX Mercedes-Benz Superdome Indianapolis at Cincinnati 1:00 pm CBS Paul Brown Stadium L.A. Chargers at New England 1:00 pm CBS Gillette Stadium Oakland at Buffalo 1:00 pm CBS New Era Field San Francisco at Philadelphia 1:00 pm FOX Lincoln Financial Field Houston at...

Florida citizens will likely be unhappy with this new development in the NFL National Anthem protests. As Dolphin players continue to take a knee or hide in the locker room tunnel during the Anthem, fans are not the only ones tuning out. Police are pissed. Normally, working security for sporting events is a voluntary detail. Officers, generally off-duty ones, usually sign up and it is a first-come, first-serve basis. Now, police want nothing to do with the disrespectful players. In a protest of their own, they are refusing to volunteer. This puts citizens in danger since officials must force officers...

Papa Johns told the NFL their sales are down this year during NFL games. This must be very concerning to the pizza chain and to the NFL. Social Justice Protests continued this week at several NFL games

The NFL entered Week 7 today and it's obvious the backlash against players kneeling for the national anthem continues.Here are a few tweets from around the league showing fans voting with their pocketbooks by not purchasing game tickets, leading to half-full -- or worse -- stadiums.Courtesy of Gateway Pundit. All tweets show stadiums after kickoff.Miami Dolphins vs. New York Jets #NFL #NYJvsMIA RT @nsbbcom: Nobody cares about jet or dolphins @[me] pic.twitter.com/k6wPSlIRJG— Empty Seats Galore (@EmptySeatsPics) October 22, 2017 Cleveland Browns vs. Tennessee Titans And we are underway #Browns #Titans pic.twitter.com/dcrirhjo6r— Daryl Ruiter (@RuiterWrongFAN) October 22, 2017 Indianapolis Colts...

HOME SCORES SCHEDULE STANDINGS FANTASY LOG IN Too many bad teams, awful quarterback play making NFL games hard to watch Kaepernick and protests aren't the problem, bad football is the reason ratings, attendance are down Jason La Canfora mugshot by Jason La Canfora @JasonLaCanfora 11h ago • 9 min read People are staying away from the NFL. Viewership is down and empty seats are up compared to the record ratings of a few years ago. It's hard to argue that fact. Any camera angle that panned across the upper deck in any number of stadiums Sundays confirmed that fact. The...

An American flag in the shape of the U.S. was unveiled Sunday ahead of the San Francisco 49ers game against the Dallas Cowboys, the latest response to a controversy that has embroiled the entire NFL over how teams respond to protests during the national anthem.The flag was unveiled at the San Francisco 49ers Levi's Stadium.Some 49ers players kneeled during the national anthem, according to multiple reports.All of the players on the Dallas Cowboys stood for the anthem, according to the Dallas Morning News. David Irving raised his fist at the end of the anthem.Cowboys owner Jerry Jones has threatened to bench any...

... However, a study last year by Harvard Economics Professor Roland Fryer, who is black, concluded that for the Houston police department: “On the most extreme use of force – officer-involved shootings – we find no racial differences in either the raw data or when contextual factors are taken into account.” Unfortunately, he doesn’t have the race of the officer doing the shooting and the data for just one police department doesn’t allow the investigation of police policies. Using four national databases of crime statistics representing confrontations between police and civilians in many parts of the U.S., the study did...

After performing the national anthem at Friday night's Brooklyn Nets game, singer Justine Skye took a knee in the latest installment of the ongoing demonstration.Skye knelt specifically during the line "and the home of the brave," according to reports. However, according to the Associated Press, the demonstration wasn't well received among fans. Skye reportedly received more boos than cheers for her stunt.Shortly after her performance at the Nets' home opening game, Skye posted on Instagram a clip of her kneeling with the caption, "Got a bit shaky at the end.. was pretty uneasy about singing the anthem and probably won't...

Like many Americans, I find it distressing to see multi-millionaire athletes kneeling during the playing of our national anthem before professional football games. In my lifetime, football has been a big part of our image as Americans. In my working-class Cleveland, Ohio family, Sunday football was always a big event. One of my cousins was married to Lenny Dawson who would become a Hall of Fame quarterback. It was a rare Sunday during football season when we weren’t gathered around our TV or radio for the Cleveland Browns or the Kansas City Chiefs game (both if possible). As we watched...

Jerry Jones is now center stage, but not for a reason he'd like to be. The Hall of Famer owner took ownership of nearly every major headline in the 24-hour news feed when he took a powerful stance regarding how the Dallas Cowboys will handle the National Anthem. Through the team's Week 5 game against the Green Bay Packers, no Cowboys' player had offered any type of demonstration during the signing of the Anthem -- remaining one of the few teams with that designation. Jones' comments were unexpected, considering the aforementioned combined with the discussions that took place after comments...

National Football League (NFL) owners, executives, players and union leaders announced Tuesday that they’re making plans to “utilize our platform” to effectuate “social change.” The NFL and NFL Players Association released a joint statement after a meeting Monday that discussed, among other things, players’ National Anthem protests at games. The statement declares their joint plans to use the NFL’s platform to change society and “address inequalities in our communities.” […] On Monday, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell used his platform to promote Senate legislation. Goodell and Seattle Seahawks receiver Doug Baldwin issued a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck...

NFL television ratings continue a downward trend in the early part of the 2017 season. CBS' NFL ratings are down 17 percent year over year compared to 2016. Fox's NFL ratings are down seven percent for the first five weeks of the season year over year. CBS' broadcast of the Pittsburgh Steelers-Kansas City Chiefs, which went to 86% of the country, drew a 14.0 rating. The 14.0 is the lowest for the Week 6 national window since 2006 (13.5), per Sports Business Daily. Later in the day, NBC pulled a 10.9 for the winless Giants against the Broncos on Sunday...

Indications from Tuesday's meeting between NFL owners, players, executives and NFL Players Association personnel are that all sides identified "common issues" and engaged in "productive" conversation about how to "work together to promote positive social change and address inequality" in the wake of peaceful protests across professional sports. The meeting, which came a day after reports that the NFL would formally endorse criminal justice legislation and finance a social activism boot camp, marked a "coming together," according to the league and NFLPA. NFL Network's Judy Battista suggested the dialogue Tuesday in New York was the "best communication [there] has ever...

“We felt that this was an issue over the last months, as we have continued to work with our players on issues of equality and on issues of criminal justice reform, that was surfaced for us, and we thought it was appropriate to lend our support to it,” NFL spokesman Joe Lockhart told reporters. The endorsement comes amid national debate over NFL players kneeling during the pregame national anthem in protest against law enforcement’s alleged institutional mistreatment of minorities.

Mandatory Title: NFL LIVE THREAD Week 7 Thursday, Oct 19, 2017 Kansas City at Oakland 8:25 pm CBS Oakland Coliseum Sunday, Oct 22, 2017 Arizona at L.A. Rams 1:00 pm FOX Twickenham Stadium Baltimore at Minnesota 1:00 pm CBS U.S. Bank Stadium Carolina at Chicago 1:00 pm FOX Soldier Field Jacksonville at Indianapolis 1:00 pm CBS Lucas Oil Stadium New Orleans at Green Bay 1:00 p FOX Lambeau Field N.Y. Jets at Miami 1:00 pm FOX Hard Rock Stadium Tampa Bay at Buffalo 1:00 pm FOX New Era Field Tennessee at Cleveland 1:00 pm CBS FirstEnergy Stadium Dallas at San...

UNDERSTANDING EACH OTHER   Sometimes sports become a venue for overcoming racial tensions. Amid anthem protests, pro football has a high-profile opportunity. Minutes before kickoff for the first round of Sunday’s football games, the National Football League website carried two unusual features. Below the usual fare of game-day predictions and fantasy matchups were slideshows of Baltimore players visiting schools with Baltimore police and of Miami Dolphins and the league commissioner doing the same with police in their city. It was a jarring bit of social activism for a sports league site on game day. The slideshows are the NFL’s tentative...

San Antonio Spurs coach Gregg Popovich has never been shy when it comes to criticizing President Donald Trump and he continued Monday, calling Trump a “soulless coward.” According to Dave Zirin of The Nation, Popovich called him Monday to vent after Trump attempted to defend his lack of public statements about the four United States soldiers who were killed in an ambush in Niger. Speaking Monday his press availability, Trump said: “President Obama and other presidents, most of them didn’t make calls, a lot of them didn’t make calls. I like to call when it’s appropriate, when I think I’m...

There is some hope. Watch as black police officer Brandon Tatum talks about NFL players who took a knee instead of honoring fallen police officer Marcus McNeil.