Teams Will be Fined if Players Kneel During National Anthem

While admittedly a small sample size, some players are telling me they’re *considering* staying in locker room or making a different on-field gesture simply b/c they feel this new policy is a direct challenge to them. Before today, they hadn’t thought about demonstrating in ‘18.

— Jim Trotter (@JimTrotter_NFL) May 23, 2018

Steve Kerr: NFL Is Using The Anthem As Fake Patriotism, Nationalism, Scaring People

https://www.si.com/nba/2018/05/24/steve-kerr-nfl-national-anthem-policy-idiotic

Golden State Warriors head coach Steve Kerr called the NFL’s new national anthem policy “idiotic” while talking with reporters ahead of Game 5 of the Western Conference Finals.

Under the new NFL policy, NFL owners voted to allow NFL comissioner Roger Goodell to discipline any league personnel who does not stand and show respect for the flag and national anthem before games. Players are given the option to remain in the locker room if they prefer not to be on the field for the anthem. Teams will have the option to fine any team personnel or players that attempt to sit, kneel or protest during the anthem.

Kerr is no stranger to speaking out against President Donald Trump and has supported NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick’s decision to kneel during the national anthem. In October 2017, Kerr told the Pod Save America podcast that he believes Kaepernick is being blackballed by NFL teams.

“It’s just typical of the NFL,” Kerr said, according to Anthony Slater of The Athletic. “They’re just playing to their fanbase. Basically just trying to use the anthem as fake patriotism, nationalism, scaring people. It’s idiotic. But thats how the NFL has conducted their business. I’m proud to be in a league that understands patriotism in America is about free speech and peacfully protesting. Our leadership in the NBA understands when the NFL players were kneeling, they were kneeling to protest police brutality, to protest racial inequality. They weren’t disrespecting the flag or military. But our president decided to make it about that and the NFL followed suit, pandered to their fanbase, created this hysteria. It’s kind of what’s wrong with our country right now – people in high places are trying to divide us, divide loyalties, make this about the flag as if the flag is something other than it really is – which is a representation of what we’re about, which is diversity, peaceful protests, right to free speech. It’s ironic actually.”

President Trump went on FOX News on Thursday morning to commend the NFL for “doing the right thing.”

NFL’s National Anthem Policy Ignores the Original Reason for Protests: Social Justice

https://www.si.com/nfl/2018/05/23/nfl-policy-national-anthem-players-kneeling

ATLANTA — The NFL’s new policy regarding player protests during the national anthem is not a compromise whatsoever. It is a series of half measures dedicated to the attempt of satisfying all frustrated parties while completely ignoring the initial point of the peaceful protests. It is intended to hide its mostly black players who wish to speak up, through their actions, about inequality in criminal justice and police brutality against people of color. The policy treats those players as nuisances and attempts to hide them away in the locker room. It is meant to chill the speech of the players whose voices have grown louder than the players—and owners—imagined they could go.

The NFL was at a crossroads with President Donald Trump breathing down the owners’ necks, the precious white male fan threatening to abandon the sport forever, a mutiny from two-thirds of its players and the disdain from tomorrow’s fans who could eventually jump ship to another sport. As a result, the league’s owners came up with a five-point plan that they believed could satisfy all parties at least a little.

What the NFL certainly could not do is reverse course to pre-2009 and have players stay in the locker room during the playing of the anthem. That would be viewed as the North American sports behemoth capitulating to the liberals and furthering the PC culture damaging this great nation.

Telling teams they can make their own policies seems so apropos today as we enjoy heated debates about states’ rights in our national discourse. A policy for San Francisco or Seattle would not suit the fans in Kansas City or Buffalo.

The policy states that the league will fine teams—not individual players—if players do not “show respect for the flag and the anthem.” When asked to define what respect for the flag and anthem is, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell said, “The general public has a very strong feeling for what respect for the flag is in that moment,” adding that clubs and the league will be the arbiters of what disrespect for the flag and anthem is. Team owners can then eat the fines themselves or exact fine money from players for the violation of team rules—and in that instance, the player fined wouldn’t be public knowledge.

All of this is rooted in the idea promulgated Tuesday by Jerry Jones that “our fans want us to zero-in on football, and don’t want to think about—or think we’re thinking about—anything other than football.” It’s a laughable comment since every NFL game forces us to think about the military and war, among many other reasonable, charitable and valiant causes. Perhaps the league has hard data on the demographics of their fans, but I also enjoy the idea of a clipboard-holding Jones polling the average person as he or she exits the Wal Mart beside AT&T Stadium.

There is a fantastic amount of evidence—both tangible and anecdotal—that shows players protesting during the anthem didn’t tank the ratings. Some of the league’s top stars were injured and some of the most well-followed franchises failed to make the playoffs. Sports Business Daily’s Austin Karp told SI.com in February “it is perhaps worth noting that the league’s 9% decline in its overall delivers matches the 9% season-to-date drop in broadcast prime” television. The Atlantic’s Derek Thompson combined the two, noting that “quite simply, televised football has a television problem and a football problem.” And then there’s the fact that, despite all the myriad issues, six of the seven most-viewed broadcasts so far this year were NFL games, and Sunday Night Football ranked as the highest-rated show on TV.

Furthermore, discussions about people tuning football out for protest-related reasons usually conspicuously exclude those in support of player protests who boycotted the NFL because of what should clearly and efficiently be stated as the blackballing of Colin Kaepernick.

The obvious policy is that there should be no policy. There’s a significant arrogance to the idea that these men, who by definition of their positions are out-of-touch with the majority of society, can predict the future as it relates to police brutalizing black and brown bodies. With this policy, there’s a clear belief that the political landscape will maintain status quo when we should all know the ground beneath us is constantly shifting.

At a time when blackness is being celebrated and continuing to be persecuted—and when blackness is persecuted while celebrating—any attempt to muzzle such celebration will be met with resistance. Now the players have mostly worked out the kinks in the Players Coalition, they’ve been emboldened by comments past and future from the certain owners in these private meetings, and they’ve clearly grown a healthy contempt—like so much of this country—for the president. These players are motivated and organized, and, most of all, they now know their collective power.

This remarkable arrogance from these owners that they can hold their black players in check is matched only by the incredible ignorance from the same owners that these young, rich (mostly) black men will acquiesce to what was decided in Atlanta.

Every so often a commercial is aired, an identifier is published, a promposal goes wrong, a company’s insensitive tagline is stamped with approval where I remark to myself “if only they had consulted one black person.” I’m not convinced that one single black man or woman could have saved the 32 owners from this miserable policy. These men and women were determined to come up with a bad idea by hell or high water.

But this policy clearly shows that, once again in America, there wasn’t a black person in the room.