NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, who has the power to discipline players and serves at the pleasure of the league’s 32 owners, spent much of last Saturday communicating with owners, coaches and players. His message was primarily that management needed to do all it could to show support for players, according to a person familiar with the matter. You see, this is not Trump’s feud with athletes. It’s the NFL athletes feud with America.
A league executive also said players on the teams that remained in the locker room for the anthem wouldn’t be fined, even though NFL rules say they could be if they aren’t on the field for it, as is required.
Some players knelt for the national anthem, while others interlocked arms. Three teams so far—the Pittsburgh Steelers, Seattle Seahawks and Tennessee Titans—didn’t take the field at all for the national anthem. The Titans in a statement said the “players jointly decided this was the best course of action” and “the absence of our team for the national anthem shouldn’t be misconstrued as unpatriotic.”
How many other jobs are you allowed to publicly make political protests without repercussions? The NFL is a sports league. The players are being paid to perform on the field. They need to take the political protests OFF THE JOB like the rest of Americans have to do. This is precisely what President Trump meant by calling for the firing of the “Son’s of Bitches” who don’t respect the flag. If the NFL doesn’t enforce the common sense rules the rest of us have to abide by, then they deserve to go bankrupt and the sooner, the better.
Here is a list of NFL sponsors which is listed by the NFLPA, the NFL Players Association, which is the Manhattan located union representing professional football players, responsible for negotiating collective bargaining agreements.
Anheuser-Busch
Barclaycard US
Bose
Bridgestone
Campbell’s Soup Company
Castrol
Courtyard Marriott
Dairy Management, Inc. (Fuel Up to Play 60)
Dannon
Extreme Networks
FedEx
Frito-Lay (PepsiCo)
Gatorade (PepsiCo)
Hyundai Motor America
Mars Snackfood
Microsoft
Nationwide
News America Marketing (News Corp)
Papa John’s
Pepsi
Procter & Gamble
Quaker (PepsiCo)
Verizon
Visa
USAA (Insurance/military appreciation)
We need to get off our asses and tell these sponsors we are not supporting them in the future!
The problem is I still don’t know what the message is, exactly…..Kill all cops? Let blacks get away with murder? Black men should NEVER obey the law? Help me out here……..
Here are some other comments from folks:
They don’t really know exactly what they are protesting except that lower class blacks have it harder than most in America and young black males have a tendency to get in trouble, break the law, come into contact with the police, sometimes do not behave prudently and are injured or killed, and many wind up in the criminal justice system, where their crimes do not have the luxury of $500 an hour criminal defense attorneys to get them off or mitigate their sentences
It appears that it is simply too much to expect many young black males in urban ghettos to obey the law and act rationally when dealing with the police. This seems to be a literal, undeniable truth. Many of them just cannot do it. Certainly the massive social pathology of the ghetto and the sexual promiscuity and irresponsibility of young males and females contributes mightily to this, as does trans-generational welfare dependency and the culture of low or no expectations.
These foolish protests implicitly proclaim that since it is too much to expect such people to behave lawfully and rationally, the blame for their misfortunes must rest with the police and the criminal justice system. There is no use asking or expecting them to behave better, for they cannot do it. The only solution is what is called harm reduction – in this case by teaching the police and rigging the criminal justice system to make the consequences of their misbehavior as easy on them as possible.
I do not believe this dumbed down, low expectation, essentially and covertly racist model is correct. I believe that ghetto dwellers can behave better if they are provided the tools and opportunities to do so. Welfare is not the answer. Nor is ignoring the role their own bad choices and behaviors play in their problems.
Blaming the police for the very real problems is not only absurd, it is destructive, for it deliberately distracts attention from the issues that need to be faced and dealt with if improvement is to be achieved.