Analysis by Kyle A. Lohmeier
It appears that the other flavor of national snowflake is poised to boycott the NFL next season, after many conservative snowflakes boycotted last year’s season because feels. As I’m sure we all remember: former 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick started a trend by kneeling during the national anthem to protest police brutality and soon players around the league were joining in. Then, a bunch of conservative snowflakes decided the protest was itself disrespectful to the flag, troops, Francis Scott Key, veterans, mom, Chevrolet and apple pie and therefore decided to boycott the NFL last season.
So, the NFL decided to do something during its off-season and this past Wednesday, league commissioner Roger Goodell announced what that something is: a new policy! And, let’s hope that whatever fix they come up with for defining a catch is better thought-out than this idea – which has angered many liberals and is kind of dumb besides.
The NFL’s new anthem policy allows players to either stand for the anthem, or remain off-field until it’s done playing. This has outraged many on the left who are now themselves calling for a boycott of the NFL, citing the league’s “taking away of free speech rights.” Of course, lefties often conflate the power a boss has with the power a government has – likely due to their lack of familiarity with the former. The players, these larger-than-life celebrities in their own right, still have all the rights in the world to leverage their status to express their concerns about police brutality, or whatever else they desire, on social media and elsewhere. For the few hours a week they wear the company uniform, the company requires they abide by company rules – the same situation most gainfully employed people exist under.
So, of course the NFL can make rules for its employees to follow and in doing so isn’t taking away anyone’s right to free speech as the NFL isn’t a government and the oppressing of rights typically requires a government’s monopoly on the legal initiation of violence to achieve. This doesn’t necessarily mean the rule makes a ton of sense.
What the NFL was fighting against was the “bad optic” of players kneeling during the anthem. The best way to do that would have been to go back to the old way of playing the anthem during a commercial break and while the players were still in the locker room, the way it was all the way up until 2009. This new policy opens the door for cameras to show entire empty sidelines during the playing of the anthem. If a smattering players taking a knee during the anthem looked bad, imagine what empty sidelines will look like?
In fact, there’s even a precedent for just such a scene, which Business Insider described as “surreal.” On Sunday, Sept 24, 2017, both the Seattle Seahawks and Tennessee Titans remained in the locker room for the playing of the anthem before the game in Nashville. From Mark Zaleski of the Associated Press’ photo, “surreal” seems apt, but hopefully not for long.
I hope most teams stay entirely in the locker room for the anthem all next-season-long, thereby making a de facto return to the old, better way of doing it. Perhaps then in the following off-season, the NFL will return to the pre-2009 way and football can go back to being football without all the political nonsense added in. I am, after all, a Detroit Lions fan; this means the NFL season is 17 weeks of agonizing frustration and annoyance as it is. Political nonsense already gets to annoy and frustrate me all 52 weeks of the year.
Leave a Reply