A Donald Trump supporter at a Steelers game. Washington Post/AP.
It what is being seen as a major victory for President Trump, NFL commissioner Roger Goodall has released a memo saying that NFL players should stand for the national anthem. Washington Post. Goodall sent the memo to the owners of the NFL teams and it leaked immediately. Though the anthem protests had never really died down after Colin Kaepernick left the league, Trump reignited the issue at a rally for failed Senate candidate Luther Strange. Trump said the NFL should fire the kneeling players. Trump doubled down by rescinding an invitation to the NBA championship team and his Vice President, Mike Pence, left a Colts/49ers game when players their knelt during the anthem. Trump caught a lot of flack for his stance from the media, but he and his fans were able to put massive pressure on the NFL. The NFL has been declining in ratings and Trump was considering investigating tax breaks for the NFL. Though Goodall himself has capitulated, it is unclear if the players will continue the protests.
My Comment:
I said a couple of times that I knew that Trump was going to win here. It was fairly predictable after all. Donald Trump has always had good instincts on what middle America is thinking and he knew that people were more upset about these protests then they were letting on. He tapped into that anger and let a boycott movement that hit the NFL right in the pocketbook. There was little doubt in my mind that the NFL would lose, my only question was how long it would take. Three weeks was pretty quick...
Though we don't seem to have good numbers on how effective these protests are it seems like they had an effect. Ratings have mostly been down for the NFL, but that has been a trend for awhile now. Certainly there was polling data that said ratings were down and that people said it was because of the protests, but we won't be sure how much is due to other factors as well.
But I think we can confirm that the protests were working in some way. After all, Goodall had no other reason to capitulate. He doesn't want a fight with his players and he doesn't want to anger the liberal sports media who are most likely going to crucify him for being spineless. He'd have to have a very good reason to do this and my guess it was the survival of the league itself. I think he knew that his ratings were tanking and people weren't buying tickets or gear anymore. And given how many franchises were on the brink in the first place, he had to do something.
I have to say that the NFL bungled this entire situation from the start. They never should have allowed Kaepernick to continue his protest in the first place. Perhaps they didn't have to fire him, like Trump had asked for, but they could have taken action against him for kneeling during the anthem. Had they done so, the issue would have died last year. They might have faced a liberal backlash against them, which they probably will get now as well, but considering where the NFL's money is made, that isn't a big deal.
When Trump brought the issue back to the forefront they could have stopped the controversy again by releasing this memo right away. Instead they had whole teams kneel or otherwise protest the anthem. Critically, they didn't seem to understand why fans were upset. When some of those protests were moved from during the anthem to just before it, fans still booed.
Why? Because it wasn't just the disrespect to the flag that fans hated. They also hated the fact that the NFL was allowing the game to be politicized. One thing that I have heard repeatedly in this controversy is that regardless of the politics, people were getting pissed that they had to think about politics during the games. For many, the NFL was supposed to be a place where you could get away from politics for awhile and these protests took that away.
People also didn't like what the players were originally protesting about. Kaepernick started as a way to support Black Lives Matter. BLM isn't popular in the first place, but to have the protest come from a bunch of rich and powerful athletes who have more money that the vast majority of Americans and who aren't oppressed in any meaningful way. It reeks of hypocrisy and the fact that they were bashing the country that has given them so much at the same time made these protests hugely unpopular.
Though I think Donald Trump deserves some credit for an obvious political win here, we also have to acknowledge that he had a lot of help. Had the people not rallied around him this would have blown over soon. It was normal everyday Americans that made the NFL cave. Trump rallied them and encouraged them but if it wasn't for people contacting advertisers, burning their gear, or even just tuning out, the NFL wouldn't have ever capitulated.
The question is how many fans did the NFL lose permanently? I know that I personally will probably go back to watching football as soon as these protests end. I am guessing that will happen in the next week or so. But I do think that the NFL probably lost a few fans that won't ever be coming back. What they did in this situation caused a lot of open wounds and not all of those wounds will heal just because the protests end. Some of those fans are gone for good.
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