Machiavellian said:
That is the whole point of a protest. It makes you who is comfortable uncomfortable. If a protest made you comfortable then it did not do its job. As for Trump, he probably did the NFL a favor. While he may be pandering to his base, he has unified the NFL on this whole topic. He turned a small protest that probably would have lost steam in a year to being a national event by giving it more press. Should be interesting how this develop. |
Don't be surprised if it hurts the NFL. I was busy yesterday and thus watched my home teams game, missing the kickoff, and tunred it off the second it was over. Thus I didn't really know anything about this protesting. They mentioned durign the game, some solidarity across the league during the anthem and showed a clip of players holding arms. Didn't think nothing of it, and couldn't tell from that 5 second clip whether it was in support of flag or not.
I come into work today and like 5 people come up to me, unapproached, to see what I thought of it. Since I didn't really know anything, I listened mostly and not one person was in support of the players. Scrolling through my facebook feed today, for every person supporting it there are 10 people hating on it. FYI, the ones in support of it are not the football fans.
NFL has been struggling in their numbers and I dont' see this helping.
My advice to any professional athlete on the issue is something Michael Jordan once said. "republicans buy shoes too" Jordan is smart and not pissing off half his potential consumers. The athletes should be smart and do the same. Heck, I've had people not pick people in fantasy football because they are a kneeler/protester.
