We’ve reached a very weird point in our society for our professional football teams to start announcing what they’ll be doing during the pregame national anthem. Who would have thought a year ago that this is where we’d be.
Things have gotten so crazy for the NFL, that teams are starting to game plan for the anthem. It’s not even been a week since the league-wide protests against the president and police began, but already, teams and players are adjusting their protest strategy.
As reported at Breitbart, on Sunday, all but a single Pittsburgh Steelers’ player stayed in the locker room during the anthem. Predictably, this caused quite the outrage amongst their fans and the general public. So they’re adjusting their tactics and have announced they’ll all be standing on the field for the anthem on Sunday.
“I promise you one thing, this week we’ll all be standing out there for the national anthem. Trust me,” said Steelers’ veteran Maurkice Pouncey on Wednesday.
“As far as I know it’s 100 percent participation. We love this country. It’s America. We know there are injustices in this world, but to me, personally, football is football and that’s what we need to approach it as,” he added, via CBS Pittsburgh.
That’s a far different sentiment than what’s been expressed by many of the participating players. The general refrain from protesters has been that they can’t support a nation that allows blacks to be discriminated against, but now the word “love” is being thrown around.
I wonder what’s changed. Oh wait, that’s obvious. The league and franchises are hemorrhaging viewers and fans and are in full blown damage control.
After the Steelers’ stunt on Sunday, fans took to Twitter and other avenues to vent their outrage, even going so far as to burn merchandise on video. It seems the message has been heard loud and clear.
“I think this week we are going to show that. We are sorry for all of our fans who are upset about the things that went down, and I think we’ll come together and all of this will be out the window,” Pouncey added.
Good. They should focus on football and be responsive to the people that fund their exorbitant salaries. Now let’s just hope that the rest of the league follows suit and ends this whole charade before they do irreparable damage to their brand.
Source: Breitbart