Ever since Colin Kaepernick decided to use the football field as a stage for protesting police brutality against African Americans by kneeling during the national anthem, the NFL has been in the midst of a public relations disaster. The league is now trying to pick up the pieces from its ratings getting demolished in the subsequent controversy.
The good ideas don’t seem to be coming easily. Take, for instance, the latest report surfacing from an NFL owners meeting about what do to about players kneeling during the anthem. In the Atlanta meeting on Tuesday, one of the ideas that floated around about stopping players from kneeling was to assess the team of the violating player a 15-yard penalty.
You read that right. Not a fine. Not a suspension. A 15-yard penalty. A punishment that actually affects game play.
Of course, NFL owners haven’t decided on this particular form of punishment to get players to stop kneeling. Everything is still on the table.
Other leagues like the National Basketball Association – which had its own national anthem controversy and is arguably more woke than the NFL – mandate that all players stand for the national anthem. NBA Commissioner Adam Silver has not addressed whether a player would be punished if they violated that rule. However, given how quickly the league hands down fines to players, there’s a good chance they would face a penalty in that regard.
Why can’t the NFL take a page from the NBA? While players’ rights are protected under the First Amendment to protest during the national anthem, the NFL is not the federal government. Sure, they continue to receive massive amounts of money in taxpayer subsidies, but they can police their players and owners however they want.
The solution doesn’t have to take months of deliberation. And setting up a multimillion-dollar fund to address issues like criminal justice reform and social justice by the NFL shows that they are at least willing to listen to their players’ grievances. Still, it seems more apparent that the NFL has no idea what it’s doing.
