Here’s my attempt to analyze the kerfuffle and pose a solution.
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NFL player protests aren’t likely to be a one-off scenario. The League is perplexed. President Trump is outspoken. Fans are frustrated. Welcome to the new normal—politics and sports intertwined.
Here’s my attempt to analyze the kerfuffle and pose a solution.
Many fans who oppose the protests do so because they feel it disrespects the flag and those who fought (and died) defending it. That perspective makes sense, too—historic sense. Here’s why.
Sports, war, and patriotism share an undeniable connection, write Michael Serazio and Emily Thorson. General Dwight D. Eisenhower viewed sports as a training ground for battle. And notable and historic coaches—Woody Hayes in football and Bob Knight in basketball, for example—were students of the military and viewed games as a battle exercise. In short, games mimic war.
In sports, as in war, winning isn’t compromised. And winning requires the exercise of masculine behaviors, Serazio and Thorson assert, like aggressiveness and “gutting it up.”
The connection between sports and battle is especially apparent in a game that demands strength and the imposition of force, like football.
What I’ve just described aligns well with attributes that we commonly associate with a Conservative political orientation. Not surprisingly, then, a recent national poll conducted by The Washington Post-Kaiser Family Foundation (and analyzed by Scott Clement and Emily Guskin) found that nearly 90% of Republicans said that it’s never appropriate to kneel when the National Anthem is being played.
Courtesy: YouTube
Another poll—conducted by Morning Consult with data analyzed by Kevin Quealy—found that many 2016 Trump voters are miffed that the NFL hasn’t stopped the protests. About 60% of those voters say they have a Somewhat Unfavorable or Very Unfavorable view of the NFL. Those views are reinforced by the news they had seen or read recently. Roughly 75% say they had seen/read mostly negative news about the League. The bottom line? Trump voters rate the NFL low as a brand—so low, in fact, that (for them) it’s roughly equivalent to other targets of the President’s angst—CNN and The New York Times.
But, of course, America isn’t made up of like-minded people, even among pro football’s fan base, which is broader than it was a generation or two ago. How broad? To find out, FiveThirtyEight conducted a SurveyMonkey Audience poll of NFL fans, team-by-team, across the country. When Neil Paines, Harry Enten, and Andrea Jones-Rooy analyzed the data they found that only six teams had a fan base with a net partisan lean toward the Republican Party. Tampa Bay was highest, followed by Houston, Dallas, Jacksonville, Buffalo, and Tennessee.
Courtesy: thebiglead.com
Meaning? There is another side to this coin. For example, in the Post-Kaiser survey, only 22% of African Americans polled felt that NFL players should never kneel during The Anthem. The percentage was 29% among Democrats. And among those persons who had attended a protest rally in the past year, 60% said it was ok to kneel during The Anthem.
The bottom line is clear: the NFL is between a rock and a hard place when it comes to accommodating its fans. And the League’s recent attempt at managing pre-game protests was met with disdain and controversy. The League withdrew it quickly.
What do I recommend? I believe that the NFL and Players Association should engage in earnest dialogue about the issues NFL players are protesting. Then, together, they should develop a joint plan to take action.
Doing that would turn a kerfuffle into a transformational opportunity the likes we’ve never seen in the history of American sports. Why not now? And why not led by “America’s Game?”
I think it’s time to move from protest to action and transition from controversy to collaboration.
