WHY?

I once had an employee come to see me in my office.  She was upset because she didn’t like an assignment she had been given to complete. She explained, in detail, why she did not want to do this. I listened carefully and then said the following: “If I only gave you assignments that you wanted to do, I wouldn’t need to pay you!”  She blinked a couple of times, then got up, went back to her desk and started working on the assignment.

I think this is exactly the way the NFL should handle the flag protest situation.  If you don’t want to honor our flag by standing for the national anthem, there is an easy solution. Go work somewhere else.

For years I have watched sports franchises put up with ridiculous demands by “star” players.  Sometimes this includes overlooking or even covering up criminal activity.  Some of the owners believe that the only thing that matters is winning.  But, championships are never won by one player. We have all seen teams win championships that no one expected.  In many cases is this with new younger players, or older players rejected by other teams.  There is no better example of this than the Las Vegas Knights.  This is an expansion team that was not expected to be competitive for years.

How did they achieve this?  If you check out their website, they will tell you.  “The formula, from owner Bill Foley on down, is based on team.” If you watch a Las Vegas Knights home game the performance of the National Anthem is a big part of the event.  The singer is Carnell “Golden Pipes” Johnson.  He sings the National Anthem at all their games.  When it comes to the part where the anthem goes:

gave proof through the ‘night’ that our flag was still there” he pauses and the entire arena shouts: “knight.”  Like I said, it is all about the team.

Google a video of the Las Vegas Knights national anthem and you can see it for yourself.

That is the opposite of a Colin Kaepernick.  When he sat down for the National Anthem, he made a loud statement: “This is all about me, not the team.” When other players joined in for a cause most of them can’t even define, they missed something important. The thousands of people who were paying big bucks to see them play were standing at attention for our National Anthem. If those fans stop buying tickets and people at home turn off NFL games, then your protest will be meaningless.

I think the NFL could have fixed this problem easily by showing some common sense.  This is a sports league.  It is about performance on the field.  We as the NFL honor America.  That is why we make it a big deal to honor the flag before every game.  If you want to play in the NFL, then you are expected to show the same honor and respect for our flag as the fans who are paying to see you.  If this in unacceptable to you, then we suggest seeking other employment.

They could also solve it my directing TV broadcasters to focus on the thousands of people honoring our flag and ignore the three malcontents sitting on their ass.  But, of course, that would require ethical behavior on the part of the broadcasters so that is extremely unlikely.

Instead they said you can either honor the flag or stay in the locker room. Brilliant.  This insults everyone and satisfies no one.   We can bet that the main stream media will showcase every athlete who stays in the locker room and promote them to hero status for their great act of courage.  They will be too pumped up with self-righteous glorification to hear the clicks when a whole lot of us turn the channel.

TDM