To the NFL, a Proposal About the Anthem Thing: Don't Worry About It

NFL owners, I’m going to let you in on something here. A secret about the common man that, frankly, I’m surprised you guys seem to be in the dark about, given all your success in business (and the business of life).

The masses bore quickly.

I know you’re concerned. You’re worried that a continued controversy about players kneeling in protest during the playing of the national anthem is going to hurt the NFL’s bottom line. I don’t blame you. It is, after all, your job to worry about bottom lines.  I won’t pretend to have any useful advice to any of you guys about business.

That said, I think you’ll agree that you are not the most in touch group of people in the country. All of you are astonishingly rich, and most of you are quite old.

And now here I am in the back of your limo trying to explain the situation to you guys. (WARNING: Coarse language).

I’m sorry to be the one to tell you this, but …

… did you see when Mark Zuckerberg (that’s that pasty Facebook guy) got called to testify before Congress? And did you see the part where your generational peers in government were trying to grill The Zuck about Facebook, despite being … it is not a stretch to say … illiterate … on the topic?

Ok. That’s you guys. That’s you guys when it comes to culture and media. It doesn’t mean you’re bad, it just means you don’t understand what you’re looking at, therefore all your ideas for about it are flawed from the start.

This kneeling thing? It poses no threat to the NFL. It doesn’t even have much to do with the NFL, and almost two years in, it’s pretty much over as a major media story. President Trump will almost certainly bring it up again, and you guys are going to have to be strong enough to outlast the president’s 45-second attention span, but I believe in you.

This is not cancer. It’s a flesh wound that will scab over and heal if you just stop picking at it.

Colin Kaepernick kneeled during the anthem for years before anybody even noticed. People will easily fall back into not noticing this, if you will just let them. This is partially because nobody, protesters included, seems sure what exactly is being protested, what the demands of the protest are, or who is responsible for meeting those demands (although it does seem like one of you guys is supposed to sign Kaepernick).

Why choose this hill to die on?

There is no existential threat to the league. So stop coming up with goofy half-compromises and unnecessary rules. What you need is a non-solution for this non-problem, and to continue about your business.

The masses bore quickly. This will pass. So just don’t worry about it. Play your games, broadcast them on TV, sell all the Viagra and light beer you can. Don’t try to play a game you don’t understand. If the football is any good, we’ll all be here.