NFL can’t make the fight for social justice go away

National anthem controversy will continue to be a hot-button issue

Whichever poor soul in the NFL head offices is tasked with monitoring the Twitter feed of the president of the United States must have had a good Friday morning.

Donald Trump had not, by lunchtime, blasted the NFL or any of its players for a SAD lack of PATRIOTISM or any such thing. For the league, that counts as a win. With a slate of NFL pre-season games having taken place on Thursday night, and with a handful of players choosing to stay in the tunnel under the stands rather than come out and stand at attention during the national anthem, conditions were ripe for another presidential blast.

But then again, it is only a matter of time. If anything has become clear during this latest round of controversy over NFL players, social-justice protests and the Star- Spangled Banner, it’s that there is zero chance the league will be able to make it completely go away. And for a league that so often richly deserves to be embarrassed, it looks good on them.

Trump is bound to repeat his criticism of protesting players — and his demand that they be suspended or fired — because he knows it plays well with a segment of his supporters. And the players who have made a point thus far of taking some sort of action during the anthem, whether by kneeling, raising a fist or staying in the locker-room, are going to continue to do so for different reasons.

Some will want to draw attention to racial injustice issues, which were the impetus for the original Colin Kaepernick protests in the fall of 2016. Some will push back largely because the league’s owners arbitrarily changed the rules around the anthem this spring; those rules are on hold while the league and the players’ union try to work out a compromise. For most players who protest, it is probably a little of both. The protests had cooled off by last fall, until Trump ripped such players in a mildly profane speech, and they were a minor issue again by the end of last season, until the owners rewrote the anthem rules in May. Dying embers, gasoline, match, whoomp.

But now that the fire has been rekindled, it’s impossible to imagine dousing it again. Trump has made clear that he thinks every player on an NFL team must stand with “hand on heart” during the anthem. He finds the idea that any player would be allowed to remain in the lockerroom an outrage, a fact that surprised no one other than the league owners who thought the compromise they included in the new rules would placate those who were angered by the sight of a player on his knee. The president will continue to vent about the NFL until everyone does what he says they should. Over the course of this controversy, he’s called for players to be fired over protests, and more recently said they should be suspended for a season without pay over a second kneeling offence. He’s not exactly softening on this particular issue.

But the players aren’t about to agree to a full-scale retreat, either. The league used to have no rules about the anthem and then in 2009, it said players should be on the field for it, but there was no disciplinary measure for players who avoided the anthem, or knelt, or sat on the bench or did cartwheels during it. This is why Kaepernick, despite becoming an unemployed pariah, was never punished while he was on a roster.

The league tried to change the rules in May to allow players to be formally punished for kneeling, but now that the players pushed back they are seeking some kind of out. How would that look? Are the players, now that they are at the table, going to agree to a set of rules that seeks to effectively end any type of protest during the anthem? Because that’s the only thing that will stop the periodic cries of SHAME from the White House.

This is a uniquely NFL problem. The NBA, home of many a vocal Trump critic, requires players to stand for the anthem, and they are all fine with that. But their rule was in place many years ago, and they let players speak freely on social issues, and no one is calling for a basketball boycott.

But because it was the NFL where the anthem issue came to light and the president made it a personal fight, it is the NFL that will continue to wear it. It has been suggested that the problem could be solved by eliminating the practice of playing the anthem before games. It’s true that the anthem is unnecessary for a sporting event, but does anyone really think that scrapping the Star- Spangled Banner would cool things off ? I mean, imagine the tweets.

Instead, we wait to see if the league and the players can come up with a policy that they both like.

It is hard to imagine a set of rules that will placate, say, Jerry Jones AND Malcolm Jenkins.

The only certain thing here, as the issue continues to unfold, is that Colin Kaepernick still won’t have a job.