Players continue to push NFL into national debate on race
Bennett’s accusations against Las Vegas police latest flash point
The allegations are chilling, the alleged videotape disturbing.
Seattle Seahawks defensive end Michael Bennett’s troubling social media description of the “excessive use of force” he said he endured at the hands of officers from the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police De- partment last month is a fitting reminder that the nation and the NFL have reached the same cultural crossroads at the same time.
This critical juncture for the NFL doesn’t involve Tom Brady or Ezekiel Elliott, although Elliott’s suspension and subsequent appeal over alleged acts of domestic violence should never be minimized.
This is much bigger than that. This is about the continuing backlash occurring around the nation in the wake of the horri-
fying events in Charlottesville, Va., and President Trump’s dreadful response to white supremacism and neo-Nazism, and how that tragedy has become intertwined with the issues of race and protest that have been present on NFL sidelines for more than a year.
If Colin Kaepernick’s original national anthem protests were the launching pad for these issues, Bennett’s statement Wednesday that a Las Vegas police officer ordered him onto the ground and said if he moved “he would blow my (expletive) head off ” might well have brought the matter to a boiling point just as the new NFL season approaches this week.
Bennett sat during the national anthem this preseason and has vowed to continue that practice throughout the season. Nearly a dozen members of the Cleveland Browns knelt in protest during the anthem last month. Cleveland-area first responders then said they would protest the players’ protest by not showing up to hold a large U.S. flag during the national anthem at the Browns’ home opener.
One wonders what might have been had Kaepernick, who quarterbacked the San Francisco 49ers to the Super Bowl five seasons ago, been signed by an NFL team in the offseason rather than deemed too controver-
Ironic, isn’t it? Colin Kaepernick is now the least of the NFL’s problems, as the league and its owners are tested in ways they never would have imagined.
sial because of his protests.
Kaepernick was planning to return to standing for the anthem this year, according to multiple news media reports all the way back in March. He has continued to meet his pledge of donating $1 million to charitable organizations. Had he been on a roster and in uniform, he could have been a calming influence, perhaps even someone league officials could have turned to in moments of discord and uncertainty.
And, of course, any animosity other players felt about the way he has been shunned would have disappeared once he was signed.
Instead, Kaepernick is on the outside looking in at what has become an increasingly unsettled situation in the nation’s most important and popular professional sport.
Ironic, isn’t it? Kaepernick is now the least of the NFL’s problems, as the league and its owners are tested in ways they never would have imagined.