Good morning, America. Your alarm went off this morning and you rose up from your warm pillow and you took a deep breath, yawned, and with outstretched arms, you got ready to embrace a brand new day of opportunity with dreams, goals, plans, and hopes for today and days to come.
We're inching towards Memorial Day Weekend where we are supposed to be giving honor to the fallen who have lost their lives in service to this country. It was not designed to be a platform for breaking out our new gas grills or to throw parties where we get drunk enough to debase and embarrass ourselves and our families. It is supposed to be a solemn respectful remembrance to those that made the most incredible of sacrifices to keep our country safe and to keep our liberties intact.
When you woke out of that bed, for those of you blessed enough to own one, you also may have given God thanks that you didn't wake up in a war zone (technically and hopefully), and you have healthy children, and you are not sick or in impoverished circumstances. There's so much to be thankful. Turning on the TV is probably part of your morning routine too and there you can find plenty of bad news but the one place where you used (emphasis) to go to avoid the normal bad news cycle is your national sports channel. Yesterday, you may have heard why this is no longer a safe space to just enjoy sports.
"The NFL will enact a national anthem policy for 2018 that requires players and league personnel on the sideline to stand but gives them the option to remain in the locker room if they don't want to stand, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell announced Wednesday.
Under the change approved by team owners at the Spring League Meeting, individual clubs will have the power to set their own policies to ensure the anthem is being respected during any on-field action. If a player chooses to protest on the sideline, the NFL will fine the team. The player also could be fined by his team, NFL Network Insider Ian Rapoport and NFL Network's Judy Battista reported."
http://www.nfl.com/news/story/0ap3000000933971/article/nfl-owners-approve-national-anthem-policy-for-2018 (Courtesy of NFL.com) If you find yourself fearful or uninterested in chiming in on this topic, I understand. Every response reveals something about us and should be taken with the utmost seriousness and consideration. Quite frankly, the hypocrisy is thick in this situation. Many say the flag and fallen soldiers have been disrespected by a player kneeling or sitting during the anthem. Maybe so, unintended or not. It's been highly publicized that the flag code should be respected and never be broken because of what it represents. Pictures are worth a thousand words. At least, that's what I heard.
Under the change approved by team owners at the Spring League Meeting, individual clubs will have the power to set their own policies to ensure the anthem is being respected during any on-field action. If a player chooses to protest on the sideline, the NFL will fine the team. The player also could be fined by his team, NFL Network Insider Ian Rapoport and NFL Network's Judy Battista reported."
http://www.nfl.com/news/story/0ap3000000933971/article/nfl-owners-approve-national-anthem-policy-for-2018 (Courtesy of NFL.com) If you find yourself fearful or uninterested in chiming in on this topic, I understand. Every response reveals something about us and should be taken with the utmost seriousness and consideration. Quite frankly, the hypocrisy is thick in this situation. Many say the flag and fallen soldiers have been disrespected by a player kneeling or sitting during the anthem. Maybe so, unintended or not. It's been highly publicized that the flag code should be respected and never be broken because of what it represents. Pictures are worth a thousand words. At least, that's what I heard.
I won't rehash the obvious details such as whether we are experiencing patriotism or a strong-arming by powerful men concerned with the financial bottom line. I won't offer many opinions on whether lost in this entire debate is the lives of young people who don't always deserve to die or be physically abused by law enforcement.
I also don't think I need to highlight the clear access that bigotry, prejudice, and politics have been given into the sport that we love so much. What I would like to do is explore the relationship between the owner and the players.
In all the discussion during the owners meeting, you will notice that the players themselves as well as some team staff, though directly affected by this situation, were not consulted or considered in the decision that was handed down. No invite. No input. It is called the "owner's meetings" for a reason but it would have repaired a major breach if the owners extended an olive branch to the players who are directly affected by any decisions made as well as the every day reasons there were even protests in the first place.
For many of these players, this is their life and has been their every day struggle outside of the football field, where they possess some semblance of power and value and worth. It's likely one of the few places, excluding their personal households, where they feel that they bring something of value to the equation. They feel wanted, valued, and important in most cases.
During these meetings, a silent but loud message was sent to the players that they were not thought of as any of those things, barring perhaps one West Coast based NFL owner in particular. They were the ones that produce on the field. They are the ones that execute the plays. They are the ones that do the job that garners championships and acclaim for franchises. But in cases like these, they are just employees and hired help, paid handsomely, but still hired help. Nothing is more important than the bottom line and it really showed once these meetings concluded. All this talk about flag codes and respect but how long will we look at the blatant hypocrisy of it all and call it out where it lies? It's hard for me to see how the relationship between the owners and the players (generally speaking) is not frayed beyond repair. It wasn't like players didn't already wonder how much owners cared. It's not much different than you in your workplace. Upper management tells you they care about your opinion and you matter to the company and sometimes you see signs of that evidenced. And sometimes you don't. It's usually pretty ambiguous and cloudy. Company wide surveys. Pizza days. Prize giveaways. Achievement awards. The signs that really matter come in those times when things are not going so well and there is an outcry for justice and fairness. Nobody remembers the hot slices of hand tossed pizza. No one remembers the gift card from Starbucks. They just remember the lack of response from those that said they cared or the company line used in hopes of quelling the noise.
During these meetings, a silent but loud message was sent to the players that they were not thought of as any of those things, barring perhaps one West Coast based NFL owner in particular. They were the ones that produce on the field. They are the ones that execute the plays. They are the ones that do the job that garners championships and acclaim for franchises. But in cases like these, they are just employees and hired help, paid handsomely, but still hired help. Nothing is more important than the bottom line and it really showed once these meetings concluded. All this talk about flag codes and respect but how long will we look at the blatant hypocrisy of it all and call it out where it lies? It's hard for me to see how the relationship between the owners and the players (generally speaking) is not frayed beyond repair. It wasn't like players didn't already wonder how much owners cared. It's not much different than you in your workplace. Upper management tells you they care about your opinion and you matter to the company and sometimes you see signs of that evidenced. And sometimes you don't. It's usually pretty ambiguous and cloudy. Company wide surveys. Pizza days. Prize giveaways. Achievement awards. The signs that really matter come in those times when things are not going so well and there is an outcry for justice and fairness. Nobody remembers the hot slices of hand tossed pizza. No one remembers the gift card from Starbucks. They just remember the lack of response from those that said they cared or the company line used in hopes of quelling the noise.In my humble example, this would be old and negative history and it would mean nothing in today's view had the owners possessed a heart of understanding rather than choosing to emphasize control. Easy for me to say I suppose. I am not brokering billion dollar deals and raking in cash at the level they are. I don't understand their pressures or their pains. All I know is my own. Deep down, I was hopeful that this would be a great opportunity for those that didn't understand to finally attempt to. Imagine yourself as an NFL player in this climate and take race, politics, and the anthem protests out of the equation. As involved as I was in sports growing up and the avid fan that I am now, I know I can never understand this plight fully but I can't fathom that a player can ever look at ownership the same again. The player's association is going to fight this tooth and nail and they should. In fact, it's what they literally do for a living. No surprises there.
Despite the overtures spoken in locker rooms and closed door meetings, the ownership will never put you before its bottom line. That's clearly the case today and perhaps into the future. The player will always be just an employee working for his company. Maybe that's how it should be from a business standpoint. It just feels cold and callous in this social climate. At least to me.
But in my own crazy mixed up world, I dream of a time and space where people who have authority can have heart too. I hope for a time when money doesn't rise in importance above all else but love sits in the number one spot every week and is never unseated by greed. Sincere attempts to understand just trump the need to control and dictate in the lopsided world I live in. The ownership of the NFL came together and in this meeting, on this day, after all they have seen and heard, were still unable to unanimously agree that there was a responsibility to be taken. It just boiled down to business as usual. Let's just get back to playing football, right, guys?
68% sounds like a majority to me. So I would suggest that you did well attempting to get the ownership, who allegedly had your back to back you. That was unsuccessful. Now it's time to use your own money, your own name, and your own influence to create opportunities for your voices (and the collective voices of those who are not being heard) to finally be heard. I am almost positive it will amount to more than 68%.
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