TIME October 9, 2017
‘To condemn us
for exercising
our rights says
a lot about him
as a President.’
—BRANDON MARSHALL,Denver Broncosfrom salary caps to franchise-player
tags—defy free-market principles.
Some of this tension is built into
the NFL’s founding. The nation’s first
professional football teams were in once
booming Rust Belt cities like Muncie,
Ind.; Rock Island, Ill.; and Akron, Ohio;
and the league works hard to promote
its roots in America’s manufacturing
base. The NFL Hall of Fame is in Canton,
Ohio, and the names of iconic franchises
like the Steelers and Green Bay Packers
are living tributes to blue collar identity.
The deepening cultural divide between
its athletes and its audience is one
reason the NFL studiously tries to avoid
controversy.
In one of his many tweets about the
player protests, Trump insisted “the
issue of kneeling has nothing to do with
race. It is about respect for our Country,
Flag and National Anthem. NFL must
respect this!” But it escaped no one that
Trump had uncorked his attack in a state
with an ugly history of racial discord.
“The people cheering,” Seattle Seahawks
defensive end Michael Bennett told
TIME, “was the most hurtful thing.”
Trump has a history of fanning tribal
divisions, including comments about
the Central Park Five case in 1989,
the racially loaded ads he ran against
potential Native American casino
competitors in 2000 and his campaign-
trail attacks.
For NFL players, it was hard to
square the fact that the President had
called black athletes “sons of bitches”
for peacefully using their constitutional
right to free speech, just five weeks
after defending the same rights for
violent white nationalists marching
on Charlottesville, Va. “Why didn’t
he condemn what was going on in
Charlottesville?” Denver Broncos
linebacker Brandon Marshall told
TIME hours after he and 31 teammates
knelt on the field before a 26-16 loss
to the Bills. “For him to condemn us
for exercising our rights, that says a lot
about him as a President.” Says a White
House official: “The national anthem
and the American flag are symbols of
the commitment Americans make to our
country and its ideals. They serve as a
humbling reminder of those who have
fought and died to ensure that we remain
one nation, under God, indivisible—
something for which the President will
always stand firm.”WHERE WILL THE national-anthem
controversy end? A 2015 joint oversight
report released by Arizona SenatorsJohn McCain and Jeff Flake, both
Republicans, argued that the military
pageantry that has crept into professional
sports is partly about profit. The study
found that $6.8 million in Defense
Department contracts had been doled
out to professional sports leagues to
showcase what the Senators called
“paid patriotism”—from on-field color-
guard performances and re-enlistment
ceremonies to sponsorship deals for
performances of “God Bless America.”
But now the battle lines have been
drawn by the President. “The venue is
not what it’s about,” says Representative
Brian Mast, a Florida Republican and
Purple Heart recipient who lost both legs
in an IED explosion in Kandahar in 2010.
“It’s about disrespecting the flag and
our country. They’re using the national
anthem as an opportunity.”
According to a senior White House
official, some Administration aides,
including chief of staff John Kelly, were
peeved by the President’s focus on
the sideline behavior of professional
athletes at a moment when challenges
like threats from North Korea and the
aftermath of Hurricane Maria loom. But
other Republicans saw a matchup to
exploit.
As these strategists read it, so long
as the President could cast the debate
as patriots against protesters, he would
win. Polls bear out that view: in an Ipsos/
Reuters survey released on Sept. 26,
58% of respondents said athletes should
be required to stand during the national