Fox analyst blasts NFL kneelers: 'There are six other days in the week' to protest
Jason Whitlock may have once worked for ESPN, but he has continually shown at Fox Sports that he and the “Worldwide Leader” do not march to the same drumbeat on so-called social justice.
In an interview Wednesday on Fox News, the African-American sports host made abundantly clear how he feels about Colin Kaepernick’s movement to turn the playing of the national anthem into a case of Tommie Frazier and John Carlos at the 1968 Mexico City Olympics every week.
Host Brian Kilmeade led off the discussion by bringing up the reason he had Whitlock on his show to begin with, reported The Daily Wire.
He pointed to a grievance the NFL Players Association filed seeking an injunction that essentially claimed the league acted outside its collectively bargained authority by unilaterally imposing penalties in May for players and teams that choose to engage in national anthem protests. The policy requires all players who are on the field to “stand and show respect for the flag and the anthem,” but players may stay in the locker room if they do not want to do so.
As Kilmeade said, this is a question of the NFL trying to protect its brand.
“Over the last 24 hours, the NFL players union has fired back against the NFL’s May decision ordering players to stand for the national anthem or stay in the locker room,” the Fox News host said. “The players association just filed a grievance against the league demanding that they have a right to kneel, sit or do something else, protest. They want that right to be restored.
“Is that going to do anything to win back fans of the NFL? … Jason, is this going to help or hurt the league?”
Whitlock has drawn ire from some in the black community for what they see as a betrayal, as Whitlock, in their view, dismisses the questions about police brutality and systemic racism that are the stated reason for the anthem protests.
Whitlock was having none of that argument and took his critics to task.
“I think it’s going to hurt the league, and I think it will hurt the individual players as well in terms of the brand of NFL player,” he said. “These guys just don’t seem to get it. They are branding themselves as unpatriotic in a sport that since Pete Rozelle in the 1960s has branded itself as over-patriotic. This is completely off-brand and off the business model the NFL has established for itself and its players. It’s bad business.
“If these guys want to protest, there are six other days in the week. There’s 21 other hours on Sunday for them to do that. When you’re playing in the NFL, your goal is to make as much money as humanly possible for playing a dangerous game and then take that money and support whatever causes you believe in. This is so crystal-clear I have no idea what those guys are thinking.”
Whitlock played football, taking advantage of the scholarship he earned at Ball State University in his native Indiana to earn his degree in journalism, so he’s not just some talking head trying to suss out the psychology of people he has no connection to.
For him to speak to the culture of the locker room carries with it a measure of credibility.
What’s more, Whitlock also understands what the NFL is in the eyes of the American sports consciousness.
Football is a celebration of patriotism, of combat, of Americans of all stripes coming together as brothers and sisters for three hours on a Sunday afternoon. When Americans watch football, they are not watching for dissent or division. They want order and unity. And the protesters are harming the league by mixing the two.
Kilmeade said it is largely white owners and fans advocating for order, while black players are on the side of what they see as their right to protest.
Whitlock shut down that line of argument, saying, “Listen, man, my father was a small business man in Indianapolis, and the customer is always right when you go into business. So you have to please your customer base. This isn’t about a handful of players and how they feel.
“I’ll push back. I want DeMaurice Smith, the head of the players’ union, to poll the 1,700 NFL players. How many of them want to kneel during the national anthem and want to continue this fight? I don’t think it’s a majority; I think it’s less than a hundred. If that’s the case, why are you as a union out supporting what a hundred or less players want as opposed to what 1,500, 1,600 other players want done? This should not be a priority because there’s not that many NFL players that want to see this happen.”
If Whitlock is right and indeed a small minority of players are claiming to speak with a louder voice than their numbers should by right allow, the union might just come to the table with the NFL and agree that there is a time and place for protest, and the national anthem at a football game is neither.
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