ESPN provides an inside look at the fecklessness of both the NFL league office and the owners:
Going forward, however, some owners preferred a league-wide directive. Dan Snyder, the Washington Redskins’ owner and who declined to comment through a spokesman, argued that the protests needed to end because of the danger that the issue posed to the league’s bottom line. A “$40 million” NFL sponsor was considering pulling out, he told his fellow owners. Snyder kept repeating “$40 million” to add emphasis, amusing a clique of owners who did the math and realized that, after the players’ cut of the shared revenue, it amounted to considerably less than $1 million per club — hardly a game-changing sum for a league that last year had an average per-team profit of $101 million.
In the meeting, many owners wanted to speak, but the discussion soon was “hijacked,” in the words of one owner, by Jones, a $1 million contributor to Trump’s inaugural committee fund and who declined comment through a spokesman. The blunt Hall of Famer mentioned that he had spoken by phone, more than once over the past 24 hours, with Trump. Jones said the president, who only a few years ago tried to buy the Buffalo Bills, had no intention of backing down from his criticism of the NFL and its players. Jones — who a day earlier for Monday Night Football in Arizona had orchestrated a team-wide kneeling before the anthem ahead of rising to stand when it started to play — repeated his refrain that the protests weren’t good for the NFL in the long run. Most agreed, but some felt that even if the league did lose a small percentage of fans due to the protests, it also could gain a new audience. There was a general, if fanciful, consensus that even a short-term financial hit could benefit the league in the long term, especially if the league and the union could join in solidarity behind a single plan. That’s how the league’s marketing department was planning to proceed, even if some of the rough ideas fell flat. One idea had all players wearing a patch on their jerseys that would read, “Team America.” An owner briefed on the proposal simply shook his head: “We need to do better than that.”
By the time Jones concluded his remarks — and by the time the meeting ended in the early evening — nobody had pitched a concrete plan about how to move forward.
Apparently Jerry has had enough of everyone pussyfooting around the players.
Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones said Sunday any player who disrespects the flag will not play.
Jones’ comments, the strongest made on the anthem controversy, came after he was asked about Vice President Mike Pence leaving the game in Indianapolis early after several San Francisco 49ers players took a knee during the national anthem.
“I know this, we cannot … in the NFL in any way give the implication that we tolerate disrespecting the flag,” he said following the Cowboys’ 35-31 loss to the Green Bay Packers. “We know that there is a serious debate in this country about those issues, but there is no question in my mind that the National Football League and the Dallas Cowboys are going to stand up for the flag. So we’re clear.”
Translation: I told you Trump wouldn’t back down and the fans obviously hate it. So knock it off, because it’s bad for bidness.