Eric Reid is Getting Kaepernicked; America Loses
By Ken Reed
“Being rich doesn’t mean you’re smart, honest or fair. It just means you’re rich.”
That’s how John Feinstein ended his column about how former San Francisco 49er Eric Reid is getting punished by rich NFL owners — in the same way former 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick is — for kneeling during the playing of the national anthem.
Reid, a free agent, has started at safety for the 49ers the past five seasons. He’s healthy and in his prime at age 26. There’s clearly no reason why he hasn’t been signed by an NFL team other than the fact he kneeled during the anthem last season.
Feinstein’s concluding sentence gets to the root of the problem in the NFL: Revenue-At-All-Costs rules. NFL owners don’t really give a damn about patriotism, or if they do, it’s well below worshiping the God of Greed on their list of values. Money is all that matters to them. If they feel players kneeling during the anthem is bad public relations, resulting in decreases in stadium attendance and TV ratings, then they are against kneeling. However, on the other hand, if they felt there was huge public sentiment from their key stakeholders in favor of players being allowed to quietly protest during the anthem, they would be totally fine with players kneeling.
NFL owners’ positions on issues of the day are solely driven by what’s best for their wallets, nothing else, including any sense of patriotism.
Do you think I’m overstating that? Well, then how do you explain the NFL’s phony soldier salute? From 2011 to 2014, the Department of Defense paid 14 NFL teams $5.4 million for promotional salutes to military personnel. An example is the New York Jets’ Hometown Heroes promotion. During timeouts, the Jumbotron camera would zoom in on a U.S. soldier. The soldier smiled and waved to the crowd. Fans stood and cheered, bursting with patriotism and happy that their favorite football team was honoring true American heroes. In reality, the whole thing was a marketing scam, just another revenue stream for NFL owners, not a feel-good gesture. Sad.
Back to the anthem debate. Owners, as heads of a private organization known as the National Football League, may very well have the legal right to force players to stand at attention during the national anthem. But does forced patriotism — their definition of patriotism, anyway; I believe peaceful social protests are a patriotic act — really reflect the freedom this country was built on? Denying one’s freedom to quietly make a statement during the national anthem is something a third-world dictator would do. Or, something President Donald Trump, a dictator wannabe would do.
Trump reacted to players kneeling during the anthem by expressing how he thought it should be handled, “Get that son of a bitch off the field right now! Out. He’s fired. He’s fired!” Nice, and very presidential Donald.
At any rate, there’s a bigger issue here than whether or not owners can legally force players to stand for the anthem: Is it an American thing to do?
I turn to David French, a conservative writer for the conservative publication National Review, for wisdom on this topic. French, who also is a veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom, writes:
“Standing for the National Anthem is meaningless if it’s mandated, and such a mandate undermines the essential liberty of free speech. … Private corporations should think twice before using their own economic and cultural power to enforce conformity, even if they are legally empowered to censor their employees. Again, the cure for bad speech is better speech, and free speech cannot flourish in the midst of a culture of censorship.”
French completely disagrees with Trump’s approach to the issue. He believes forcing citizens to stand for the anthem is a losing proposition.
“I want the president to stop demanding that private corporations punish speech he doesn’t like,” writes French.
“If football players — or any American — stand for the flag and the anthem, I want them to do so because of their love for this nation, its people, and its ideals, not because they fear the consequences of dissent. Seek to impose your will, and more men will kneel (if they’re permitted), and when they rise, it will be with resentment in their hearts.”
Finally, I couldn’t agree more with French when he writes, “[I]f I believe a person is wrong, I seek to persuade them to change course — not mandate that they conform their speech or behavior to my demands.”
Exactly. The American Way is about establishing and protecting a free marketplace of ideas. May the best ideas ultimately prevail.
As Feinstein points out, NFL owners are rich, not necessarily smart. Mandating players to stand at attention during the playing of the national anthem isn’t patriotic. It’s stupid.
And it undermines the spirit of freedom that is the very foundation of the United States of America.
— Ken Reed, Sports Policy Director, League of Fans
Sports Forum Podcast
Episode #29 – League of Fans’ Sports Forum podcast: The Honorable Tom McMillen Visits League of Fans’ Sports Forum – McMillen is a former All-American basketball player, Olympian, Rhodes Scholar and U.S. Congressman, and has a long involvement with the President’s Council on Physical Fitness and Sport (now called the President’s Council on Fitness, Sports and Nutrition). We discuss the state of college athletics today, given the pressures of NIL, the transfer portal, sports gambling and huge media contracts. McMillen then provides great perspective on the poor state of physical fitness our young people are experiencing today.
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Episode #28 – League of Fans’ Sports Forum podcast: A Chat With Mano Watsa, a Leading Basketball and Life Educator – Watsa is President of PGC Basketball, the largest education basketball camp in the world. We discuss problems in youth sports today.
Episode #27 – League of Fans’ Sports Forum podcast: Kids’ Sports: How We Can Take Back the Game and Restore Quality Family Time In the Process – Linda Flanagan is author of “Take Back the Game: How Money and Mania Are Ruining Kids’ Sports and Why It Matters.” We discuss how commercialized and professionalized youth sports are hurting kids and their families.
Episode #26 – League of Fans’ Sports Forum podcast: How Can We Fix Youth Sports? – John O’Sullivan is Founder and CEO of Changing the Game Project and author of “Changing the Game: The Parents Guide to Raising Happy, High Performing Athletes and Giving Youth Sports Back to Our Kids.”
Episode #25 – League of Fans’ Sports Forum podcast: Physical Education Should Be a Critical Component of K-12 School Design – Michael Horn is co-founder of the Clayton Christensen Institute for Disruptive Innovation.
Episode #24 – League of Fans’ Sports Forum podcast: Mental Health and Athletes: Ending the Stigma – Nathan Braaten and Taylor Ricci are the founders of Dam Worth It, a non-profit created to end the stigma around mental health at colleges and universities through sport, storytelling, and community creation.
Media
"How We Can Save Sports" author Ken Reed appears on Fox & Friends to explain how there's "too much adult in youth sports."
Ken Reed appears on Mornings with Gail from KFKA Radio in Colorado to discuss bad parenting in youth athletics.
“Should College Athletes Be Paid?” Ken Reed on The Morning Show from Wisconsin Public Radio
Ken Reed appears on KGNU Community Radio in Colorado (at 02:30) to discuss equality in sports and Title IX.
Ken Reed appears on the Ralph Nader Radio Hour (at 38:35) to discuss his book The Sports Reformers: Working to Make the World of Sports a Better Place, and to talk about some current sports issues.
- Reed Appears on Ralph Nader Radio Hour League of Fans’ sports policy director, Ken Reed, Ralph Nader and the New York Times’ Tyler Kepner discussed a variety of sports issues on Nader’s radio show as well as Reed’s updated book, How We Can Save Sports: A Game Plan. Reed's book was released in paperback in February, and has a new introduction and several updated sections.
League of Fans is a sports reform project founded by Ralph Nader to fight for the higher principles of justice, fair play, equal opportunity and civil rights in sports; and to encourage safety and civic responsibility in sports industry and culture.
Vanderbilt Sport & Society - On The Ball with Andrew Maraniss with guest Ken Reed, Sports Policy Director for League of Fans and author of How We Can Save Sports: A Game Plan
Sports & Torts – Ken Reed, Sports Policy Director, League of Fans – at the American Museum of Tort Law
Books