NFL Players Protest

From the very beginning, I never understood why NFL players protested during the national anthem. Let me clarify, I completely understand why players would protest in general. There are very serious social and safety issues that are routinely ignored by the public (with no practical solutions ever actually implemented).  Professional athletes, and all public figures, have an unique opportunity (perhaps an obligation) to use their platform to advocate for issues that concern them. When those issues are valid (based in reality), it makes their actions all the more important. So I believe and support the NFL players raising awareness of issues facing their community. But why during the anthem. Yes, it got a lot of attention, but the end goal was social change, not attention for attention's sake. The entire conversation has been co-opted by the media, and others, as a general battle of freedom of speech against being unpatriotic. Although those are interesting topics, they are missing the original point. Yes, I believe the players should be able to protest during the anthem, but wouldn't there achieve their goal more efficiently by protesting during the kick-off, or during the first play of the game, or at the start of the 4th quarter, or basically any other time that has to be on TV.  What if, prior to the kick-off, players help up both fists in protest, holding their hands up one second for every person killed by a police officer that week.  That would usually be over 20 seconds, which connects their protest to something very tangible and very wrong.

Colin Kaepernick might have had the best intentions, but there also needs to be an effective strategy to achieve real goals. Whether they should be allowed to or not, protesting during the anthem just seems counter-productive.

The reason why I'm writing this now, is that the NFL just made a new rule stating that players cannot protest during the anthem, although they have the choice to stay in the locker room if they do not want be on the field at that time. They also said that individual teams can decide on penalties for players who break the rules. This just seems like a terribly short-sided rule for so many reason. Players will not be allowed to conduct "acts deemed disrespectful" during the anthem.  Who decides that that is? Kneeling, yes?  Turing your back, yes? Hold fist up, maybe? Hold hand up, maybe? It will just lead to more problems. Plus what if one team decides to bench any player who protests, but other teams do the opposite (the Jets owner just said that players should be free to protest and the team would pay any fine given to the player). There are just so many potential problems and most significantly, nobody NOBODY is talking about the underlying issue of police brutality. 

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