Grasping for solutions to stop its financial hemorrhaging, the NFL is proposing a $100 million fix that will satisfy the protesting players enough to convince them to stand for the national anthem.
While many players are willing to consider the offer, several others are resisting, which means that the NFL’s grand idea is dead in the water.
I’m afraid what the NFL doesn’t understand is that they are not dealing with rational people. They are dealing with spoiled millionaire crybabies who don’t mind killing the golden goose for a little ego stroke.
Depending on the point of view, the NFL has either reached out to its players with an unprecedented financial offer to help fund social justice charities, or it is offering hush money to end the national anthem protests that have dominated headlines and feuds all season, according to the New York Post.
The NFL submitted a proposal to players Monday that would commit “nearly $100 million” to various charities that focus on social justice and causes important to African-American communities, ESPN reported. This initiative would surpass all of the NFL’s current charitable campaigns, including its support for the military and breast cancer awareness. The NFL also hopes this would put an end to the players’ protests during the national anthem.
“I think it’s important for the NFL – they very openly said that they wanted to help us and be behind us and support us,” Jets linebacker DeMario Davis said. “If we can have an ‘agreement’ to work together, it just shows that they are doing exactly what they said they’re going to do.”
Not all of the players who are part of the Players’ Coalition, a group led by Philadelphia’s Malcolm Jenkins and the recently retired Anquan Boldin, are on board. The offer from the NFL is for “at least $89 million” over a period of seven years, according to the report. Players would be expected to kick in $250,000 per team per year at the local level.
“I’m not going to say that’s it – that it’s the end all, be all,” Jets offensive lineman Kelvin Beachum said. “It’s a step in the right direction and we’re going to continue to have a conversation.”
At least two of the players in the coalition — 49ers Eric Reid and Dolphins safety Michael Thomas — are withdrawing from the group. Reid, who was the second NFL player to protest alongside Colin Kaepernick and said he speaks to the ex-NFL quarterback “every day,” said he has a problem with the way Jenkins and Boldin are running the coalition.
“Malcolm continues to have conversations on his own with the NFL, and the Players’ Coalition is his organization,” Reid told ESPN. “When we agreed to be a part of the Players’ Coalition, we were under the impression that it would be our organization. We were under the impression that we would all have equal say in that organization.
“But we’ve come to find out that it’s actually Malcolm and Anquan’s organization. Nobody else really has a stake in the organization. Malcolm actually wants us to — he calls it invest, I call it donate — to the company to pay salaries for his staff. But again, we would have no equity in the organization.”
The anthem protests, which began last season when Kaepernick, then employed and with the 49ers, sat and then kneeled to raise awareness for the mistreatment of black people by law enforcement and other racial inequality issues, have received exponentially more attention this season.
A big reason for that is President Trump’s series of social media attacks on the NFL and its players, and a rally at which the president said NFL owners should say about a protester, “Get that son of a b—h off the field.” The discussion has strayed from racial inequalities to perceived disrespect of the military, an agenda that Trump and others have pushed.
The NFL reportedly has considered not having its teams on the field next season during the anthem as another option to mitigate the backlash about the protests.