The NFL continues to be dragged down by the weight of the anti-American anthem protests.
Commissioner Roger Goodell has made some overtures the NFL got some terrible news about their TV ratings to win back fan loyalty, but he’s been slow to act.
Now the NFL just got more bad news about the annual Hall of Fame game ratings.
Leftism Creeps Into the NFL
Free agent quarterback Colin Kaepernick unleashed a virus that has spread throughout the league when he protested the national anthem back in August 2016.
Kaepernick had recently become indoctrinated into radical left beliefs after taking a course involving critical race theory.
Any social sciences or humanities discipline that ends in “theory” or “studies” is really a course in warmed-over Marxism under a different name.
All of a sudden, Kaepernick was talking about how America was an imperialist evil, and wearing t-shirts praising Fidel Castro.
His radicalization was obvious to everyone, except for perhaps the players that followed his lead.
Although Kaepernick didn’t do much talking other than a sporadic ideologically-charged social media post, other players and leftists in the mainstream were happy to carry water for him.
They claimed Kaepernick wasn’t protesting the country and the military, but was only raising awareness on the issue of police brutality against black people.
However, Kaepernick’s own words made it very clear that his intentions were staunchly anti-American.
Patriotic Fans Push Back
Players followed him down the rabbit nonetheless, but tried to maintain they weren’t being unpatriotic.
The American people weren’t buying the double talk.
Fans canceled season tickets, stopped watching on television, and even burned memorabilia.
Teams like the New Orleans Saints and Baltimore Ravens apologized to their season ticket holders for the blatant anti-American protests.
Commissioner Goodell enacted a new policy that required players to stand for the anthem or remain in the locker room, but soon buckled.
The league and the players are currently hammering out a new policy, which will likely anger the majority of the country that remains patriotic.
Ratings Reach 20-year Low
With the regular season rapidly approaching and no deal in place, the pre-season officially kicked off at the Hall of Fame game in Canton, OH.
However, the results weren’t good at all for the NFL.
Ratings for the game were abysmal.
According to Sports Business Journal:
“Thursday night’s Hall of Fame game between the Bears and Ravens register 6.78 million viewers. That’s a 17.8-percent decline from last year’s Cowboys-Cardinals game, and the smallest broadcast audience since 1998, when 6.3 million watched the Buccaneers and the Steelers.”
A 20-year low in ratings has to be terribly concerning for the league, and this comes on the heels of a drop in advertising revenue, and a two-year drop in fan popularity.
Perhaps the most frustrating aspect for the league is that the number of protesting players is relatively small.
Out of a league of over 1,700 players, fewer than 10% actually protested. Most players aren’t political, or they’d rather contribute to social causes without disrespecting and dividing the country.
Some players like Adam “Pacman” Jones, Tamba Hali, and Dallas Cowboys starting quarterback Dak Prescott have spoken out against the protests for the silent majority, but the threat of ostracization is too high for many players.
The NFL is trending in the wrong direction, and the anthem protests are an obvious reason why.