The NFL season is off to a rocky start.
Concerns over the Wuhan virus have left stadiums largely empty, which is a bad look for the league.
But the NFL’s ratings are in freefall because of one giant mistake.
The NFL didn’t learn its lesson from anti-American anthem protests started by former quarterback Colin Kaepernick in 2016.
The league saw a massive decline in viewership, but slowly clawed back in the appeal after the protests subsided.
But now the league has committed to going full “woke,” and the ratings have been unkind.
According to Sports Media Watch, the NFL lost one million viewers overall from week two.
The primetime Thursday Night Football game between the Miami Dolphins and Jacksonville Jaguars drew 1.3 million fewer eyeballs than the previous week’s game.
NBC saw a 7% drop in ratings and 4% decline in overall viewers.
And CBS experienced a 19% drop in ratings and 11% decrease in overall viewers.
None of the first three weeks of the season have performed well in terms of viewership, but the Thursday Night Football season opener that went full “woke” saw a 16% slide over last year’s opener.
The NFL committed to playing the unofficial black national anthem “Lift Every Voice and Sing” before the “Star-Spangled Banner,” which prompted some players to stand for the first, then kneel for the second.
A similarly ugly episode happened in 2017 when an NFL game was played in London, and players kneeled for the American national anthem, then stood for “God Save the Queen.”
The so-called gestures for unity are actually dividing the country.
Sports are the ultimate meritocracy, and they’ve done more to bring people together from all walks of life for a common purpose.
But the healing power of sports is being damaged by the radical left who aim to turn everything into a political battle.
The NFL has yoked itself to the Black Lives Matter movement, which is an openly Marxist organization.
The entire point of the group is to sow racial discord and undermine American capitalism.
The players and the league don’t realize they’re partnering up with an organization that’s hellbent on their destruction.
However, people might slowly be waking up.
Members of the Pittsburgh Steelers refused to wear the name of a police shooting victim on their helmets after they learned he’d committed a drive-shooting before encountering the cops.
Also, according to polling, Black Lives Matter is now under water with the American people, and the group scrubbed its radical “what we believe” section from the website.
They deleted talk of undermining the nuclear family and affirming “queer” identities.
Unfortunately for the NFL, they’re already speeding toward a cliff.
They seem to have understood the error of their ways, and broadcasts simply aren’t showing the national anthem.
Perhaps the most insidious aspect of the radical left’s incursion into sports is that they’ve successfully convinced players to kneel for the anthem, or they’ve successfully forced broadcasters not to show the anthem.
When spreading chaos is the main goal, any disruption is a victory.
