This week, team owners in the NFL met and decided to introduce a new rule to force players to stand during the national anthem played before games, or face a series of fines.
Ostensibly, this decision was a response to players kneeling during the anthem last season, a movement against police brutality of African Americans and other U.S. minorities, led in 2016 by former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick. Ironically, he decided to kneel instead of sit, out of respect for the flag at the advice of a close friend who is a veteran. Anyway, that’s just more nuance that’s gotten lost in the noise.
Speaking of noise, this was not a bold, decisive move by a group of leaders, it was a cowardly capitulation to the bully-in-chief, who hijacked a peaceful, symbolic protest over the targeted extra-judicial killings of black men and women and other people of color, as well as police brutality, harassment, and ongoing racial and ethnic discrimination. Everyone knows, in America, being wealthy (or educated, I should add) doesn’t buy your way out of the racial hierarchy or its consequences. Just ask the most recent high profile victim in the news, a Milwaukee Bucks rookie who was surrounded by five white officers and tazed to the ground in January while talking calmly–all over a …wait for it…parking violation.
The bully-in-chief decided to use race-baiting language and appeals to fear and ignorance to reframe the peaceful protest of athletes against injustice (in the 21st century, for goodness sake) as a question of patriotism. He fanned the flames this week when he added protestors should leave the country. (This guy.) So, if you oppose the protest you are patriotic. For some, it seems that shooting unarmed civilians has become the ultimate measure of patriotism.
Meanwhile, the NFL’s so-called patriotism is compromised. The celebration of militarism during games is simply a corporate arrangement between the league and the Department of Defense as part of its recruitment strategy, with millions of dollars in exchange, as evidenced in a report by Senators John McCain and Jeff Flake in 2015. While the Star Spangled Banner first started being played before games from 1941 as a show of patriotism during World War II, players did not come out onto the field for it until 2009. Before that, players only came out for it during the Super Bowl and after September 11. Our collective memory is painfully short.
In the midst of all the talking head controversy over the season, the players had proposed many ideas for how the league, which has a significant number of African American players, could make a positive statement through its support of ongoing player initiatives to help and support communities left behind, build police-community relations, and other moves that would bring all Americans together. After all, the last time I checked, NFL is America’s favorite sport. The Super Bowl is pretty much a national holiday. Just about everyone is into football.
At the same time, for the players, many if not most, have family and friends in the military (like many of us do — myself included), or who are police officers or first responders or teachers or nurses, basically all the people who form the backbone of our society. Of course the players love the country; they love the sport they’ve dedicated their lives to being the best at; and they want, I think, more than anything, not to have to protest the growing ugly undercurrent of hatred that threatens all of the progress (through blood and tears and yes, peaceful protest) this country has made over the past two and half centuries. Yet here we are.
But I digress…
Supposedly, the decision to force players to stand on the field during the anthem was all about the financial bottom line, with the owners’ wallets supposedly taking a hit. (Some have argued, however, that declining NFL ratings for the still highly profitable league have little to do with the protests and more to do with the coming to grips with its ultra-violent nature and potential lifelong health impacts facing players, who have sustained repeated head trauma since high school or earlier, and parents turning their kids away from football as a competitive sport).
But let us say the silent anti-police violence protests during the anthem were the most significant cause of declining ratings. On one hand, in a capitalist society, we understand that profits are the ultimate rationale for any business decision. But for those of us who embrace triple-bottom-line thinking, it’s woefully shortsighted and misguided. If you take it to the extreme (i.e. a single-minded pursuit of profits, with all costs and consequences, be damned) you do things like pay your workers a pittance, offer no benefits, work them every waking hour if you can until they die, provide no health care, ravage the earth, discard waste indiscriminately, steal land and resources, monopolize markets so you can charge as much as you can, all in the effort to minimize costs and maximize profits. In this case, you side with hatred and ignorance and injustice to put a few more coins in your pocket. Morality is not part of that picture. Just profit. In fact, business since the industrial revolution has operated that way. Which is why we are the state we are in–threatened with planetary and social breakdown. It’s why we’re on the brink, and it’s what so many of us are fighting against.
I almost jumped out of my chair yesterday morning over what one sports commentator, Max Kellerman of ESPN, said in response to the owners’ whole approach to the player protests (which has basically been to stick their heads in the sand, then declare a rule from behind closed doors). He said it was reactionary and the owners need to find their own moral compass and let it guide them. This is exactly what I talk about as one of the essential shifts towards transformative leadership. Before questions of style, or worrying about if employees or your team are adhering to the company line, are you clear on your own inner compass? Are you in tune with your deep sense of purpose? What do you want your life and legacy to be about?
But I digress again…
The NFL owners didn’t consult with their players in making this rule. They decided to use the stick as motivation. Classic wrong move (I also talk about why carrot and stick incentives always fail, despite their prevalent use among US businesses in my free training.)
As a result, resistance is already mounting, with the players association reviewing the rules to see if it violates their collective bargaining agreement. (There is so much irony in the fact that the highest paid sports leagues in America are covered by collective bargaining, while unions have all but disappeared for most workers and the right to unionize or collectively act are under attack (see the latest supreme court ruling.)
But I digress yet again…
It will be interesting, at the very least, to watch this play out, but I guarantee that the owners’ move will backfire. Leadership is not done behind closed doors. Leadership does not always put profit above humanity or nature. Leadership is not by decree.
If you want to know more about what effective, transformative leadership could look like, just do the opposite of whatever NFL team owners do and check out my free training webinar.
