Nobody likes to be told how to do their business.
Believe it or not, there are very few businesses that want even the President of the United States’ opinion on how they should conduct their business.
That being said, the National Football League would have done well to have pocketed its pride this past weekend when responding to the comments made by President Donald Trump at a Friday night Alabama rally for Sen. Luther Strange.
Trump, as only Trump can do, told the NFL owners in a very colorful manner what they should do to players who protest by kneeling during the National Anthem.
Trump’s comments succeeded in firing up his base, but they also succeeded in firing up the owners and players around the NFL, and not in a good way.
On Sunday, most every team had some sort of protest, whether it was kneeling during the National Anthem, or simply not coming out of the locker room while the Star Spangled Banner was performed.
The trap that Roger Goodell, the league’s owners and the players fell into this past weekend is that they are now protesting Donald Trump.
The original protest against “social injustice” that earned former San Francisco quarterback Colin Kaepernick headlines, as well as an unofficial league banishment, has been lost.
And this is the tricky part for the NFL, which has seen a decline in ratings over the past few years.
Keep in mind, there are a number of reasons the NFL’s ratings are suffering.
There are low-rate cable packages that no longer include ESPN. There’s the ever-growing fan base in college football, and there are the recent studies that have shined the light on the detrimental physical toll the game has had on many of its players over the years.
If the league continues to engage the President, they will soon be able to add Donald Trump to that list.
Trump is rough around the edges. He flies off at the mouth, and he has critics on both sides of the aisle, but he also has a track record of destroying his competition. This is a lesson that Ted “Lyin’ Ted” Cruz, Marco “Little Marco” Rubio and Jeb “Low Energy” Bush all learned after they engaged Trump on a personal level during the Republican primary.
All three of those candidates walked away feeling very good about their messages when it came to ripping Trump, but each one limped away thoroughly destroyed.
The same can be said for Democratic party nominee Hilary Clinton, as she and her supporters were shocked last November when Trump won the presidency in the electoral college.
Trump’s approach is less about drawing large numbers to himself and more about pulling large numbers from his opponents. Whether that is his intention is irrelevant, because that is usually the result.
Trump has the power and the proven ability to further hurt the NFL’s ratings. He has equal power and ability to affect the attendance at these games.
That’s not to say there isn’t room for standing up for principles and protesting for any number of causes, but the league has got to pick its battles carefully.
Goodell may think he and his employees are going to war with the President, but when they actually do go to the front lines, they will recognize many in Trump’s army, because a lot of them used to occupy the seats of the league’s stadiums.
