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'Kneeling or wearing a Black Lives Matter T-shirt didn't go hand in hand with supporting black lives,' Orlando Magic forward Jonathan Isaac said. 'Everyone is made in the image of God.'⁣ “Kneeling or wearing a Black Lives Matter T-shirt didn’t go hand in hand with supporting black lives,” Isaac said. “I believe that my life has been supported through the Gospel, everyone is made in the image of God.”⁣Isaac is a faithful Christian who has preached publicly on several occasions. After the game, the first question reporters asked was whether he believes black lives do matter? “Absolutely,” he responded, going...

The inmates really are running the asylum in the NFL. It's amazing any coach would put up with this garbage. Rivera and the owner of the team certainly can stop this punk from protesting and should.

The NFL players are at it again - taking a knee when they should be standing proudly for the National Anthem. Numerous players, from different teams, wanted to show their “outrage” at something that most of them are unable to define. They make a fortune doing what they love...... .....Be happy, be cool! A football game, that fans are paying soooo much money to watch and enjoy, is no place to protest. Most of that money goes to the players anyway. Find another way to protest. Stand proudly for your National Anthem or be Suspended Without Pay!

On Tuesday, NFL owners put three hours aside for a privileged session to speak—amongst themselves and family members—about the most sensitive of topics. One was how the league will handle players kneeling during the national anthem going forward. An idea being floated in the room goes like this: It would be up to the home team on whether both teams come out of the locker room for the anthem, and, should teams come out, 15-yard penalties could be assessed for kneeling. The league is currently being sued by Colin Kaepernick and Eric Reid, with the two unsigned free agents alleging...

While national anthem protests have slowed around the NFL, it has still dominated national conversation throughout this season. So what if such protests — namely kneeling — were to surface at the Super Bowl? Fred Gaudelli, the executive producer of the Super Bowl, told reporters Tuesday night that the network would indeed capture any kneeling at the game. "It was a pretty big story in our country this fall,” Gaudelli said Tuesday. “The Super Bowl is a live event, just like ‘Sunday Night Football.’ When you’re covering a live event, you’re covering whats happening. “So if there are players that...

A few weekends ago, at a seersucker-in-November southern horse-racing event I attended with some lovely and friendly people who will nevertheless be the first ones taken out when the revolution comes, a family friend, an older white man, asked me what I, the one sportswriter he knew, thought of the kneeling NFL players. I told him that while I stand for the anthem myself, I supported the players’ right to express themselves politically and encouraged him to worry less about the kneeling and more about what the players were trying to say. He snorted and said he was done with...

In the late 1990s, when the Clinton White House was under siege amid revelations of the president’s affair with Monica Lewinsky and efforts by Congress to impeach him, it fell on Joe Lockhart, then the White House spokesman, day after day to defend his boss. But unlike many of his predecessors, he did not just take his marching orders. In countless meetings with the president and his advisers, Lockhart helped shape the message he would convey, and he aggressively pressed it to reporters. “He was out there, he was on point, he was wearing his cleats,” said Doug Sosnik, an...

The debate over NFL player protests during the national anthem has become so big within the league that it has delayed the completion of commissioner Roger Goodell's contract extension, league sources told ESPN. Goodell's deal is still expected to be completed and has been papered, sources told ESPN, but the process has been slowed while the overwhelming majority of the NFL's attention has been diverted to handling the anthem issue, which has affected TV ratings, merchandise sales and the country's feelings about football. Had the issue not existed, Goodell's contract might have been completed at last week's owners meeting in...

Cowboys owner Jerry Jones has gone to great lengths in recent weeks to ensure his voice was heard publicly about his displeasure over any NFL player not standing for the national anthem, and while he slipped out of last week's owner's meetings in New York without speaking to the media, league sources said he was quite vocal during Wednesday's session. Jones was the only owner to rail against the handful of players who are still regularly kneeling, standing or staying in the locker room during the playing of the anthem, the sources said, pronouncing his disagreement with how the NFL...

A group of House Democrats on Thursday urged Vice President Pence to reimburse taxpayers the cost of his travel this month to Indianapolis for an NFL game he abruptly left after players kneeled during the national anthem. In a letter to Pence, five House Democrats demanded the vice president pay back the expenses of attending the game, where the Indianapolis Colts faced off against the San Francisco 49ers. A CNN report estimated that Pence’s travel to and from Indiana cost taxpayers about $242,500, which doesn’t include the cost of Secret Service or advance staff. The Democratic lawmakers asked that Pence...

Seattle Seahawks defensive lineman Michael Bennett said that before NFL players and the league can move forward with their conversations about working together on social causes, the issue of Colin Kaepernick's unemployment must be addressed. "I think the first step to even being able to even have a conversation is making sure that Colin Kaepernick gets an opportunity to play in the NFL," Bennett said Wednesday. "I think before we even negotiate anything about whether we sit, whether we stand [during the national anthem], it should be a negotiation about opening up the doors for Colin Kaepernick and giving him...

The national anthem football controversy continues to have an impact at the high school level. The Des Moines Register reports 13 members of the Ames High School band walked off the field before playing the national anthem on Friday night. This happened before the school hosted Lincoln on the football field. Earlier on Friday, student leaders read a statement to their classmates saying, "the decision to change from a patriotic USA to pink-out theme for the student section was the decision of the Ames High student body alone. Is this political? Maybe. But we are proud of how our students...

Ratings for the National Football League are off substantially this season , and of course nobody at the league has the slightest idea why. It can't be due to the ungrateful arrogance of has-been 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick, or the increasing politicization of the sport by lefty sportwriters (and they're all lefties) and ESPN. No, it must be something else: The NFL has a ratings problem. The causes are many, and the leading cause is certainly up for debate. But that isn’t stopping the NFL from denying that the problem has some controversial undercurrents – or that the problem exists...