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Super Bowl 52 is just a few days away, and after NFL regular season TV ratings fell by nearly 10% this season on average, one of the biggest questions pundits and sports media have is: Will the Super Bowl ratings be good? If the results of a new survey from Seton Hall University are to be believed, the answer might be no. Seton Hall surveyed 706 Americans across the country, via landlines and cellphones, from Jan. 29 to Jan. 31. The first question asked people how closely they follow the NFL. Of those who said they follow it "very closely,"...

Hours before NFL players across the league took a knee during the national anthem in defiance of President Trump on Sunday, one World War II veteran hosted a protest of his own — in his backyard. "These people have every right to protest," John Middlemas, a 97-year-old farmer from Springfield, Missouri, told his grandson, Brennan Gilmore, before kneeling.

Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine’s youngest son has been placed on probation and ordered to pay $236 in fines and fees in connection with his arrest following a rally for President Donald Trump in Minnesota. Linwood “Woody” Kaine, of Minneapolis, was among eight people arrested in the St. Paul rally in March. He pleaded guilty to a charge of obstructing the legal process and received a 90-day sentence, with 86 days suspended. He served four days in jail.

In September 1975, The Grateful Dead released what was to become its highest chart-topping album for the next twelve years, Blues for Allah. In an interview at the time, the group’s lyricist, Robert Hunter, described the album’s title song as “a requiem for King Faisal of Saudi Arabia, a progressive, democratically-inclined ruler (and incidentally a fan of the Grateful Dead) whose assassination in 1975 shocked us personally.” Hunter went on to note proudly that the lyrics of the album, inspired as it was as much by Bach as by Eastern influences, were printed in Arabic on the back of album....

Baltimore Ravens team president Dick Cass sent a letter to season-ticket holders, suite holders, and sponsors about the noticeable dip in attendance at games this season, and cited the team’s protest during the national anthem as one reason. "The numbers [of no-shows] are higher, and it is noticeable," Cass wrote. "There are a number of reasons for the no-shows, but surely the one-time protest in London has been a factor." [Snip] The NFL's ratings have fallen by nearly 20 percent since players started protesting during the national anthem two years ago.

Prior to the House passing the Republican's tax plan, a female protester crashed the House gallery and removed her top. [Snip] NBC News' Johnathan Allen added the woman was still wearing her bra.

**SNIP** “You hear ‘coward’ and ‘stand up’ and ‘disgrace,’’ Vernon told the New York Post. “It’s fine. As long as nobody comes on the field and touches me. You stay where you at, you’re going to be all right. They have a right. Oh yeah, I hear it all the time.” And then there was the advice: “If they don’t like it, don’t come to the game.’’ And the fact is the fans may be doing exactly that.

Despite total saturation of the UK news cycle, the mainstream media’s “hysterical overdrive” failed Friday to motivate more than a handful of anti-Trump protesters at an organised event outside the U.S. embassy in London. As the nearby shopping streets of Oxford circus surged with pre-Christmas customers Friday night a small band of activists from Stand Up To Racism gathered outside the United States’ Grosvenor Square embassy to wave placards and chant slogans such as “No racist Trump — no state visit” and “Donald Trump stay away — racist, sexist, anti-gay”. The Twitter account of President Donald Trump has been treated...

ST. LOUIS (AP) — A protest forced a large suburban St. Louis shopping mall to close for an hour on one of the year's busiest shopping days, and renewed concerns by protest leaders about how police handle demonstrations. Protesters marched Friday at the St. Louis Galleria mall. Richmond Heights, Missouri, police say seven people were arrested for failure to disperse. One of the seven also was cited for assaulting an officer. Among those arrested was state Rep. Bruce Franks Jr. Activist Darryl Gray says protesters were leaving when police forced a man to the ground. Gray says Franks tried to...

Some NFL owners are considering a change to the league's national anthem policy that would possibly keep players in the locker room when the Star-Spangled Banner is played before football games, according to The Washington Post. Any policy change would have to be discussed after the season. “I think that if players are still kneeling at the end of the year, then it could very well happen,” an unnamed source told The Post.

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Neither rain nor sleet nor a storied football rivalry could keep an angry group of local patriots from turning out on a dank Sunday afternoon during the Bears/Packers game to burn their football jerseys in protest of the way NFL owners have responded to the long-simmering national anthem controversy. Not only did some of these passionate veterans, ranging in age from mid-30s to upper-80s, toss their once beloved jerseys into a metal pit set ablaze near a pond on Aurora's West Side, the charred remains were to be gathered up and mailed to the owners of the teams represented as...

The NFL has taken a beating over players kneeling during the national anthem, but a closer examination shows that the protests are less a story of the league as a whole and more a tale of two liberal cities: San Francisco and Seattle. On any given Sunday, the vast majority of those refusing to stand for “The Star-Spangled Banner” play for the San Francisco 49ers and Seattle Seahawks, teams nestled in famously left-wing locales and led by owners who sought to keep Donald Trump out of the White House. That doesn’t include blips like Sept. 25, which saw nearly 200...

JOIN THE SFGOP ON SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 4TH AT 2:00PM TO PROTEST THE GAS TAX INCREASE On the Divisadero side sidewalk of the ARCO station at the corner of Fell & Divisadero Streets. The California Republican Party is declaring Saturday, November 4, 2017 as #GasTaxtrophe Day! On November 4th, activists from across the state will gather in their communities to demonstrate against the Democrats' harmful new gas tax. We want everyone to know the California Democrats' gas tax is a #GasTaxtrophe.

Last November, a few days after the election, thousands of people gathered for a rally in New York to protest Donald Trump. The Guardian reported on the scale of the Nov. 12 rally at the time: More than 10,000 people indicated on Facebook that they would attend a noon march from Union Square to Trump Tower, the future president’s home and corporate headquarters.As marchers mustered at East 17th Street and Broadway, organisers estimated the turnout at 2,000. As the march began to move, however, the true figure seemed closer to the promised 10,000.Chanting “Not my president!”, the crowd set...

NFL players protesting the national anthem has undoubtedly caused serious damage to the popularity of the National Football League and has also hurt the reputation of league Commissioner Roger Goodell. In fact, the New York Post reported Sunday that Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones has had enough of Goodell and is leading a charge among fellow owners to derail a pending contract extension for the commissioner. Jones has been outspoken about how he would have handled the anthem protests differently, such as threatening to bench players who behave disrespectfully. [Snip] Aside from the obvious problem of allowing player protests during...

The National Football League continues to struggle with furious fans as player protests enter their second month, with ratings for the NFL’s flagship ‘Sunday Night Football’ down a staggering 25% from this time last week. According to Deadline Hollywood, television viewership for the troubled football association continued its free fall from previous weeks, with roughly one quarter fewer fans tuning in as the Detroit Lions faced off against the Pittsburgh Steelers. “With that, as the league and broadcasters have been losing ratings traction and snared in political controversy this season, last night’s Week 8 NFL game is down a hard...

TV network executives are scrambling to solve the NFL ratings decline and are looking to possibly cut games on Thursday to prevent “over-saturation.” According to Sports Business Journal, there are talks to cut “Thursday Night Football” from 18 games a season to eight games. The report states there is a plan to pull games played in the UK back to 1 p.m. ET, or 6 p.m. London time. “Ten years ago, the NFL had 32 game windows through week six,” the publication said. “This year, it is up to 39, a 22 percent increase. It’s even more crowded in college,...

NFL kneelers have started a firestorm regarding our National Anthem and article after article have discussed what the National Anthem means. Although perhaps well intentioned, all of these discussions miss the main issue. The issue is not what the National Anthem might mean to this or that individual but rather why the National Anthem, or in smaller settings the Pledge of Allegiance, is performed before public gatherings. And that why is unity. Before the city council meeting or before a town hall or even yes, before a sporting event the National Anthem is performed as a sign of unity. Before...

An open letter to the NFL players, You graduated high school in 2011. Your teenage years were a struggle. You grew up on the wrong side of the tracks. Your mother was the leader of the family and worked tirelessly to keep a roof over your head and food on your plate. Academics were a struggle for you and your grades were mediocre at best. The only thing that made you stand out is you weighed 225 lbs and could run 40 yards in 4.2 seconds while carrying a football. Your best friend was just like you, except he didn’t...