Report: NFL Likely to Allow Player Protests During National Anthem

Getty Images_Jim Rogash
Getty Images/Jim Rogash
Warner Todd Huston

According to reports, the NFL will in all likelihood allow player protests during the playing of the national anthem.

An NFL source has told the Front Office Sports that as play resumes, the league will allow protests during the anthem and will not fine teams or players.

“We anticipate taking the same approach we’ve taken the last number of years,” the source told the site. “No discipline will be enacted. No player has ever been fined.”

The source added that the league is working with the NFL Players Association on a new policy concerning the protests.

The insider’s leak comes on the tail of a video posted to social media by NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell in which he says the league was “wrong for not listening to players.”

“We, the National Football League, condemn racism and the systematic oppression of black people,” Goodell said in the video posted after a group of players posted their own video demanding that the league respond to the death of Minneapolis man George Floyd. “We, the National Football League, admit we were wrong for not listening to NFL players earlier and encourage all to speak out and peacefully protest.”

After Goodell posted his video, and as a leading critic of the idea of protesting during the Star-Spangled Banner, President Trump jumped to Twitter and asked the NFL chief if he was going to permit anthem protests.

“Could it be even remotely possible that in Roger Goodell’s rather interesting statement of peace and reconciliation, he was intimating that it would now be O.K. for the players to KNEEL, or not to stand, for the National Anthem, thereby disrespecting our Country & our Flag?” Trump tweeted on Sunday.

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