Kaepernick

[Keith]

Originally Posted by chuck

This is not exactly a scholarly journal.

Et tu, Brute?

[Arky]

Well, sounds like the Texans have elected to go with McGloin and Yates so it seems Kaepernick is not a possibility unless there is another injury. There's another thread for Bob McNair.

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Not to derail but something I find similar is the Breast Cancer Awareness deal. The NFL readily adopted this - every year we get a week or month of pink clothing on the football field. After several years of this, I think most of us are aware of breast cancer and most of us know where to go if we desire to donate to the pink ribbon (and it is a worthy cause). I'm just not quite sure why the NFL continues to do this..... Is the advertising a tax write-off for the NFL? Maybe if they continue with this, they could just drop the "Awareness" part - call it Breast Cancer Research (or something) - cause I don't know about you, but I'm plenty aware of the condition.....

[HPF Bob]

Let's try a hypothetical. Let's say Bob McNair and some buddies start a professional table tennis league and it catches on like wildfire with huge tv contracts and fills 70,000-seat stadia.

Now to get the best players, McNair's new team hires a high percentage of Asian and notably Chinese players. So then the Chinese players begin demanding accommodations for themselves that outrage a certain percentage of the fan base. What is McNair to do?

He can hold firm on the existing rules and tell the players they will just have to live without certain things, causing unhappiness with the player ranks who may boycott or leave for other teams or just not try very hard.

Or he can give in to the player demands which piss off some of his fans who leave and hurt his bottom line.

It's the same dilemma each NFL owner faces. The only difference is they don't stick their foot in their mouths and declare the protests a "Chinese fire drill".

The smart business person will make some minor concessions that he does not think will hurt the bottom line but may reduce the animus of the players.

Right now, I think both sides exaggerate their positions in the extreme. Kneeling during the anthem is not the same as spitting on the flag or disrespecting our military but owners insisting on standing is not the same as the slave owner whipping and beating the slaves. This is the problem I so despise about our current mode of debate. Painting the other side in uberextremist terms does nothing but stifle constructive debate where a compromise can be reached.

[barrett]

Originally Posted by HPF Bob

Let's try a hypothetical. Let's say Bob McNair and some buddies start a professional table tennis league and it catches on like wildfire with huge tv contracts and fills 70,000-seat stadia.

Now to get the best players, McNair's new team hires a high percentage of Asian and notably Chinese players. So then the Chinese players begin demanding accommodations for themselves that outrage a certain percentage of the fan base. What is McNair to do?

He can hold firm on the existing rules and tell the players they will just have to live without certain things, causing unhappiness with the player ranks who may boycott or leave for other teams or just not try very hard.

Or he can give in to the player demands which piss off some of his fans who leave and hurt his bottom line.

It's the same dilemma each NFL owner faces. The only difference is they don't stick their foot in their mouths and declare the protests a "Chinese fire drill".

The smart business person will make some minor concessions that he does not think will hurt the bottom line but may reduce the animus of the players.

Right now, I think both sides exaggerate their positions in the extreme. Kneeling during the anthem is not the same as spitting on the flag or disrespecting our military but owners insisting on standing is not the same as the slave owner whipping and beating the slaves. This is the problem I so despise about our current mode of debate. Painting the other side in uberextremist terms does nothing but stifle constructive debate where a compromise can be reached.

I agree 100% Bob. I don't think George W. Bush was a perfect president but he gave an amazing quote last year at the Dallas Police Officers' Memorial. He said that...

Too often we judge other groups by their worst examples while judging ourselves by our best intentions.

This is worst in arguments where people think painting the other side worse makes their side stronger. So we end up with wild accusations as the norm.

The only thing I'll add to your other comments is that McNair's players/employees were not really protesting during the Anthem. They held arms once but nobody was kneeling. Texans ratings weren't down and Texans seats were being filled. Deshaun Watson was a guarantee of fan interest for another decade. Everything was great in Houston and the owner's bottom line wasn't threatened. We weren't the 49ers with 2 years of ongoing protests. We weren't the Jaguars standing for God save the queen and kneeling for the anthem. McNair had always wanted choir boys on his team and those choir boys had mostly behaved like choir boys. JJ Watt was still helping the franchise bathe in the glow of $40 million raised for hurricane relief. And into that positive situation McNair decided that after years of being opinionless with his NFL peers, he wanted to choose now to assert himself with an all-time boneheaded comment.

So are guys who stood in respect for the anthem feel betrayed by an owner they previously had no complaints about. Our only malcontent with no business sense (Duane Brown) gets to grind his axe. We make a smart football trade that still must alienate some players on the team. And for every militant player in the league who thinks their must be racist owners, we announce that ours is the one they know about.

[Big Texas]

I agree 100% with the quote you mentioned.

I was always of the belief that one could respectfully "agree to disagree". It is not written anywhere that everyone must agree on everything.

Believe what you want about the protests. That's your right and your opinion. However, this day and age mature debate has become childish mudslinging. Rather than me prove my point I'm going to try and destroy the image of the person.

If the media wasn't so hell bent on sensationalism these outlandish and childish comments wouldn't even get off the ground. But every dumb comment is aired and re-aired over and over again.

Just a thought...would this argument be happening if the media just showed the person singing the anthem instead of searching for drama?

With all that said...misery loves company. When people are upset about something they want everyone else to be upset about it too. Which is our current situation.

[chuck]

The drumbeat for the team to look to Kaepernick is becoming ever more insistent, ever louder, from knowledgeable sources local and national. I have seen no one argue that Kaepernick to the Texans does not make football sense.

So as the calls to respond to football logic become louder, I suppose we'll see if ownership responds to its baser, ugly instincts (and to the reactionary instincts it wrongly supposes are held by the majority of its fan base) or if it responds to its imperative to field the best possible team.

I already know what it will do, and so do you. They would rather lose than put out idiot, racist fans.

I of course recognized a variant of that a decade ago or more.

In this case it's especially entertaining because Uncle Rick gave away all their draft picks cleaning up his own mess so there is literally no reason to tank.

And I can't wait for this collusion case to come to trial. In some respects it'll be more fun than all the Trumpspunkers in their orange jumpsuits.

[bikerack]

From my friend...

BOB wants Kaep. Up to management to make It happen. Have talked with his agent repeatedly. Big hurdles still to clear. Coach is so frustrated right now and has no faith in Savage. Neither does the locker room. Signing Kaep would probably bring them back together.