Today, Explained - Kneecapped

Episode Date: May 23, 2018

Today the National Football League released a statement saying players will be fined if they kneel during the national anthem. It’s the ultimate response to a protest that began with former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick in 2016, and became a cause célèbre for President Trump. SB Nation’s Tyler Tynes explains the significance of this moment. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello? Johnny, can you hear me? I can hear you just fine, yeah. Your phone came up as today explained. Isn't that cool? As if that's a person. Yeah, that's like really cool. It didn't say anything about quip electric toothbrushes, did it?

No, that was kind of inferred, you know, with the whole thing. I didn't even have to see it to know. Where are you right now? I'm on a ferry that is loaded with people coming back from a little island here near Hong Kong. Holy smokes. I want to hear all about what you're seeing, what you're hearing, what you're doing. Oh, man. I'll just tell you this.

It has a lot to do with buns. Okay. Buns? Okay, buns? Tyler Tynes, staff writer at SB Nation. The NFL announced today that it will fine teams if players kneel during the national anthem. So what exactly did the NFL say? The NFL made it very clear they had a six-point stance for the 32-member clubs. Unanimously,

all the owners wrote at this end, they said that all team and league personnel on the field shall stand and show respect for the anthem. We don't know what that means. The game operations manual

will be revised to show this. Personnel who choose not to stand for the anthem can stay in the locker room or a similar location off the field. A club's going to be fined by the league if its personnel are on the field and do not stand and show respect for the field. A club's going to be fined by the league if its

personnel are on the field and do not stand and show respect for the anthem. Each club can develop its own work rules. So they're making their own workplace rules now. So it's like the league will impose a fine, but it's up to the team to then decide how they kind of want to go about this. And then lastly, the commissioner is going to impose appropriate discipline as the league sees it on league personnel who also do not stand and show respect for the flag or the anthem. So is it already written in stone or do teams have to sign on to this or has that already happened? It's final. It'll be updated for the next season as soon as football starts. As soon as any organized NFL football starts, this rule is on the books. It is likely going to happen by preseason, so August. Okay. And this just happened a couple

hours ago, but have players said anything? Have the players union come out and said anything about this? The players union has come out and basically said that the NFL didn't choose to consult the union with the development of the new policy. And so the representatives for players in the league, they weren't consulted for this at all. And so if the players don't have representation to see exactly what this alleged compromise is going to be that the NFL is positing, there's no actuality here, right? Like it's what the league has decided. It's what the league has mandated. It's what the majority white owners in the league have said is okay. And the black players now have to follow this rule of law. Were other rules being considered too? Where did this fall in with the other rules

they announced? I mean, these are completely different than all the other rules. What are the other ones like? All the other rules are football? I mean, these are completely different than all the other rules. What are the other ones like? All the other rules are football rules, right? Like about kickoffs, about tackling. Okay. I mean, like very simple rules for the game. Did this all start with Colin Kaepernick? This is certainly not new, but what has happened and what has subsequently come about is definitely different than anything we have seen in sports.

So could you take us through the timeline of how this happened in the NFL? In the summer of 2016, there were already a gaggle of 60 to 80 players who were on different text message chains who were consistently saying after Philando Castile was murdered, after Alton Sterling was murdered, what could they do? What could they actually do to either do something on the field or create substantive change? And so at that moment, Colin Kaepernick then in August in a preseason game started sitting. And he sat for about two games and no one noticed

except a black reporter named Steve Weishi at the NFL Network. Okay, so it starts with Colin Kaepernick for two weeks sitting down. How does it then start to grow into like a more league-wide movement? Every single week you have Kaepernick in a new city,'re seeing how that city reacts how that owner reacts how those coaches react how those players react and it's a 17-week tour colin kaepernick's protest against racial injustice seems to be gaining traction san francisco 49ers quarterback knelt during the national anthem at the niners la rams game on monday night more and more players now start to join in teammate eric reed joined him and players on both teams to join in. Teammate Eric Reid joined

him and players on both teams raised fists in solidarity. Now you have Megan Rapinoe, who was one of the first women after the WNBA, one of the first white people, to actually take a knee during athletic play. You have NBA players who are linking arms, even though it's this non-dangerous kind of show of respect. And you have more players who are being forced to link arms, not only by teams, but also people putting up black power salutes, Malcolm Jenkins and Marcus Peters. You also have people who are sitting for the anthem, Michael Bennett and the entire black offensive line of the Raiders.

And it is starting to change and morph into this moment where the NFL no longer has control over what they thought was controllable. Just to be clear, how many owners of football teams in the NFL are black? None. No black ones. Zero. One person of color, Shid Khan, who owns the Jaguars. But even he was a very staunch Trump supporter, almost sent a million dollars to his campaign.

So owners originally were like, no, this is corny. We don't like this. You know, we don't agree with this. You know, this is my workplace. Black people, y'all are going to sit down. Listen to the rule of the law that's in my workplace that I own and operate. There was some speak here from Jeffrey Lurie and from Arthur Blank and from Christopher Johnson who owns the Jets. And that's all well and good. But no one was risking their money to stand with what black people had always been saying. And so that was the problem. So owners didn't have control. And then it kind of broke out into the next year once Callan Kaepernick had been blackballed and he's no longer in the league.

You still have Eric Reid. You still have Kenny Stills. You still have dozens of players who are willing to speak out. And this is 2017. 2017, more or less. Donald Trump is now president. Donald Trump is now on a stage in September in Alabama using profane language to explain these black players and these kneelers and these black football players who are dissenting the status quo. Wouldn't you love to see one of these NFL owners, when somebody disrespects our flag, to say, get that son of a bitch off the field right now.

Out. He's fired. And then just after that, the president sends the vice president to a game with sort of what feels like the intention to walk out of the game during this. Exactly. It was a fraud. And so the NFL had what we at SB Nation have dubbed the day of reckoning. The president went to the White House at the same week Vice President Pence went to the Colts game and actively saw the Pittsburgh Penguins who said they weren weren't going to do anything political, and basically made the point of saying, this is exactly how you're supposed to have a professional team. They're supposed to listen to the rule of law. They're not supposed to make political statements. And so it started really a six to nine week expanse of everybody kind of deciding how they were going to do this

with Kaepernick removed from the league. Eric Reid and others were still kneeling. Owners were trying to link arms the weekend after the president said that to show that this day of reckoning was possible and that it was coming to a head in the NFL. And so at that point, we were seeing the continuation of what we always see with black protests, the teeth being pulled from the protest and basically it being play action to something completely different, talking about unity, talking about things that are not the protests, the teeth being pulled from the protest and basically it being play action to something completely different, talking about unity, talking about things that are not the actual ills that black people have been pointing out for decades at this point. And so how does this the 2017-2018 season end? I mean, I know Philly wins the Super Bowl and you're probably happy about that. Excited,

excited. But what happens with the NFL? Where does this issue stand at the end of the season? So that's kind of almost in the middle of where we are now, whereas you still had five to ten people, players who were kneeling by the end of the regular season. And the NFL came down with a $90 million resolution from the Players Coalition of Malcolm Jenkins and Anquan Boldin that said we are going to put money on the books as an organization to fight for the things that you want in social justice. I think you also have to put this in the context of looking at just over the last year or two, what the league, the clubs and the players, how working together, some of the great progress we've made on the underlying issues that the players were protesting and really making a big difference in their communities on social justice issues. We don't really know what that means. The ESPN reporters that have reported this out said it was not a quid pro quo, even though many people in the league believe it was.

And so you have one part of the league, the Eric Reid's, the more radical part of the league who are saying we need more money than that if we're going to need your money. And really, we don't need your money. We need this platform. On the other side, you have Malcolm Jenkins and Anquan Bolden who are saying, at least we've done something. We don't need to keep kneeling. We don't need to keep protesting. We got something that'll help us.

It's created this division in the league where there's so many players caught in the in-between who don't know what to do or what faction to side with, which leads us now to May, where we've been discussing what will come after the money. So the money's here, and owners are now like, okay, how do we get them to stop kneeling? Roger Goodell has said numerous times on record at Bloomberg, at press conferences,

how do we get them to stop kneeling? And so that's where we're at now, where the assumption is that the gatekeepers believe that order has been restored. Did President Trump just win then? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, man. I mean, yeah. Like, you'd be foolish to think that Donald Trump didn't win. Donald Trump said, this needs to stop. And the NFL said, nope, you're right.

After the break on Today Explained, why this could all only happen in the NFL. Johnny, you are in Hong Kong on a ferry coming back from an island there are lots of buns tell me more so there is a festival here in hong kong it basically entails building towers of buns and i mean 9 000 buns and um these towers are then used as a sport for people to climb them and acquire as many buns as they can and put them in a bag that is on their back and some buns are worth more than others the ones at the top are worth a ton anyway they all scramble to do this and it is quite the sight have you brushed your teeth in Hong Kong yet? I haven't, no.

I actually got right off the plane and then jumped on a ferry. So, like, I have not even been able to brush my teeth. But, you know, I'm jet-lagged. I could easily just go back and fall asleep, but I'm probably going to pull up my Quip and give a little brushing to all four quadrants of my teeth. And that's with the Quip electric toothbrush that you got at getquip.com slash explained.

It starts at 25 bucks. You upgrade it to a Chrome brush and you at some point in the future will get like a free refill or something. Yeah, apparently they're going to send me a free refill. Hey Sean. Ezra Klein, I thought you were on book leave. What are you doing here? something. Yeah, apparently they're Explained. It is our brand new, unreasonably good TV show on Netflix. Netflix? It launched today. You have to watch it.

Okay. What can I expect? These are 15-minute episodes of Vox's amazing video team doing what they do best. Like explaining the stuff that matters most? Nailed it. Okay. What episodes can people expect first? So we launched today with episodes on Designer DNA, The Racial Wealth Gap, and, wait for it, Monogamy. Monogamy.

I'm in. Explained. It is right now on Netflix. You put in Explained, you will find it. These are great. You will enjoy it, I promise.

Today. Today Explained. It's Today Explained. It's Today Explained. What were the other iterations? What were the other solutions the NFL considered? Completely getting rid of the anthem. Really? That was on the table? There was a world where before 2009,

the anthem wasn't playing before games and stadiums. Before this $53 million pact with the Department of Defense and the planes flying over stadiums and the pageantry and all this crap that has come into our stadiums. I mean, we weren't playing the anthem. It now is there. And so one option is just getting rid of it completely or playing it and making sure the players are in the locker room beforehand, that they're not in the sidelines. Did the owners ever explicitly say like, look, we have to fix this because the president's talking about it? They did, right? The New York Times said they obtained audio a few months ago and

the owner of the Patriots, Bobby Kraft, pointed to the elephant in the room. He said the kneeling. And he said, the problem we have is that we have a president who will use that as fodder to do his mission that I don't feel as though are in the best interest of America. Like, yes, Donald Trump will continue to attack the NFL if they don't do his bidding. That's absolutely true. The difference is we're here because somebody black decided that something was wrong. We're coming to a moment where we're in a second wave of civil rights and we're also entering a moment of white redemption under Donald Trump. There has to be somebody like Colin Kaepernick. These missives have to be given to the entirety of the world. And so once

he does that, and once Trump strikes out against that, we can't forget that we are here because racism is a problem. Like the too long don't read version of this is guys, hey, racism is a problem. Has something like this ever happened before in American professional sports? So this is the thing that we kind of forget when we look at the NFL. The assumption is that everything they're doing is revolutionary. And that's not the truth. The NBA, after Mahmoud Abdur-Raouf put a policy in the same place to say that, you know, it costs you $25,000 if you don't stand in respect. The difference is that obviously the NBA has done a little bit more to kind of cater an environment where their athletes are able to speak up a little bit more. And it's more player driven than the

NFL. So this has happened before. We just care more so now because of how the optics are and what's combined with how it's happening in the NFL. Why did this happen in football? Football is the sport where we're all hitting each other and whatnot. I mean, when did it become so sacred? Football has always been sacred, right? Football is one of the religions of the United States. It is a part of the DNA of what Americans are

since football has kind of begun since the 20th century. This is America's true pastime, not baseball. And so if you're messing with the sanctity of a church, the zealots have something to say. The NFL can't move on if it has a Kaepernick the NBA can't move on if it has a Kaepernick it happened in football because basketball has decided in the macro sense they're too progressive for something like this to happen their players have said they're not going to kneel they don't need to kneel our audience understands it the NHL is too traditionalist. The MLB is much too white. And so of the major four sports, this could only happen in the way that it happens in the NFL, because it's not only

using a majority of black talent that's being entertained to a majority of white audiences, but no other league fills itself or has been so far down the hole where they actually have to reckon with something like this. Tyler Tynes writes about the intersection of race, politics, and sports for SB Nation. I'm Sean Ramos for him. This is Today Explained. Johnny, before we leave you in Hong Kong, and hopefully we can check in again tomorrow, but what's next apart from brushing your teeth probably at some point? Yes, of course. So tomorrow I'm going to go explore some of the housing in Hong Kong.

I'm going to look at the big housing towers. And then I'm going to go into some of the smallest houses you've ever imagined. People literally live in houses the size of coffins. And so I'm going to go talk to those people talk about their lives what they're facing and i'll i'll make sure to return and report great i can't wait to hear all about it so i guess we'll check in with you again shout outs to uh shout outs to quip electric toothbrushes for sponsoring the show shout outs to whatever fairy you're on right now and the bun festival exactly you should go do yourself a favor listeners of the podcast and go just type

bun festival hong kong and and feast your eyes on this spectacle on on google.com but also go to getquip.com slash explained and check out the toothbrushes exactly