The NFL Helped The Chiefs and Texans Get Booed, They Can't Understand Why
Packs Shipment No. 10
To kick off the new NFL season last Thursday, the newly-minted superstar Patrick Mahomes and his Super-Bowl winning Kansas City Chiefs hosted the Houston Texans, led by their superstar Deshaun Watson. But before the two teams could do their contractually obligated violence, players from both teams came together and locked arms to promote unity amidst the social justice issues gripping this country. The demonstration, which happened after the anthem, was pelted with boos from the Kansas City crowd.
When asked after the game about his thoughts on the show of unity, Texans Pro Bowl defensive end and 2017 Walter Payton Man of the Year award winner JJ Watt couldn’t conclude why fans decided to boo. “The booing was unfortunate during that moment. I don’t fully understand that,” Watt said. “There was no flag involved; there was nothing involved with that except two teams coming together to show unity.” Mahomes said he didn’t hear the booing, but “hopes our fans support us like they do in the game every single day.”
The fan response isn’t hard to predict. In the White House and in conservative media, figures have decided athletes should shut up and play ball instead of mucking up the authentic American experience with empathy and support against systemic racism. But the NFL played a huge role in pruning this type of behavior in their fans in the past, and those decisions now jeopardize the players’ objective.
Colin Kaepernick's blackballing because he kneeled for the anthem has been one of the biggest blemishes in the recent history of the NFL. NFL Commissioner Roger Goddell only recently admitted the league was wrong in their handling of Kaepernick’s protest, primarily because they never even listened to what he had to say. Back then, the league created rules that fined players for not standing during the anthem, and team owners suggested players who kneeled for the anthem wouldn’t play. The league elites came together to gag the player protests every year since then.
The NFL picked its side and stayed there. But now that protesting social injustice is trendy and profitable, the league has had to bring themselves up to speed in a hurry not to seem insensitive to their predominately black players and the issues they care about. But what fan reaction did the league expect when they spent years setting a precedent opposing the thing they now want to promote?
For years, the NFL has been gag in the players’ mouth as they try to protests for social justice. Their fans followed suit, encouraged by a President they love more than even football. When the NFL suddenly switched lanes, the fans were never going to follow suit, not this quickly. To suddenly go back on that long-standing ideology and expect something different is naive. It will probably be a long time before roaring cheers erupt from NFL stadiums when players protest racial injustice.
Yet again, the NFL seems lightyears behind the other leagues when it comes to social commentary, protests, and promoting unity in our justice system. Other leagues will be playing sports on Mars with aliens before the NFL ever becomes a beacon of social justice change. The WNBA, NBA, and Tennis have been frontrunners in social protests while the NFL and its players can't understand why their fans respond with vitriol.
On the first Sunday of the new league year, protests occurred at every game on the schedule. Some players kneeled during the anthem, others stood, and some teams stayed in the locker room. Luckily for the NFL, the majority of pre-game protests were done with no fans in attendance. Any potential boos or cheers stuck at home, making the Chiefs-Texans debacle an outlier.
Aside from the Chiefs, only the Jacksonville Jaguars hosted fans on the opening week of football. While there was no booing (there was also no moment of unity before the game like the Chiefs and Texans), reporters noticed the majority fans did not stand for “Lift Every Voice and Sing” and seemed indifferent about the teams staying in the locker room for the anthems. At worst, the fans will boo. At best, there’s very little support at all. The people responsible for these unsupportive responses are the suits in skyboxes. They won't see any of the hatred that the players will experience.
As stadiums slowly start to allow fans again, the league-wide protests will face more live reactions, giving us a better sense of what NFL fans think of these pre-game protests in real-time. Those reactions will likely go against everything the NFL wants, which is to be a marketable force in the profit machine of social justice.
The league has diminished the players’ voice, and they have no one but themselves to blame. They got in the way of promoting change for years, and now they can’t get out of the way as they try to champion the same ideas they wanted to silence. Goodell and the NFL want something different now, and it may take years before their fans finally come around to the shift. Luckily for them, Goodell and team owners aren’t the ones who have to eat boos on the field while they wait.
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