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[snip]
Going forward, however, some owners preferred a league-wide directive. Dan Snyder, the Washington Redskins' owner and who declined to comment through a spokesman, argued that the protests needed to end because of the danger that the issue posed to the league's bottom line. A "$40 million" NFL sponsor was considering pulling out, he told his fellow owners. Snyder kept repeating "$40 million" to add emphasis, amusing a clique of owners who did the math and realized that, after the players' cut of the shared revenue, it amounted to considerably less than $1 million per club -- hardly a game-changing sum for a league that last year had an average per-team profit of $101 million.
In the meeting, many owners wanted to speak, but the discussion soon was "hijacked," in the words of one owner, by Jones, a $1 million contributor to Trump's inaugural committee fund and who declined comment through a spokesman. The blunt Hall of Famer mentioned that he had spoken by phone, more than once over the past 24 hours, with Trump. Jones said the president, who only a few years ago tried to buy the Buffalo Bills, had no intention of backing down from his criticism of the NFL and its players. Jones -- who a day earlier for Monday Night Football in Arizona had orchestrated a team-wide kneeling before the anthem ahead of rising to stand when it started to play -- repeated his refrain that the protests weren't good for the NFL in the long run. Most agreed, but some felt that even if the league did lose a small percentage of fans due to the protests, it also could gain a new audience. There was a general, if fanciful, consensus that even a short-term financial hit could benefit the league in the long term, especially if the league and the union could join in solidarity behind a single plan. That's how the league's marketing department was planning to proceed, even if some of the rough ideas fell flat. One idea had all players wearing a patch on their jerseys that would read, "Team America." An owner briefed on the proposal simply shook his head: "We need to do better than that."
[snip]
Also-historic moment for me...agreeing with D. Smith for the first time.
[snip]
Going forward, however, some owners preferred a league-wide directive. Dan Snyder, the Washington Redskins' owner and who declined to comment through a spokesman, argued that the protests needed to end because of the danger that the issue posed to the league's bottom line. A "$40 million" NFL sponsor was considering pulling out, he told his fellow owners. Snyder kept repeating "$40 million" to add emphasis, amusing a clique of owners who did the math and realized that, after the players' cut of the shared revenue, it amounted to considerably less than $1 million per club -- hardly a game-changing sum for a league that last year had an average per-team profit of $101 million.
In the meeting, many owners wanted to speak, but the discussion soon was "hijacked," in the words of one owner, by Jones, a $1 million contributor to Trump's inaugural committee fund and who declined comment through a spokesman. The blunt Hall of Famer mentioned that he had spoken by phone, more than once over the past 24 hours, with Trump. Jones said the president, who only a few years ago tried to buy the Buffalo Bills, had no intention of backing down from his criticism of the NFL and its players. Jones -- who a day earlier for Monday Night Football in Arizona had orchestrated a team-wide kneeling before the anthem ahead of rising to stand when it started to play -- repeated his refrain that the protests weren't good for the NFL in the long run. Most agreed, but some felt that even if the league did lose a small percentage of fans due to the protests, it also could gain a new audience. There was a general, if fanciful, consensus that even a short-term financial hit could benefit the league in the long term, especially if the league and the union could join in solidarity behind a single plan. That's how the league's marketing department was planning to proceed, even if some of the rough ideas fell flat. One idea had all players wearing a patch on their jerseys that would read, "Team America." An owner briefed on the proposal simply shook his head: "We need to do better than that."
[snip]
Also-historic moment for me...agreeing with D. Smith for the first time.
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