NFL reportedly did not hold official vote on new anthem policy

Roger Goodell said Wednesday that the NFL’s new national anthem policy was “unanimously adopted” by all of the league’s team owners and executives, but it’s kind of difficult to figure out what the commissioner is using as a measuring stick.

ESPN’s Seth Wickersham reports that the NFL did not hold an official vote on the new policy, though all owners were apparently polled in some fashion.

As I just said on @OTLonESPN sources in the room told me there was no official vote for the anthem resolution. League execs polled owners and knew how they’d vote but didn’t hold an official vote, atypical for such a major resolution.

— Seth Wickersham (@SethWickersham) May 24, 2018

What the NFL probably does not want us to know is that at least two team owners abstained from voting, though there apparently wasn’t an official vote anyway. One of them was San Francisco 49ers Jed York, and Wickersham says Mark Davis of the Oakland Raiders did the same.

Also told that Mark Davis was one of the most eloquent speakers on the social justice issues—and that he abstained from the vote as well.

— Seth Wickersham (@SethWickersham) May 24, 2018

Again, it’s hard to figure out how Goodell can call the new policy “unanimously adopted” if two owners chose not to vote and the poll was completely unofficial.

One star player has already said he appreciated his team’s owner not taking part in the vote, and it’s probably safe to assume others feel the same way. Like everything the NFL does, we almost never get the entire story.