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#pounditThursday, March 28, 2024

Twitter reacts to NFL’s new national anthem policy

Texans kneel

The NFL has reached what it believes is a compromise for how to handle national anthem protests, though many people feel it could lead to more issues going forward.

ESPN’s Adam Schefter reports that the new policy, which the league is expected to announce on Wednesday afternoon, states that players are allowed to remain in the locker room during the national anthem but discourages protesting. If players kneel or engage in other political demonstrations, their teams will reportedly be fined.

The new policy is also expected to leave it up to teams to decide if they want to force players to be on the sideline during “The Star-Spangled Banner.” A previous report indicated that kneeling could lead to an actual game penalty, but it does not sound like that will be the case.

As you might expect, people on social media had mixed reactions:

Some called for sports teams to simply stop playing the national anthem before events.

The danger with the new policy is there seems to still be a lot of room for interpretation. What constitutes “disrespect” to the American flag? Players have come up with political demonstrations that don’t involve kneeling during the anthem, so will those result in a fine? Something tells us the debate will rage on in 2018.

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