What Price Activism? The Consequences of Anthem Protests for NFL Players

• In Event: Racial and Ethnic Inequality and Class Politics

Abstract

During the 2017 season, several hundred National Football League players took a knee or raised a fist as the National Anthem was played to protest inequality and injustice. These brief but recurring protests - almost exclusively from African American players - drew attention across the nation and the world, such that the Associated Press and numerous other media outlets deemed the anthem protests the biggest sports story of the year.

While the league commissioner, several owners, general managers and coaches expressed support for the right to protest – if not necessarily support for the decision to protest – some team owners threatened players with irreparable harm to their careers if they engaged in any anthem protest.

The original anthem protestor, Colin Kaepernick, is no longer an NFL player. He asserts he was pushed out of the league because of his political activism. Other 2017 protestors found little interest in their services in 2018 and shared Kaepernick's suspicion that their politics had cost them their place on the field.

With a database including all 317 NFL players who protested the anthem - and the roughly 1800 who did not - here I compare their contract status in 2018 and consider whether players paid a price for their activism, and further explore the implications of these findings for the future of the newly emboldened generation of activist athletes.

Author

• David Niven, University of Cincinnati