Ex-Super Bowl Champ Has Ominous Prediction for Upcoming Season
The NFL is looking an awful lot like an ancient empire in the history books right before the barbarians show up.
Sure, it’s prosperous and looks strong now, but the kinds of things that history books write about in hindsight are starting to come into visible focus on the horizon in foresight.
Burgess Owens, who was a member of the 1980 Super Bowl-winning Oakland Raiders, went on Stuart Varney’s “Varney & Co.” show on Fox Business Channel Monday to predict another difficult year for emperor Roger Goodell’s pro football imperium as national anthem protests, fan anger, and declining television ratings continue to erode the league’s hold on American popular culture.
“This is about a global reach,” Owens said. “It’s about a corporation that understands that they need to get past the American market.”
.@BurgessOwens on NFL anthem policy debate: "It's about a corporation that understands that they need to get past the American market." pic.twitter.com/u9NN0kjJD2
— FOX Business (@FoxBusiness) July 28, 2018
This has been a problem more generally in business over the past 30 years or so. “Globalization” is why Hollywood movies now focus on the worldwide rather than the domestic gross, why McDonald’s measures its success not by U.S. locations but by foreign store openings, and why leagues like the NBA have pushed so hard to have a global brand presence.
Indeed, the NFL has been expanding its presence in places like London so aggressively recently that you’d be forgiven for thinking the British capital was an NFL city.
Owens, meanwhile, lamented the effect that globalization has had on the NFL’s home country.
“This is the worst of the leftist,” Owens said. “They can care less about patriotism … our country – they care about their profits.”
Owens attacked national anthem protests as being detrimental to not just the sport of football but to the country whose demonym lends the game its global name.
As Owens pointed out, anything short of standing at attention for the national anthem is itself a rebuke of America and sends a powerful signal to those watching around the world that our country is in worse shape than the reality of the situation indicates outside of the stadium.
“It’s still showing the entire world that our country is divided, is racist [and] is not the place to be,” he said.
So the NFL is faced with a dilemma.
Try to appeal to the domestic market, and national anthem protests and the divided nature of opinion about such protests drive away domestic fans.
Try to appeal to the global market, and the rest of the world sees not the strong America that is our global brand abroad, but instead a sport from a country whose football players portray it as weak, divided and racist — not exactly a good representation of the NFL’s brand.
Which, in turn, means that the national anthem protests are no longer about who is and isn’t patriotic or in the right.
Quashing the movement toward using the flag as a flashpoint is critical to pro football’s survival as a business in an increasingly relevant worldwide sports marketplace.
And so far, that’s a battle the NFL is in danger of losing.
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