Roger Goodell: We Did Not Ask Players to Stand for the Anthem

National Football League Commissioner Roger Goodell said he did not ask players who protest by kneeling during the national anthem to stand out of respect for the anthem and the flag, after the team owners and several players met Tuesday at an annual fall meeting in New York City.

President Donald Trump jumped into the national anthem kneeling controversy in September at a rally in Alabama, and in a series of tweets afterward, when he urged NFL team owners to either bench, suspend or fire players who showed “a total disrespect of our heritage” and “a total disrespect for everything we stand for” by kneeling. The controversy surrounding the protests, begun by former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick during the 2016 season, caused NFL ratings to plummet while a majority of Americans expressed their disapproval in a series of polls.

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But when Goodell held a press conference following the NFL’s Tuesday meeting, he told reporters: “We did not ask for” players to stand and honor the national anthem.

“We spent today talking about the issues that our players have been trying to bring attention to, about issues in our communities to make our communities better,” Goodell said. “And I think we all agree there is nothing more important than trying to get back into the communities and make our communities better. That was the entire focus today.”

Kaepernick said he began his kneeling protest to highlight racial injustice and police violence against blacks Americans. Kaepernick, now an unsigned free agent, told NFL Media back in August 2016: “I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color.” But when Trump reignited the controversy in September, many more players followed Kaepernick’s example by kneeling as a show of unity against the president.

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Rather than asking the players to protest against racial injustice in another way, Goodell said the owners agreed during their meeting “to work together with our players on issues of social justice.”

“I would tell you that our players are men of great character. They have a very deep understanding and tremendous knowledge of the issues that are going on in all of our communities,” he said. “The players were very clear about how they felt about these issues and how deeply they felt about these issues in our communities.”

“And their commitment to addressing these issues is really admirable and something that I think our owners looked at is saying, ‘We want to help support you,'” Goodell continued.

Trump himself took to Twitter Wednesday to decry the NFL’s decision, saying, “The NFL has decided that it will not force players to stand for the playing of our National Anthem. Total disrespect for our great country!”

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