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This reminds me of the irony I see among certain NFL fans. If the league puts "End Hate" or "End Racism" on the sideline then these people complain about how the NFL should stay out of politics. But during the Kaepernick debacle nearly all of them felt that the league was obligated to make an affirmative stance in favor of patriotism and require players to stand. There was no way out of this controversy. Before a game Steelers coach Mike Timlin asked players if any of them planned to kneel. When a few of them came forward, he opted to keep the team in the tunnel during the national anthem to avoid controversy. This only served to piss of conservatives even more, as Tomlin was evidently obligated to make sure that everyone on the team was out there standing. I get the impression that if the NFL had suspended Kaepernick pending an apology and made a statement that a similar fate would befall any other player who refused to toe the line, this would have been greeted with enthusiasm among them.
This isn't to say that those on the left can't be equally hypocritical. After the Bruins 2011 cup run Tim Thomas didn't attend the team's visit to the White House because he didn't like Obama. One sportswriter blasted Thomas for his decision, saying that Obama invited the team, not Thomas, so it wasn't his place to refuse an invitation. When the Penguins won the cup in 2017, the same sportswriter blasted Sidney Crosby for accepting Trump's invitation and claimed that Crosby had a moral duty to refuse to attend. "Keep Politics out of Sports", like most things, is really only dependent on whether one happens to agree with the politics in question.
Status quo preference is all that is needed to defend continuing to stand during the anthem, but oppose adfing repeation of BLM slogans.
A further difference is wide of consensus exists for each of the ideas, expressed. "White supremacy is real." is a niche idea compared to "I respect my country.", thus those promoting the former and shunning the latter, are politicizing the game.
To say nothing of inconsistency of these catchphrases being employed by NFL. Mere overrepresentation of African Americans among victims of police brutality is said to be the result racism, but them being 17% of NFL QBs, 67% of all NFL players, despite constituting only 13% of the population, is by NFL seen to be unworthy of investigation.
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