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Detroit Lions team president Rod Wood has heard all the arguments about players who are protesting during the national anthem. In his opinion, he believes that the backlash to it might be a bit overstated.
“We’ve heard from a few [sponsors], and it varies depending on the kind of business that each company might be in,” Wood said. “I think the initial wave after that first weekend with the President’s tweet that kind of ignited this, there was a lot of reaction. I’m not sure how much of it was real, how much of it might have been orchestrated. In some cases, I think it was an effort to amplify what the President said as opposed to real reaction from people.
“But to the credit of most of our corporate sponsors, we’ve communicated with them and they kind of see the progress is being made and I hope as I said, that we’re going to come out the other side of this and have some of our corporate sponsors want to partner with us on some of these initiatives and get behind the positive change and ultimately benefit from this. And I do think there’s an opportunity to turn what was an issue for a couple weeks into a real positive. For the players, for the league, even for some of our corporate sponsors.”
What about the people who are upset that the protests have been hijacked? How come no one cares about that?
Ugh… I get it. This is a sports site that posts news. I will refrain.
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Rod Wood had a few more thoughts:
“I think the ultimate end game, hopefully we do get down to zero players taking a knee, and we continue – and I don’t want this, and I’ve told our players, this is not an exercise to get you to not take a knee,” Wood said. “This is an exercise to really focus on issues that are important to you and have it be an ongoing part of our program in the community and our charitable dollars be allocated to those things.”
As a reminder, players being out on the field to “stand” during the national anthem isn't even two decades old.
