OK, a group of NFL owners, NFL players - current and former - and NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell got together to discuss the clear and present danger to the business model of the league.
Numbers are down.
By a wide margin.
And we can all point to the loss of superstar names. We can point to bad quarterback play on a growing number of teams. We can point to the frustration and fear of serious injury dwindling numbers among the youth of America. We can point to a watered-down product that features too many three-yard passes and two-yard runs as coaches and quarterbacks do everything in their power to not turn the ball over and win games 14-12.
Jay GreesonBut it's impossible to ignore the timing of sagging TV numbers - starting with the 2016 season in which Colin Kaepernick started kneeling during the national anthem. Take Monday Night Football as the latest example.
Yes, stats about cable cutting are true and sports ratings news is seldom good these days, but this one is kind of eye-popping. According to Sports Media Watch, the Monday Night Football broadcast of Colts-Titans had a 5.2 rating and 8.38 million viewers.
It was down a small fraction from last year's Jets-Cardinals game (5.2, 8.4 million) in week 6 but down 40 percent from the 2015 week 6 MNF game of Giants-Eagles (8.7, 13.9 million).
And it gets worse. Tennessee's win was the third-smallest Monday Night Football audience ever, ahead of two games last year: Falcons-Saints (which aired opposite a Trump-Clinton debate) got 8 million viewers and Colts-Jets in week 13 last year had 8.1 million watching.
There are a lot of factors that play into the declining number of viewers, but anyone downplaying the backlash to the protests during the anthem would have a hard time explaining the timing. The three lower Monday Night Football audiences ever are since Kaepernick bent the knee, and the comparison game from before protests had 40 percent more viewers. The only Monday Night Football game to have a rating that low before the protests came in 2007 when the Broncos and Chargers drew a 5.1 share. They played that game on Monday, Dec. 24 - aka Christmas Eve.
So, the owners - who have bounced between Jerry Jones' ultimatum last week that his players will stand to those supporting the players' right to kneel during the anthem - met with the players.
And the only hard and fast outcome of Tuesday's meeting was Goodell and Seattle wideout Doug Baldwin co-signed a letter to Congress to show the league's universal support of the 2017 Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act of 2017. The bill, if passed, is designed to reduce minimum sentences for nonviolent drug offenders.
Good for them. But the elephant in the room was never discussed. As for the league and owners looking to get the players to stand for the anthem, well, apparently that did not come up. Which is kind of amazing.
"We did not ask for it," Goodell told reporters about requests made to the players about anthem etiquette and requirements. "We spent today talking about the issues players are trying to bring attention to. Issues in our communities, to make our communities better."
In truth, this sounds like a meeting that should happen frequently. It also reconnects Kaepernick's original narrative and his attempts to bring attention to equal treatment for blacks by law enforcement.
That seems like a cause that no one is against. Who is not for equal treatment for everyone from law enforcement or other public services?
Now you can debate whether that's as big an issue as it's made to be in today's social media storms.
You can also debate Kaepernick's decision to make that protest during a moment when we honor our country and those who have fought to defend it. You can also debate whether President Trump should be spending his time with bigger issues. He took to Twitter again Wednesday morning with this: "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!"
So did anything get decided? That's hard to know, because several players said the best they could hope for was for the league to give them a reason NOT to kneel. Was this move and meeting enough for that? Who knows?
But what you can't debate is this entire exercise is hurting the business of the NFL.
Contact Jay Greeson at jgreeson@timesfreepress.com.