New anthem policy leaves more questions

The NFL's new anthem policy might be the most divisive, hot-button i sue in all of pro sports right now, a full three months before its implementation in an actual regular season game. The league's handling of the ongoing controversy has spawned visceral reactions from people of all walks of life, and it was always going to be close to impo sible to find a solution that would satisfy all parties.Now, with a few days to digest the rule that mandates players on the field for the anthem stand at attention and that any demonstrations during that time be conducted out of sight in or near the locker room, there is but one thing everyone I spoke to can agree on: There are far more questions than M.J. Stewart Jersey answers about how this will actually play out. The very owners who finally agreed to these changes have no idea how many players will challenge the policy, whether or not more players will be provoked to stay off the sidelines, whether or not this attempt to protect their busine s interest and mollify the segment of the country that was focusing on the handful of players taking a knee or raising a fist any given Sunday (politicians included) is actually amplifying the di sent and discord and attention being paid to the "protests," rather than turning the focus back to football as Commi sioner Roger Goodell so publicly hoped for in announcing the new rule this week.Within front offices, there are discu sions being hatched about how to implement the rules, what punishments should be. Coaches have begun talking to players and trying to wade through these murky waters. On Park Avenue, at the league offices, execs are keeping their fingers cro sed that by Week 6 or so as Phillip Dorsett II Jersey more energy is being spent di secting the on-field product rather than the inevitable pre-game ritual of counting players on the sideline during "The Star Spangled Banner,'' and that this story won't still be leading nightly news broadcasts. But they certainly don't know. No one does.In a political climate that is more charged than ever, during a presidency that regardle s of your leanings toward Trump has clearly defied norms and standards in terms of presidential attacks on constituents and busine ses, and involves regular mi sives over social media, it is impo sible to predict the next two hours let alone days and weeks and months ahead. At a time when the prevailing political discourse and rhetoric is prompting more overt reactions from supporters of various parties and causes in ways rarely seen before, no one has the pulse on whether or not this NFL policy change will actually exacerbate the owners' problems. "We're all still sort of trying to figure it out and whether or not this is going to help the league or hurt it," said a high-ranking official of one club. "No one knows where this is going. You cant help but wonder, if we would have done nothing, would this have just sort of died down on its own through the season? But no one can be surprised about how the president responded to it. You had to know he was going to take credit for it, and use it for his own political purposes."Safe to say, the powers that be with all 32 teams and within the league office are holding their collective breath. The days of discu sion about a new policy and the ultimate outcome were e sentially the polar opposite of how the league was being advised to handle this situation by former communications chief Joe Lockhart, it's worth noting. During the season, after the initial fervor over Donald Trump calling protesting players "son's of bitches" and after sparring with Trump himself, Lockhart was preaching a me sage both internally and in the media of restraint, urging owners and team officials not to engage with Jaelen Strong Jersey Trump and to avoid any actions that would further enflame the burning political tensions around this i sue, with the number of players actually demonstrating by the end of the season down to a half-dozen to a dozen many weeks.And now, with no games in sight, the anthem controversy is dominating the media landscape and this new policy being derided, chided and championed, while no one knows how sternly it will be abided. Lockhart, a former Clinton advisor, who left the league after the Super Bowl to join CNN as a political commentator as part of what became a fairly sweeping exodus, declined to comment when reached via text for his reaction to the current controversy ("I'm staying out of it," he replied). Of course, for those still within the confines of the league that is impo sible now. I heard from a few people on the Reggie Robinson II Jersey team side who wondered if the owners had just agreed to roll back the clock to a time before 9/11, when the anthem was played well before kickoff at a time when players were still getting ready inside the locker room, if that would have mollified things more adroitly. "I'm sure that would have pi sed off some people, too," one team official said, "but that's how it was done for a long time. You aren't taking attendance on the sidelines anymore. Everyone is in the same boat."There is also some concern about how different the landscape and protocols might be from one team to another. What is the range of fines, and how greatly might they differ at their extremes? Is inter-locking arms a protest in, say, Houston, but not in Seattle? What about a raised fist? Will "repeat offenders" be handled drastically differently from one franchise to the next? What about a player who gets traded in-season, say, from the (where ownership has already basically let it be known that there aren't going to be any penalties) to a team with a draconian system in place his exact same behavior would in this case be treated entirely differently from one week to the next, hypothetically.Will the NFLPA actually accomplish anything in terms of arbitration or trying to find some mechanism to alter the new policy or a sert some voice in it? (Seems highly doubtful to me until we get the negotiations for the new collective bargaining agreement, which is years away). While much is being made about the manner in which the owners voted in this rule doing so without taking a formal team-by-team vote by rather asking for any objections or di senting votes once it was put to the floor that's not unusual in these cases, and in many ways besides the point now. More than enough owners J.J. Watt Jersey were comfortable enough with giving this a whirl to put it into practice, doing so all the while with so many of the above questions largely unresolved. Will it result in 32 quite different implementations of the requirement? Again, right now, no one knows. Would there have been any perfect solution to something that has been percolating for so long? We'll probably never know that, either.My suspicion is the implementation of this policy will dominate the coverage of the preseason and early season. Do teams post the fine charts in the locker rooms? Do entire units decide to stay in the locker room and/or take a knee? And does that cause some front off