Imagine being an NFL owner. All that money and all that success and you’re so terrified of your own players leaning on one knee rather than standing on two feet for a couple minutes every week that you come right out and ban the act altogether. Sorry about it, Colin Kaepernick, but they actually banned taking a knee during the anthem. The team owners voted unanimously on it (although it appears a few may have abstained).

The new rule requires players to stand for the anthem under threat of fines against the team (and the team can also punish the player for breaking their own protocol if they want). This does leave the possibility of team owners paying the fines for the players to protect them, as Bob Johnson of the New York Jets has said he will do, but policing players’ posture is a new low even for the NFL. Mercifully players are at least permitted to stay in the locker room instead if they’d prefer... which means it wouldn’t be at all surprising if mass chunks of players do exactly that in week one (or preseason if that’s more their bag).

The obvious thing to do would have been nothing. Let the players protest and have a voice and celebrate a sporting league that embraces political discourse at a time when that’s more important than ever. Another option might have been emptying the field before the anthem like they used to do, except the owners thought that would look ‘disrespectful’. Yes, we already know about the very American tendency towards gregarious patriotism.

Of course nobody even appears to have considered the idea that playing the national anthem before every regular season game in a league that is trying to become more and more international, with everything from added avenues for foreign players to toying with the idea of a permanent team in London, is stupid and pointless and annoying and arrogant and apparently becoming a bit of a burden in the old news cycle anyway. Might as well just not play it.

Instead they have to gag the players. Clearly these nationalistic exhibitions are way more sacred to a politically conservative audience who value their own symbolic, ritualistic stampedes of loyalty towards an imagined idea of what their country represents more than they do the rights of their fellow citizens. It only makes sense that plenty of NFL owners would fall within that scope as well, being extremely rich people and all. The rich have obvious reasons for wanting to keep the status quo in check. The poor white class does not… but they’re scared of change so they clutch at the same lies that they grew up on. They all have very political reasons for wanting to see people stand. They’re dumb reasons… but they’re their reasons.

The NFL does not. You can make the argument that banning kneeling during the anthem is a political act but the NFL itself is apolitical. It kneels only to the almighty dollar… although that’s on two knees and not one.

Hence why Roger Goodell is now saying stuff about how the NFL will continue talking with players and seeking solutions so that they can express themselves and be positive agents of change and all that jazz… but they’re not allowed to do this one thing because it’s become too polarising and the league is terrified that a greedy, orange narcissist in a white house might cling to that topic once again as another way of relating to his diminishing voter base.

Because that time last year when he called players who kneel ‘sons of bitches’? He didn’t plan that attack. He was doing one of his braindead rally things and struck upon a quiet crowd that wasn’t feeding his ego enough so he started ad-libbing and kneeling in the NFL was the first thing that got a reaction so he just went with it. Nothing deeper than that, simply the whims of an old man with a large twitter following (padded out with Russian bots). Kneeling was already a very hot topic but let’s not pretend it got banned out of anything but fear over their commercial prospects if they ever got lumped into another drama like that one.

Here’s the Executive Director of the NFL Players Association, while we’re at it…

They also discussed flagging players for kneeling but that was always silly because then what happens when players on both teams kneel and the flags offset? Nah, they came to the conclusion that suits the money makers best. Of course, there’s no problem if the fans in the stands are busy trying to buy a hotdog or empty their bladders during the anthem. By coming out and drawing a line in the sand here the NFL has opened themselves up to all sorts of hypocrisy. This is fast becoming all about freedom of speech and an autocratic organisation’s desire to suppress it.

Hey but they still got Vice President Mike Pence’s approval for the new rule, a man who famously staged a completely ridiculous walkout at a Colts game over players kneeling during the anthem.

Also, what’s wrong with disrespecting the flag in the first place? Who really, honestly cares in the grand scheme of things whether an oversized patterned bandana gets its due deference? Our last government tried to change our flag in Aotearoa, no big deal. It’s just a flag. And also we’re not even talking about the flag, we’re talking about the national anthem which is about the flag but it’s not the flag, so why people bring the flag into it at all is weird. This stuff doesn’t have any intrinsic value other than that which people give to it. It’s an agreed-upon delusion.

By the way, the collusion case that Kaepernick’s taken against the NFL is ongoing behind all this and there has already been evidence put before the court that shows there were teams who judged Kap good enough to earn a starting quarterback’s role in the NFL. Not only good enough for a roster spot but good enough to start. Yet he spent the whole of last season unsigned and people still try to say it’s got nothing to do with the protests. And it doesn’t look like Eric Reid’s found a new team yet either…

Smack an ad if you’re sick of stupid American politics. Or smack an ad if you love The Niche Cache. You don’t have to say which is which, we won’t ask.