The players have said they will protest and, if they do, ESPN says they will televise it.
Normally ESPN only shows the honor guard and singing of the Star-Spangled Banner prior to games. However, for their opening Monday Night Football double-header, ESPN will also televise the “black national anthem,” a song known as Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing. In addition, the network will also “show social justice movements, actions, as they happen.”
“Our policy is to cover the anthem when it’s newsworthy. That’s not going to change,” ESPN Executive Vice President of Event and Studio Production Stephanie Druley told reporters. “We are going to continue as we’ve done with the NBA and the WNBA. We will cover social justice movements, actions, as they happen. We’re not going to shy away from that.”
Druley stressed that ESPN does not view the social justice protests as being political.
“Look, we’re going to keep our main rule, which is when it intersects with sports, we’re going to cover it, and look, we don’t see the social justice movement as being political. It’s social justice,” said Druley. She can’t say if they’ll show the anthem for half the season or just two of 10 games. “I don’t know. We will make a judgment call every week. But I can tell you that Week 1, that first game, you will see the anthem — and you will see ‘Lift Every Voice.’”
As Front Office Sports report:
The normally crowded NFL sidelines will look very different to millions of TV viewers this season. The league is strictly limiting the number of people with field access to avoid infecting coaches and players.
TV sideline reporters like ESPN’s Salters and CBS’ Wolfson will have to do their jobs from the stands. There will not be military/police honor guards on the field or on-field performances of the national anthem. Ditto for...
7 comments:
Fuck ESPN
Fuck professional sports.
Fuck collegiate sports
As a matter of fact fuck pretty much all useless sports except World Series of Poker.
They've lost all sense of reality and common sense.
I'd rather watch 10 year olds play pickup ball.
Way to stir racial divisions. What next an athem for Indian Americans, Latino Americans, Japanese Americans, Lebanese Americans, Irish Americans. May any group protest the anthem for any perceived slight. The NFL is dead and should be buried along with its racist millinaires.
Right there with you Handy, the NBA lost me a long time ago, the NFL last year and MLB this year. I'm done. I watched sports to get away from the everyday troubles, now all they do is shove it in our faces over & over & over again. Then the commercials do it some more! F 'em
And watch their ratings tank....National Felons League..
So now instead of watching overpaid dilettantes play sports, more people will take their children, grandchildren, friends and neighbors out for a pickup game of whatever. Time to stop watching and start doing.
Anyone game enough to kneel during the "black national anthem"...?
Hey, who won the World Series in 1955, Super Bowl XXII? Who cares? Sports is ephemeral and was always meant to be a distraction from our daily work-a-day routine.
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