It’s happening; the NFL has just lost their first sponsor over players and coaches’ move to take a knee during the playing of our national anthem before kick-off.
Tennessee businessman Allen Jones slammed the league as “unpatriotic” in a public statement and pulled all ads for his two businesses, Check Into Cash and Hardwick Clothes, from the NFL for the remainder of the season. Jones reportedly “instructed his media buyer to remove any commercials from airing during NFL games.”
“Our companies will not condone unpatriotic behavior!” said Jones in a statement. “For the 29 states we operate in, this isn’t much to them, but it’s a lot to us. The Tombras Group is our ad agency in Knoxville and our national media buyer for both TV and radio (for Check Into Cash) and don’t look for Hardwick on the NFL either.”
On Sunday, nearly 200 millionaire football players took a knee during the anthem in “solidarity” with other anthem kneelers, such as cops-as-pigs sock-wearing former 49er Colin Kaepernick. Three other teams did not take the field for the anthem, seemingly in effort to avoid controversy.
The move was in reaction to President Donald Trump’s Friday remarks at a Senate campaign rally in Alabama. President Trump asked the crowd if they’d “love it” if NFL owners would fire the “son of a b****” kneeling athletes. Backing-up his comments on social media, Trump suggested the American people boycott the league until the kneeling ceases.
“I think they’re afraid of their players, if you want to know the truth, and I think it’s disgraceful,” Trump told Fox News on Thursday. “They’ve got to be tough, and they’ve got to be smart.”
As previously noted by The Daily Wire, there have been swift, perhaps unanticipated, consequences for the NFL and the kneelers: “Players have reportedly lost out on endorsement deals, NFL ratings are down, DirecTV is now handing out unprecedented refunds for their NFL package, and a majority of the American people believe players should stand for the anthem (64%).”
Ouch.
