This week’s crisis of the week is the NFL’s response to the Black Lives Matter movement. I chose this crisis in light of the 2020 season opener between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Houston Texans being the day this assignment is due.
The league was brought into the national discussion about police brutality and systematic oppression back in 2016 when the San Francisco 49ers quarterback, Colin Kaepernick knelt during the national anthem to show he wouldn’t “stand for a country that oppresses black people and people of color” (Mather, 2019, para. 6). At the time, the league responded to his protest by saying, “Players are encouraged but not required to stand during the playing of the national anthem” (Mather, 2019, para. 9). Fast forward to May 23, 2018, NFL owners ruled that players could no longer kneel during the national anthem. The league announced that if players felt the need to protest they were welcome to stay in the locker room during the national anthem.
However, there has been a recent shift in the league’s public stance on the peaceful protest movement. When a dozen black NFL stars released a powerful video in which they asked the NFL to “admit it erred in its response to peaceful NFL player protests of police brutality and systemic oppression, condemn racism and affirm that Black Lives Matter” (Wells, 2020). The league finally listened. Following that day, NFL commissioner, Roger Goodell responded to the video posted on social media by the players by posting his own video from the NFL’s official Twitter account. In the video, Goodell said, “We, the National Football League, condemn racism and the systematic oppression of Black People. We, the National Football League, admit we were wrong for not listening to NFL players earlier and encourage all to speak out and peacefully protest. We, the National Football League, believe Black Lives Matter” (Wells, 2020, para. 3). He also acknowledges in the video that the NFL was “wrong for not listening to FL players earlier and encourage all to speak out and peacefully protest” (Wells, 2020, para. 4). Although Goodell didn’t mention Kaepernick’s name in his statement, the shift in the NFL’s stance on peaceful protesting says enough on how much power the NFL players have over the organization.
With that being said, I would like to tie this crisis to this week’s reading. According to Coombs (2019), the power in crisis management is “the ability of the stakeholder to get the organization to do something it would not do otherwise” (p. 45). The NFL changing its stance on peaceful protesting during games is a real-world example that demonstrates this concept.
When the group of players, including Super Bowl LIV champion Patrick Mahomes, Deshaun Watson and Saquon Barkley composed the video and posted it to Twitter it went viral. The video gained massive positive feedback from other players and organizations. Doug Williams, the first Black quarterback to start in a Super Bowl stated that Mahomes’ involvement in the video was huge, “with all these young people out here marching in the streets and demanding change, it’s a different time right now. You see that there are so many young people leading. It says a lot he wanted to be involved in pushing for that change. It was very powerful” (Reid, 2020, para. 11). By these famous athletes using their voices, working in coalition with Black organizations, and taking a stand against their “employer” they proved as stakeholders they held the stronger power over the NFL.
The stakeholder (NFL players) created the video that went viral and pressured the organization (Goodell and NFL) to check off all the items they requested. The power of the stakeholders and the video they created forced the organization to do something they would not do otherwise which was to publicly acknowledge they were wrong in the first place by not listening to the NFL players earlier.
References
Coombs, W. T. (2019). Ongoing crisis communication planning, managing, and responding (5th ed.).
Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
Mather, V. (2019, February 15). A timeline of Colin Kaepernick vs. the N.F.L. The New York Times.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/15/sports/nfl-colin-kaepernick-protests-timeline.html
Reid, J. (2020, June 8). The power of Patrick Mahomes saying ‘Black Lives Matter’. The Undefeated.
https://theundefeated.com/features/the-power-of-patrick-mahomes-saying-black-lives-matter/.
Wells, A. (2020, June 5). Roger Goodell answers NFL players’ video on equality: ‘Black Lives Matter’.
Bleacher Report. https://bleacherreport.com/articles/2894967-roger-goodell-answers-nfl-
Claire Lee Hawkins 