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GREGG DOYEL
Indianapolis Colts

Doyel: Jim Irsay misses wide on player protests

Gregg Doyel
gregg.doyel@indystar.com
Colts owner Jim Irsay said  player protests during the national anthem aren't a positive thing for NFL TV ratings.

INDIANAPOLIS — Could be their fault. That's what Jim Irsay is saying. What's to blame for sliding NFL ratings? Some suggest head-to-head matchups with presidential debates and a lack of competitive prime-time games. The Indianapolis Colts owner sees another possible factor.

The players. The ones kneeling during the national anthem.

Unbelievable, this guy.

During NFL owners meetings this week in Houston, Irsay was asked about a possible correlation between the Colin Kaepernick-inspired protests — players taking a knee during the national anthem to highlight racial inequality around America — and TV ratings dropping compared to this time last season.

This is what Irsay said.

“I think it’s the wrong venue,” Irsay told USA TODAY Sports. “It hasn’t been a positive thing. What we all have to be aware of as players, owners, PR people, equipment managers, is when the lights go on we are entertainment. We are being paid to put on a show. There are other places to express yourself.”

It hasn’t been a positive thing.

In some ways, no, it has not. Let’s not be naïve about this. Kaepernick kneels to protest the recent string of highly publicized shootings of African-American males by police officers. He triggered a national movement that has included athletes in other sports — the Indiana Fever knelt last month — and a handful of NFL sidelines.

Doyel: Entire Indiana Fever roster kneels for national anthem

Has the protest helped this country? Sadly, it has not. Not yet, perhaps. The racial divide Kaepernick was highlighting seems not necessarily to have grown, but become more obvious. The two sides of this debate are not talking with each other, as Kaepernick and others were hoping. The two sides are talking at each other. Nobody’s listening. Nobody’s understanding. In that sense, no, it hasn’t been a positive thing.

But Irsay wasn’t asked about that. He was asked, specifically, if the protests were affecting TV ratings, which are down 11 percent for the NFL compared to last year.

It hasn’t been a positive thing.

Not the fault of a league that might finally have found its saturation point, with prime-time games three nights a week and games in England that kick off at 9:30 a.m. in New York, 6:30 a.m. in Los Angeles.

Always with these Colts, it’s someone else’s fault — anyone else’s fault. The offense stinks? They fire one coordinator. The defense stinks? They fire the other. Offensive line is horrible? Fire the offensive line coach.

Their fault.

The Colts lost to the truly terrible Jacksonville Jaguars in London on Oct. 2, and barely waited to get back across the Atlantic before firing two starters, including leading tackler Sio Moore. The other player the Colts fired was ….

Wait a minute. You don’t wonder …

Then-Colts cornerback Antonio Cromartie took a knee during the playing of the national anthem on Sept. 25.

I do wonder. I’ll be honest. From the moment it happened I wondered if the Colts released Antonio Cromartie after the London loss not simply because he was bad that game — and make no mistake, he was bad that game — but because he was bad and he was the only player who had knelt during the anthem.

Could be a coincidence, of course. Could be. But the minute it happened — I mean, the second the Colts released Cromartie — my first thought was: Is this payback for kneeling?

You have to wonder — Terricka Cason, Antonio's wife, wonders — especially now that Irsay has come out against the protests at NFL games. But Irsay isn’t the only owner to link player protest with falling ratings.

Wife of Antonio Cromartie: Protest cost him his job

“People come to the game because they want to get away from what’s happening in their everyday lives,” Texans owner Bob McNair told USA TODAY Sports. “When you bring those types of things into the scene, yeah, it will turn some people off.”

Players being paralyzed right there on the field, that hasn’t turned off TV viewers. Concussions haven’t done it. Even suicides by beloved players like Junior Seau and Dave Duerson that were linked to concussions caused by the violence of a typical NFL game, that didn't do it.

But a player dropping to a knee during the anthem? That did it?

Doyel on Kaepernick: The conversation — the treason? — grows

Whatever. I'm tired of listening to the Colts, you know that? With statistically one of the worst defenses not just in the NFL today, but in Indianapolis Colts history, Pagano says, “We have a good defense.” After that historically bad, nearly mathematically impossible choke at Houston on Sunday night, Pagano says, “I am encouraged.”

Grigson goes on national radio and blames Andrew Luck’s massive contract on the Colts’ inability to build a defense. Never mind that Luck’s contract got massive only months ago.

Irsay sees all this, hears all that, and this is what he says last week: “I feel confident that we have the right group of leaders…. I feel confident we have those pillars in place.’’

Meanwhile, TV ratings are down, and not because the NFL dilutes its product and compounds the problem by putting the lousy Texans and the worse Colts on prime time. No, it’s because of the kneeling.

What happens when the Colts leadership speaks?

It hasn’t been a positive thing.

Find Star columnist Gregg Doyel on Twitter at@GreggDoyelStar or atfacebook.com/gregg.doyel.

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