Most Americans say that the protests by NFL players during the national anthem are "appropriate," and they say, by "overwhelming margins, that President Trump's heated criticism of them are not," according to a poll cited by Page & Fair of USA TODAY. Two-thirds in the poll of registered voters say Trump's call for NFL owners to fire the players and fans to boycott their games "is inappropriate." That includes "a third of Republicans as well as nine of 10 Democrats." By a 51%-42% margin, those surveyed said that the player protests "are appropriate." The survey was "taken Wednesday through Sunday by landline and cell phone." The poll of 1,000 registered voters has a "margin of error of +/-3 percentage points." Views were "sharply divided along partisan and racial lines." About eight in 10 Democrats saw the players' protests as "appropriate; eight in 10 Republicans call them inappropriate." More than nine in 10 Democrats "call Trump's comments inappropriate; a 57% majority of Republicans say they are appropriate." Caucasians are "closely divided on whether the players' protests are appropriate; 44% say they are and 49% disagree." But African-Americans by a "wide margin call them appropriate" (USA TODAY, 10/3). THE BUSINESS JOURNALS polled readers, receiving 2,900 responses, and more than half of NFL fans said that they have "become less interested in the league and they intend to pull back on their support of league and team sponsors." An additional 17% said that they have "become less interested but didn't say they'd take the next step and pull back from sponsors." Twenty-one percent of respondents said that the protests "aren’t having an impact on their viewing and spending plans" (BIZJOURNALS.com, 10/2).
TURNING DOWN THE NOISE: The WALL STREET JOURNAL's Matthew Futterman cited sources as saying that the NFL's Week 4, more muted approach to Trump followed a "tense meeting last week in which several owners argued the league's combative stance was unproductive." Sources added that those owners "argued that taking on a sitting president over whether players should be required to stand for the national anthem was bad for business, while others thought the league should continue to stand up to the criticism" (WALL STREET JOURNAL, 10/3). In DC, Mark Maske notes the league "has a business to run, and it must run that business while avoiding alienating fans on both sides of this polarizing, emotionally charged issue." At least for now, the league is "drawing the ire of both those angry about the players’ protests, as well as those supportive of them and upset" that Colin Kaepernick remains without a job. The league is "acutely aware of this." The volume "undoubtedly will be turned down at some point, though perhaps not soon." One former NFL GM "expressed wariness in recent days that any team contemplating signing Kaepernick must fret that Trump will return to the issue at some point." The NFL "ultimately will be left to assess whether its business model has suffered lasting damage -- and, if so, to what extent" (WASHINGTON POST, 10/3). In Seattle, Geoff Baker writes despite the notion that Trump's attack on NFL players was "impacting the league's ticket sales, major online ticketing companies say that notion is not supported by the overall data." They said that NFL ticket prices and sales data throughout the secondary market are "about what is normally expected and even slightly higher, both week-to-week and over this same period a year ago" (SEATTLE TIMES, 10/3).
