Beloved former Los Angeles Dodgers broadcaster Vin Scully has said that he will never watch another football game due to the player protests during the national anthem. From ESPN:
Said Scully: “During the fall and winter, I watch the NFL on Sunday, and it’s not that I’m some great patriot. I was in the Navy for a year, didn’t go anywhere, didn’t do anything, but I have overwhelming respect and admiration for anyone who puts on a uniform and goes to war. So the only thing that I can do in my little way is to not to preach; I will never watch another NFL game.”
The 89-year-old, who broadcasted Dodgers games for almost 70 years, made the remarks at the Pasadena Civic Auditorium during a question and answer session after a speech he gave.
Everyone loves Vin Scully. It’s impossible not to. I’m a lifelong Cubs fan and Harry Carey will always reign supreme in my heart, but I have no problem saying that Scully was the greatest sports broadcaster ever.
It’ll be interesting to see if this harms his reputation. Something tells me he won’t care if it does.
Last week, Papa John’s, a top sponsor of the NFL, said that the protests have hurt the company’s pizza sales. from ESPN:
“The NFL has hurt us,” company founder and CEO John Schnatter said. “We are disappointed the NFL and its leadership did not resolve this.”Executives said the company has pulled much of its NFL television advertising and that the NFL has responded by giving the company additional future spots.“Leadership starts at the top and this is an example of poor leadership,” Schnatter said, noting he thought the issue had been “nipped in the bud” a year and a half ago.In revising sales estimates for the next quarter, Papa John’s president and chief operating officer Steve Ritchie said on the call that the NFL deal was the primary suspect behind the decline and that “we expect it to persist unless a solution is put in place.”
In October, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell met with NFL owners in New York City for their fall meetings, where he announced that players should stand for the national anthem, but the league will not make it a rule requiring it. From NFL.com:
“I think our clubs all see this the same way — we want our players to stand, we’re going to encourage them to stand and we’re going to continue to work on these issues in the community,” Goodell told reporters after meeting with team owners at the Fall League Meeting in New York. “We’ll address issues — I can’t deal with hypotheticals right now, we’ll deal with those issues if they come up — but for right now, that’s our focus.”Said Goodell: “The fact is that we have about half a dozen players that are protesting. We hope and continue to work to try to put that at zero — that’s what we’d like to do.”
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