Stephen A. Smith seems to believe that Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones doesn’t truly care about the national anthem, but is requiring players to stand for the national anthem to protect his “bottom line.”
“Jerry Jones is not fooling anybody. The national anthem and patriotism and all of that stuff is not his priority, the bottom line is his priority,” Smith said on Jones’ plans to bench players who disrespect the flag.
“They’re supposed to be America’s team, so I can understand why he’s bloviating about patriotism and what have you, but for him it’s about business. I can respect it, I can understand it, from that perspective that it’s about business. You don’t want to alienate advertisers and sponsors and things of that nature, but at the same time infringing on players rights is an issue for me,” Smith said, pointing out that there is no NFL policy that requires players to stand for the anthem.
“I say the players should call his bluff, but I sincerely doubt that they will because you have marginal players who are worried about their jobs, you have veterans like Jason Witten who would never do that, and you have young dudes like Dak Prescott who are too young to do it and another young dude in Ezekiel Elliott who’s got his own issues and is in no position to protest anything. So Jerry Jones knows exactly what he’s doing.”
Smith and other commentators on “First Take” debated about Jones and the national anthem for nearly 25 minutes on Tuesday morning, and later discussed it again at length in response to Mike Ditka’s comments on the issue.