NEW YORK—NFL team owners began arriving Monday night at the downtown Manhattan hotel where the most important conversations of the 2017 season will take place today.
For most of this football season, America’s most popular pro sports league has been at the center of a fractious national debate about players choosing to demonstrate during the national anthem to raise awareness for social issues including racial injustice and police brutality. There are those, among them the President and some NFL team owners, who consider such demonstrations blasphemous; on the other end of the spectrum are those who see no greater display of patriotism than peaceful protests in the name of a better America.