US President Donald Trump probably didn’t realise he’d struck such a nerve with American football NFL players when he implored team owners to ‘get that son of a bitch off the field’ for protesting during the national anthem.
The line drew loud applause at the president’s political rally in Huntsville, Alabama, but the words cut deep into America’s most popular sports league, where the majority of players are black and many of them grew up in tough neighbourhoods, raised by strong women.
“I’m a son of a queen,” an emotional Falcons defensive lineman Grady Jarrett said.
“There are no SOBs in this league,” Lions coach Jim Caldwell said on Sunday, when at least 200 NFL players either knelt, sat, stretched or prayed during the ‘Star Spangled Banner’ to protest Trump’s remarks. Three teams didn’t even take the field until the national anthem was over.
The protest campaign that started last year with former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick was down to just six players last week. But Trump’s weekend attack on athletes sparked angry reactions from around the sports world and drew defiance from most of the NFL.
He suggested the NFL was going soft for cracking down on big hits. He even uninvited the NBA basketball champions Golden State Warriors to the White House after Stephen Curry and other players indicated they weren’t sure they would accept the invitation.
Players, owners and commissioners past and present chastised the president for his divisive remarks, but the angriest responses came from players upset that he’d insulted their mothers.
“Once again, this is a tragedy in this country that we have to sit here and still have these discussions,” Browns rookie quarterback DeShone Kizer said following a 31-28 loss to the Indianapolis Colts. “I know for a fact that I’m no son of a bitch, and I plan on continuing forward and doing whatever I can from my position to promote the equality that’s needed in this country.”
After calling for NFL players who protest to be fired, Trump also tweeted that the league should make it mandatory to stand for the US national anthem and that fans should shun anyone who doesn’t.
“It just amazes me with everything else going on in this world, especially involving the US, that’s what you’re concerned about, my man? You’re the leader of the free world and this is what you’re talking about?” said Dolphins safety Michael Thomas. “So, as a man, as a father, as an African-American man, as somebody in the NFL and one of those ‘sons of bitches,’ yeah, I took it personally.”
The issue reverberated across the Atlantic, where about two dozen players took a knee during the playing of the US anthem at an NFL game between the Ravens and Jaguars in London.
“We stand with our brothers,” Ravens linebacker Terrell Suggs said. “To protest, non-violent protest, is as American as it gets, so we knelt with them today to let them know that we’re a unified front. There ain’t no dividing us. I guess we’re all son-of-a-bitches.”
Buccaneers wide receivers Mike Evans and DeSean Jackson, who knelt at the Bucs-Vikings game, said Trump’s remarks were especially disturbing when juxtaposed to his recent comments equating white supremacists marching in Charlottesville, Virginia, with counter-protesters.
Jackson said, “It’s just blatant disrespect. I look at it as my mum’s the queen. We’re not sons of any ’B’s.”
Linebacker Brandon Marshall, who hands out winter coats in Denver alongside his mother as part of his charity work, said the Broncos gathered Saturday night to talk about their reaction.
“We talked about the fact that while he called white supremacists in Charlottesville very fine people, but we are sons of bitches,” said Marshall, who received the 2017 Courage Award from the Harvard Graduate School of Education’s Alumni of Colour for his stance against social injustice.
