David Rosenthal

I do think when that happened in 2016, it was a lot more of a radical act than it might seem today.

And there were a lot of people at the time who were deeply offended by it.

And there were a lot of people in the NFL who understood why he was doing it because 70% of the NFL is black.

So there was a lot going on here.

The NFL blackballed Colin Kaepernick after this.

Yeah, and I think the interesting thing for the purposes of our discussion here about this is,

I don't think this ever would have happened or happened in the same way in the NBA.

The NBA embraced both social media and the strategy of letting players have their own platforms, be their own voices, and promote the league through that.

And the NFL was the opposite of that.

They were the command and the control.

We own the message.

And there was no clearer example of this.

Right.

Which is emblematic of the NFL not understanding the social media era.

I think this is a good point to transition into analysis.

And why don't we do playbook and then do power?

One that just really strikes me through all this is the Lindy effect.

Despite everything you just said, football is bigger than it ever has been.

A huge amount of revenue and now diversified those revenue sources.

It's not just old line broadcast networks trying to hang on that are paying them this money.