Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones takes a knee before Monday Night Football game
As the NFL football weekend played out, and several NFL team owners stood arm in arm with their players while some of those players took a knee during the National Anthem, many assumed that Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones – a politically conservative Republican – would be the one team owner to side with Donald Trump on the issue. But as his Cowboys prepared to take the field for the Monday Night Football game, Jones appeared on the sideline with his players – and he took a knee with them.
Jerry Jones and nearly the entire Dallas Cowboys roster took a knee just before the anthem began, then returned to their feet as the anthem played. This marked the first instance of an NFL team owner actually taking a knee during these protests against racism. The fact that it was Jones, the owner who would have been least expected to do such a thing, makes it an even more powerful statement. This clearly only happened as a result of Donald Trump having attacked black NFL players for protesting against racism.
If Trump’s goal was to divide the NFL along racial lines so he could find a way to spin that division for his own benefit, he’s flat out failed. Instead, he ended up prompting the league’s owners, most of whom are wealthy white conservative establishment types, to publicly side with their players while pushing back against him. Even Trump’s friend, New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft, released a statement publicly criticizing him.
But the move by Jerry Jones stands out as the most noteworthy of all. Jones is viewed as being so stereotypically conservative, numerous people fell for the apparently fake stories over the weekend that he had ordered his players not to kneel on the sidelines. Instead, Jones ended up kneeling with them.
