Backup plan

You can say this about the Nash-unal FOOTball League, as Howard Cosell used to enunciate it: It never puts a plan in place without carefully considering every potential ramification, good and bad.

OK, so the Blob misspoke, as Our Only Available President/Russian Toady would say. What I meant to say is the NFL almost always puts a plan in place without carefully considering every potential ramification, good and bad.

This upon the news that the Shield has taken a knee in regards to players taking a knee during the national anthem. In the wake of the Dolphins getting blowback for proposing to punish any player who dared exercise his constitutional right to protest, the NFL has temporarily shelved its plan, which would ban players from kneeling on the field but allow them to stay in the locker room during the anthem if they chose.

Apparently league officials have decided to back up and talk the whole thing over with the NFLPA first. Why they didn't do this before implementing their plan to begin with, of course, is an excellent question. You'd think that would be No. 1 on the to-do list when you're going to institute a policy that is solely directed at the players, but, nah. That's not how the Shield rolls.

I guess they owe the Dolphins a debt of gratitude, in that case, for pointing out the flaw in their plan. Yes, it's true, your employer has every right to impose arbitrary rules without consulting you, as the league and the Dolphins chose to do. Whether your employer should, however -- especially when it comes to punishing something as fundamentally American as lawful protest -- is a separate issue.

It says here your employer shouldn't. Or, at the very least, should discuss it with those it will impact first.

That seems only fair. And, in its way, fundamentally American, too.