Yahoo and YouGov teamed up to survey over a thousand Americans about how they felt about Colin Kaepernick-inspired protests during the national anthem. Though the release is suspiciously light on methodology, the headline finding is that 44 percent of self-identified NFL fans said they would stop watching the NFL if protests continued.
That struck us as a curious finding—especially considering that the number of viewers of Week 1 action was actually up—so we thought we’d conduct our own survey.
Please take our survey below:
If you clicked yes, the survey told you that you are a fucking liar, because you are a fucking liar. If you care about the anthem that much, you presumably weren’t watching football before this season, when TV stations regularly cut to commercials during the “Star-Spangled Banner.”
Notably, the Yahoo/YouGov poll didn’t seem to ask respondents if they’d actually stopped watching the NFL, and while ratings so far this year are indeed down, that is likely mostly attributable to TV viewers watching more Sunday afternoon cable news in this election year.
There are a number of threats to the future of America’s pastime, but people tuning out because they’re offended by a couple of guys kneeling during the national anthem isn’t even close to one of them.