I understand Hue Jackson is a coach and he is on the hot seat already, but he is also a black man, so this is a little disheartening.
Everyone says Jackson is a good man, just wish he didn’t say this, because the stick to sports white supremacists will latch on to the comments via Larry Brown Sports.
“I think everybody has a right to do, and I get it, but the National Anthem means a lot to myself personally, the organization and our football team,” Jackson said, per Dan Labbe of Cleveland.com. “I hope — again I can’t speak, I haven’t really talked to our team about it — I would hope that we don’t have those issues.”
“I understand there is a lot going on in the world. I like to just keep it here. What we deal with, we try to deal with as a team in our closed environment. We talk about things,” he said. “Hopefully, that won’t happen. I can’t tell you it won’t happen, but I just know our guys, and I don’t think that is where our focus is. We hope the things that are going on in the world get ironed out, but I know right now we are doing everything we can to get our football team better.”
Things won’t “ironed out” by being silent. Athletes have voices, if they are silenced because they are scared of their coach, that is just really sad.