Written by As the NFL season winds down, its league-wide social responsibility initiative “Inspire Change” will be on display in stadiums around the country. Yet it’s easy to imagine a familiar scene on Super Bowl Sunday, a day described former commissioner Paul Tagliabue as “Winter’s Fourth of July.” As confetti swirls around SoFi Stadium, a (most likely white) team owner high upon a platform will be handed the Vince Lombardi Trophy while praising a sweaty and predominantly black male labor force standing below on the field, all captured by over 100 cameras rigged for a game with a viewership of nearly 100 million people.
In our everchanging landscape, the NFL maintains a vice grip on American culture with owners reigning supreme. At the same time, sky high television deals have translated into big pay increases for athletes, who now also communicate directly with fans on social media. The result is players more emboldened to take stands on game issues like coaching decisions, recruiting and even executive choices, as well as social justice and other advocacy, which is where campaigns like Inspire Change find footing.
NFL players have also quietly grumbled about the racially insensitive overtones of the use of the word owner in the league comparing it to the term master bedroom, which is problematic for its ties to slavery and implication of dominance. While the real estate industry quickly pivoted to the more benign primary bedroom, the NFL still uses the term “owner” on the NFL.com website. All while other departments created a coordinated Inspire Change package of banners, goal post wraps, stencils, helmet decals and video board graphics. Also, during the regular season, the league office allowed players to wear decals on helmets with six league approved slogans – “End Racism,” “Stop Hate,” “It Takes All of Us,” “Black Lives Matter,” “Inspire Change” and “Say Their Stories” – as well stenciling similar positive messages in the endzones during regular seasons games. There have been other concrete steps through this initiative, like the financial backing of groups like Gideon’s Promise, Council on Legal Education Opportunity, and the Oregon Justice Resource Center.
Nevertheless, the use of the word owner in the NFL remains important litmus test because research suggests that minorities are more likely to perceive racially based discrimination in a variety of settings more than whites, in large part because of the ways their personal experiences with racism shape the lens they use to view the world. This was evident right at the beginning of Colin in Black and White, the dramatic series about Colin Kaepernick’s early life. It opened with a depiction of the NFL Combine akin to the slave auction block. The criticism of portraying of millionaire athletes like slaves, ignored how black players, who comprise roughly 70 percent of the NFL, experience symbolic discrimination differently than white players. Acknowledging the value of broader perspective could be simply called empathy.
In 2019, NBA commissioner Adam Silver stated the NBA was moving from using owner to describe those with controlling interest of teams in favor of the terms “Governor of the team” and “alternate Governor.” The league itself stopped using owner prior to 2019 and with that leadership, individual teams like the Philadelphia 76ers and Los Angeles Clippers were among the first to follow suit. As Golden State Warriors forward Draymond Green said on an appearance on HBO’s The Shop, “You shouldn’t say owner. [It should be called] CEO or Chairman. When you think of a basketball team … you think of the players that make that team.”
Another option is to use the term franchise operator or franchisee. That’s the term favored by McDonald’s, which is an entity on a mega billion-dollar scale and with a similar business model to NFL. Like the NFL, McDonald’s has increased its efforts to help increase franchise ownership opportunities from historically underrepresented groups, but it has the added racially more sensitive nomenclature out of respect for the diversity of its workforce and consumers. While franchisee or franchise operator would certainly fit the bill for the Jerry Jones and Bob Kraft’s of the sports world, no one in their rarified circle has identified as such.
When Kaepernick took a knee, he not only raised awareness about police brutality that sparked a global movement. He also helped us see his humanity, putting it front and center above his station as a professional athlete. In a league comprised of disposable black athletes and largely white owners who take prominent roles as the stewards of their franchises, the impact of this has been profound. But the reckoning is still at hand and will be until all the leaders in the NFL inspire change.