The painful thing about protests is they cut both ways.
The NFL is dreaming if it thinks the alarming double-digit drop in TV ratings this season has nothing to do with a fan backlash against Colin Kaepernick's protest of the American flag and national anthem.
TV ratings for "Sunday Night Football" and "Monday Night Football" are off by a whopping 16 to 20 percent so far this season, Nielsen told Sporting News on Monday.
Yet in an internal memo last week, NFL executives found “no evidence that concern over player protests during the national anthem is having any material impact on our ratings.