Professor Charles Grantham in The Undefeated and Wharton Business Radio on Athlete Anthem Protests

Professor Charles Grantham, director of the Center for Sport Management, was featured in The Undefeated and on Wharton Business Radio on Sirius XM.

Grantham, who is the former Executive Director of the National Basketball Players Association, published an essay in The Undefeated entitled, “Unions had better start doing their jobs to protect NFL players’ rights.”

In the essay, Grantham writes:

Colin Kaepernick’s act of protest in the backdrop of a presidential election, and now administration, where race is front and center has created a firestorm with regard to racial attitudes and relations in America.

The protest, using sports as the platform, has opened a conversation that is long overdue in America, and each day more people are brought into the debate offering support or disagreeing with the protest. Whatever your opinion, the‎re is still an “uncomfortable silence” from the segment of the sports community that can actually effect the very change Kaepernick, NFL players and other athletes are seeking….

Any solution to this protest will require the commissioners‎ and union leaders in both sports to demonstrate the courage currently displayed by the athletes and the bold thinking required to change status quo. While management and labor are most often adversaries, they are financial partners in a defined revenue sharing/salary cap business model because of the collective bargaining agreement. Thus, the biggest challenge to leadership on both sides of the aisle is to determine when and how outside forces affect revenue and franchise values.

Read more of “Unions had better start doing their jobs to protect NFL players’ rights.”

On the Sirius XM Wharton School of Business radio show, “Knowledge@Wharton,” host Dan Loney led a roundtable discussion on the anthem protests as well as the rights and relative business interests of both players and owners. Along with Professor Grantham, the show featured Wharton Professor Emeritus and CEO of Global Sports Institute, Ken Shropshire; and Andrew Brandt, director of the Center for Sports Law at Villanova and NFL business analyst for ESPN.

You can hear the show in its entirety here.

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