The NFL reportedly adopted its anthem policy without an official vote. What happened to the ‘unanimous’ decision?

Roger Goodell saying all 32 teams agreed on the national anthem policy seems disingenuous.

The NFL’s new national anthem policy adopted at its annual spring meeting requires all players on the sideline to stand and “show respect” for the flag and the anthem. The controversial new rule gives players the option to stay in the locker room during the anthem, but the deeply flawed policy has resulted in an immediate backlash.

When NFL commissioner Roger Goodell announced the policy change at a press conference Wednesday afternoon, he called it a “unanimous decision” among team owners. But ESPN’s Seth Wickersham reports there wasn’t even an official vote.

“This has been going on since September,” Wickersham said on ESPN’s Outside The Lines. “They’ve been talking about some kind of resolution. Usually when they have official votes, there’s a process that they go through. With this one, they knew how people were going to vote — they had essentially polled it — and they didn’t do an official vote.”

Wickersham said making such a significant change without an official vote is “atypical” for the league.

Did the NFL really not vote on it?

Wickersham’s report was slightly contradicted by Sports Illustrated’s Albert Breer, who gave an alternate recap of the events in the meeting room.

Breer said Goodell — acting as a moderator in the meeting — asked all 32 owners to give their thoughts on a national anthem policy one by one. Executive vice president Jeff Pash used the owners’ thoughts to write out a plan that reflected the room’s consensus.

Then, Goodell asked if the room would vote for it.

49ers CEO Jed York stood and said, “I can’t vote for it, but I won’t vote against it.” And that was it. The measure got 31 votes, with San Francisco abstaining.

Did that quick strawpoll to ask if the room was in favor constitute an official vote? Or was it close enough to a consensus that the league didn’t find a vote necessary? The difference between the reports may just be semantics.

Breer didn’t see it as a contradiction.

On Thursday, NFL spokesperson Brian McCarthy told ESPN that it’s not an uncommon way for votes to happen among owners:

Instead, they called for a show of hands to test support, which came back with zero nays -- an unofficial process that is often used, according to McCarthy.

”That was considered a vote,” he said.

Is the NFL allowed to make that change without a vote?

It would seem so.

The national anthem policy is part of the NFL’s game operations manual, which isn’t negotiated in the collective bargaining agreement and doesn’t seem to have official rules regarding amendments. More specifically, national anthem procedures is in the “Policy Manual for Member Clubs,” which isn’t made publicly available like the NFL rulebook.

It isn’t something that the NFL always changes unilaterally, though. Earlier this offseason, there was a vote to amend part of the policy manual (see: 2018 RESOLUTION G-2).

But as Deadspin pointed out in October, the NFL has tinkered with the national anthem policy in the past without taking it to an official vote.

In 2014, the policy said not being on the field for the national anthem may “result in disciplinary action from the League office.” Three years later, it said a violation may “result in discipline, such as fines, suspensions, and/or the forfeiture of draft choice(s) for violation of the above, including first offenses.”

So the NFL didn’t step over a line Wednesday it hasn’t already crossed before.

Why not just take an official vote?

On such a controversial issue, the NFL really tried hard to sell its policy as one presented by a unified front.

“Clearly our objective as a league and all 32 clubs — which was unanimous — is that we want people to be respectful during the national anthem and we want people to stand,” Goodell said at his press conference Wednesday. “And [we want to] make sure we treat this moment in a respectful fashion. That’s something that we think we owe. We’ve been really sensitive in making sure that we give players choices, but we do believe that moment is an important moment.”

The reality is that it wasn’t entirely unanimous. While Breer said York was the only one who skipped the vote, Wickersham said Mark Davis of the Raiders was also reportedly prepared to abstain from voting.

There was also Jets CEO Christopher Johnson, who told Newsday that he’d support any player who protested during the anthem and would pay the team fine without handing out discipline.

“I do not like imposing any club-specific rules,” Johnson said. “If somebody [on the Jets] takes a knee, that fine will be borne by the organization, by me, not the players. I never want to put restrictions on the speech of our players. Do I prefer that they stand? Of course. But I understand if they felt the need to protest. There are some big, complicated issues that we’re all struggling with, and our players are on the front lines. I don’t want to come down on them like a ton of bricks, and I won’t. There will be no club fines or suspensions or any sort of repercussions. If the team gets fined, that’s just something I’ll have to bear.”

So if there was an official vote, there would’ve been some degree dissent. And the NFL — likely realizing the backlash that was on the way — opted to present it as a consensus instead.

Another possible explanation is that the league gave the 32 teams plausible deniability in the collusion grievances filed by Colin Kaepernick and Eric Reid. If the policy was passed by the league office and not by the team owners, it’s more difficult to use it as proof of a collective will to quash protests. Goodell calling it a “unanimous” decision doesn’t help that cause, though.

Considering the differing thoughts of York, Davis, and Johnson took less than 24 hours to surface, it wasn’t quite a winning strategy for the NFL either way. It paints an already sloppy-looking policy change as even more rushed and ill-prepared amendment.