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An NFL team reportedly used San Francisco\u00a049ers<\/a>\u00a0star Nick Bosa\u2019s\u00a0Donald Trump-supporting stunt<\/a>\u00a0to warn its players about the potential cost of speaking out ahead of Election Day.\u00a0In\u00a0his weekly notebook<\/a>\u00a0at Sports Illustrated, NFL insider Albert Breer said the conversation in NFL circles about the U.S. presidential election has been \u201cway more toned down\u201d compared to the past two elections. But to see whether that was intentional or not, Breer checked in with nine NFL teams to see what the teams were telling their players.<\/p>\n According to Breer, one of the teams used Bosa going on \u201cSunday Night Football\u201d\u00a0to show off a \u201cMake America Great Again\u201d hat as a negative example.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cThe first team had its public relations director address the team Thursday,\u201d Breer wrote. \u201cThe PR chief raised the example from last weekend of Nick Bosa \u2014 telling players he\u2019d lose a sum of at least five figures from the fallout, and he didn\u2019t even utter a word \u2014 in emphasizing to the players that, while they\u2019re free to speak out, there can be a cost to it.\u201d<\/p>\n As SFGATE\u00a0first reported<\/a>\u00a0last week, Bosa\u2019s stunt was in direct violation of the\u00a0NFL rulebook<\/a>, with Rule 5, Section 4, Article 8 stating that the NFL expressly prohibits messages related to \u201cpolitical activities or causes\u201d during any moment a player is \u201cvisible to the stadium and television audience,\u201d including during pregame warmups and postgame interviews.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n That unnamed NFL team\u2019s PR chief then apparently lied to the team\u2019s players, based on what Breer reported from the PR person\u2019s message: \u201cHe added that, as a result, Bosa\u2019s teammates had to answer questions they otherwise wouldn\u2019t have had to, as an example of how a personal statement can become a team matter.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n No 49ers player was asked to address\u00a0Bosa\u2019s political hat stunt in the aftermath of Sunday\u2019s game\u00a0\u2014 and other than the three players being interviewed by NBC, tight end George\u00a0Kittle, quarterback Brock Purdy and running back Isaac Guerendo, most likely didn\u2019t even know it happened until after the game. With the Niners on a bye, players didn\u2019t have mandatory media availability for the entire week after Sunday\u2019s win over the Cowboys.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n In that light, the anonymous first NFL team\u2019s PR chief seems less like a warning to help your teammates and more of an active discouragement of political commentary.\u00a0For the other eight teams Breer spoke to, only one addressed Bosa\u2019s actions,\u00a0according to Breer: \u201cThe PR staff also met one-on-one with team leaders and more outspoken players, and some players came back to the PR staff to ask about handling any questions on the Bosa situation.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n An NFL team reportedly used San Francisco\u00a049ers\u00a0star Nick Bosa\u2019s\u00a0Donald Trump-supporting stunt\u00a0to warn its players about the potential cost of speaking out ahead of Election Day.\u00a0In\u00a0his weekly notebook\u00a0at Sports … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":13248,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13247","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usdailys.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13247","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usdailys.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usdailys.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usdailys.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usdailys.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13247"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/usdailys.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13247\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13249,"href":"https:\/\/usdailys.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13247\/revisions\/13249"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usdailys.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/13248"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usdailys.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13247"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usdailys.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13247"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usdailys.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13247"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}