1. I did not “cherry-pick” these athletes/examples. I tried googling “list of nfl kneel,” and without an official list of kneelers coming back from that search, somewhat randomly selected a Chicago Tribune article (I live in Chicago and the search result headline suggested I might get a list of names): http://www.chicagotribune.com/sports/football/ct-nfl-national-anthem-kneeling-20170924-story.html. I first googled the names of players mentioned in that article as kneeling. Since that was still fewer than 10 names, I started going down the list of kneelers listed in this SI article (https://www.si.com/nfl/2017/08/22/national-anthem-protests-list-players-kneel) from a month ago. I skipped over the less-controversial fist-raisers and focused on the kneelers/sitters.

2. I did pretty quick searches for each of these players. That means that I haven’t done a deep dive into their commitment and level of involvement in their charities, but the fact that those foundations exist pretty much wipes out the argument that these aren’t “men of action.” Such a quick search is also likely to not catch all charitable efforts and impacts on a community that a player has (especially if that player chooses to not advertise it).

3. The Tribune article I linked above states that over 200 players knelt or sat during the anthem this week, versus only 6 who protested the week before. This really wasn’t an issue until our President decided to fuel the fire by making divisive and racist remarks.

4. I don’t have time to research every single NFL player who kneeled, but all of them I googled have been “men of action,” many of them with their own foundations to support their communities.