Monday on ESPN’s “First Take,” contributor Will Cain said that Houston Texans players overreacted “by a country mile” by protesting the National Anthem to show their displeasure with team owner Bob McNair referring to NFL players as prison inmates when he misquoted the “inmates running the asylum” idiom.
Cain argued that the “brainless” protest is either because the players do not understand a “benign figure of speech” or because they are trying to misconstrue the words for their own cause.
“It’s such a clear, far-reaching, overreaction that it’s hard for me to use diplomatic words when viewing this. I mean, this is one of the most ridiculous, in my mind, brainless protests that I have ever seen — and that is me being gratuitous because the other option is to assume you are being manipulative,” Cain said.
He continued, “So, either you don’t understand something that most of society understands, or you do and you’re purposely misconstruing a situation for your personal or greater cause, personal benefit or greater cause. Everyone knows it was a figure of speech. You all know it. It’s a common one. ‘The inmates running the asylum,’ oh, he bungled into ‘inmates running the prison.’ No one takes that literally.”
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