Longtime Bills Stadium Worker Quits After Players Take a Knee

A stadium worker for the Buffalo Bills quit his job of nearly 30 years after players on the team protested by kneeling or locking arms during the national anthem before the game Sunday.

“I waited until the national anthem ended, I took off my shirt, threw my Bills hat on the ground, walked out,” Erich Nikischer told WGRZ in an interview.

Nikischer thinks the players should have confined their protests to before the national anthem and that it was disrespectful for players to protest during “the song that is about our country, our veterans that fight and die for us,” he told WGRZ. “It’s just something I feel you shouldn’t disrespect that way. I believe people have the right to protest; I just don’t believe that’s the proper venue for it.”

Safety Jordan Poyer declined to protest during the anthem because he agrees with Nikischer. Poyer's fiancee Rachel Bush told WGRZ, “I feel like there’s a certain time of place where you should make a stand for something, and we both agree that it’s not in your work force, your work field.”

Nikischer said the decision was a hard one.

“I will never step foot in that place again, I will never watch an NFL football game again until this ends,” he told the news station.

Ratings for most NFL games Sunday were lower than the previous week and the previous year at this time, Fox News reported.

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