The NFL staged a dog and pony show this week, with some NFL owners meeting with some current and former NFL players to discuss how they're going to "support social issues."

It was a waste of time.

Not because there weren't parties genuinely interested in using their respective platforms for good, but because the meeting was held in the first place because of the league-wide national anthem protests that have dominated the season to the point where not as many people are watching the NFL.

Which means the NFL isn't making as much money.

Which is why the meeting was called.

That meeting, though on a surface an attempt to find some common ground in regard to social issues, was all about getting two sides that pull from an insanely big pool of cash to remind them that they're pulling from an insanely big pool of cash, a pool of cash that won't be quite as big if the anthem protests continue. 

There was never going to be a resolution on the anthem protests - a league that took half of a calendar year to determine whether a player who scored a touchdown could thrust his hips wasn't going to enact new legislation regarding the national anthem overnight. There's too much acrimony between players and owners to think that the players would sign off on a new rule requiring them to stand for the anthem, and as the league careens toward what many will think will be a lockout when the current CBA expires, this is likely to be a sticking point in any negotiations between the two parties in the coming months and years.

The problem is that Roger Goodell is stuck between three sides, and while players and owners each seem to arrive at some level of satisfaction about what happened in New York this week - that, it's worth pointing out, most owners and only a very few players decided to sit out - their work was met with dissatisfaction from the President of the United States, and thus his large, loud, army of supporters.

Goodell is pinned between three powerful entities. Over here are the owners he works for. Over here are the players that work for him. And looming over all is a large swath of potential NFL consumers that act and react according to Donald Trump's latest Tweet.

It will be impossible for Goodell to appease all three, and even as the meeting he brokered this week was designed to move the league away from the national anthem issue, the only think anyone cared about as players and owners had their pow-wow was whether the protests would continue, or could continue.

In that regard, we are where we were the minute a camera caught Colin Kaepernick keeling for the national anthem last August. 

Meaning everyone who was in New York this week for the big NFL meeting wasted their time.

I'm 48-42-1 after a strong showing last week.

Kansas City (-3) over Oakland.