Pizza Hut Takes a Dig at Papa John's Over NFL Protest Complaints

Earlier this week, Papa John’s executives blamed their sales slump on the NFL protests, suggesting a decrease in viewership has hurt one of the NFL’s most recognized sponsors. Whether that’s true or just a slight at the players exercising their constitutional right to protest, Pizza Hut is here to save the day.

Pizza Hut, a company with no affiliation to the NFL, has announced that it is “not seeing any impact from any of that on our business.” In fact, the pizza company saw 1 percent growth this quarter, which is higher than expected. The corporate shade has been thrown.

The biggest twist to the story, though, is how the public has reacted to what could have been, in another social climate, a rather boring story about sales and other business terms that no one really knows how to define.

As always, it must be stressed that the NFL protesters, inspired by Colin Kapaernick, are protesting racial injustice and police brutality. This whole talk about protesting the troops, the flag, or the national anthem are ways that people have found to detract from the original tough conversation the protests aimed to spark.

But now that the sacred American tradition of pizza is involved? Well, now Twitter is going in. If these reactions are anything to go by, it seems like Papa John’s business is about to do a lot worse, and they will only have themselves to blame.