​While Business And Sports Celebrated #LoveWins, The NFL Chose The Sidelines

Last week's Supreme Court ruling on marriage equality was greeted warmly on Twitter. According to Digiday, there were 17 times more positive than negative tweets on the social media platform, which reported 6.2 million tweets on the topic in the first four hours after the decision. #LoveWins was the top trending hashtag. Big business joined the celebration, with companies from Apple to AT&T to American Express creating rainbow logos, supportive images and positive messages. Some major sports leagues did the same.

Some, like the NFL, did not.

Major League Soccer stood apart. The league's Twitter account kicked off an outpouring of support from its community by tweeting a heart and an image of a "tifo" display from the Timbers Army—the supporters group of the Portland Timbers—who created a massive rainbow from 4,500 colored cards and featured a banner that read "Pride, Not Prejudice," made in honor of the International Day Against Homophobia in 2013. The Timbers' Twitter account followed with a different image of the same tifo, along with the message: "Today is about more than green and gold. #LoveWins #RCTID".

In total, 14 of the league's 17 American clubs posted celebratory tweets. Which isn't surprising, given that the American soccer community skews young and liberal. Last summer, The Atlantic's Paul Beinart observed, "the soccer coalition—immigrants, liberals and the young—looks a lot like the Obama coalition." MLS commissioner Don Garber regularly talks about his league's connection with "a new America," one that he once said "looks different, speaks different and feels different from just about every other time in our history."

For the league, diversity and inclusion are not corporate buzzwords—they're cornerstones, good business, a way to connect with like-minded consumers. So when the country had a historic moment, and young people experienced it as they experience most things—online and on social media—MLS had no problem looking and acting like a modern American brand.

Meanwhile, the Twitter accounts for the NFL, MLB, the NBA, and the NHL were silent on the subject. Among the Big Four leagues' 113 American teams, only five California clubs—the San Francisco 49ers, San Francisco Giants, Oakland Athletics, Golden State Warriors, and Los Angeles Clippers—acknowledged the marriage equality victory with special avatars and/or tweets.

Since the NHL draft was Friday night and the NBA draft was the previous night, it's likely that the two leagues were focused on pre-and-post-draft content when the Supreme Court's ruling was released on Friday morning. To wit: When the NHL's silence was noted in a discussion on Twitter, the league's director of player safety, Patrick Burke, tweeted the following: "In our defense, our draft is tonight. Official league wide moratorium on non-draft news."

It's unclear whether the NBA issued a similar mandate. If it did, that didn't hold back the Warriors or the Clippers. Why not? The Warriors' metropolitan area has the highest percentage of LGBT residents among the largest 50 metropolitan areas in the country, and its team president, Rick Welts, is gay. Meanwhile, the Clippers are working to repair their brand and reconnect with their community in the wake of the Donald Sterling scandal. The day after the decision, the Sacramento Kings joined the Warriors and Clippers—but on the whole, the NBA's failure to seize the moment and send a message to its fan base feels disappointing.

In MLB, all clubs were in action on Friday, so they were busy as well. That might sound lame, and maybe it is. But that night, the league posted this piece on its website: "Celebrating a momentous day in U.S. history" by Billy Bean. Last summer, Bean was hired as the league's first Ambassador for Inclusion. As reported by Outsports.com, "A major focus of Bean's work with the League will be to help end homophobia in the locker rooms, front offices, on the field and in the stands."

For baseball, which has the oldest and most traditional fan base in American sports, this is remarkable.

Bean—a former ballplayer, who came out as gay after retirement—wrote, "At the end of the day, I want every fan to know they are welcome as they walk through the turnstiles. Today brought us all a little bit closer." Such welcome is particularly important for baseball right now because it simply can't afford to exclude anybody. In April, Rob Manfred, the league's commissioner, warned that the sport "must address its flagging connection to young people or risk losing a generation of fans.

Here's Rays president Brian Auld: "We're a small but visible business, and I actually think it's important that we send this signal of inclusion to the entire region."

Corporate America understands this very well. On Friday, companies large and small and from sector to sector celebrated marriage equality, so much so that Buzzfeed posted a listicle featuring 32 of the day's best brand tweets. As is the case with MLS, this shouldn't come as a surprise. Earlier this month, Fortune reporter Anne VanderMey argued that corporate America has actually been ahead of the curve on this issue.

"Even before gay marriage was widely supported by the public, more than half of the Fortune 500 were offering health insurance and other benefits to same-sex couples," she said. "Today 66% of the 500 offer same-sex partner benefits, and 89% explicitly prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation."

Recent surveys have found that about 60 percent of Americans and more than 70 percent of millennials support marriage equality. On the right, roughly 40 percent of Republicans, 50 percent of non-Tea Party Republicans, and 60 percent of millennial Republicans support marriage equality. The Wall Street Journal called this "one of the fastest-moving changes in social attitudes of this generation." For brands, positioning themselves in line with prevailing social attitudes, especially among young people, is good business.

When Apple CEO Tim Cook attacked Indiana's religious freedom law as a "pro-discrimination" law in late March, Financial Times columnist John Gapper pointed to a trend of chief executives "speaking out about social matters on which they might have remained silent a few years ago," and "adopting liberal stances that often clash with political and religious conservatives." Gapper added, "On gay marriage in particular, companies are ignoring the traditional advice that they should stick to maximising profits within what Milton Friedman, the economist, called 'the rules of the game.'"

Like MLS, businesses and brands were ready when #LoveWins exploded. As Digiday's Jordan Valinsky put it, "Companies quickly attached themselves to this wave of happiness and sent out tweets that reflected positively on themselves and the news."

And then there's the NFL. While social media partied, the league sat on the sidelines. Why?

It couldn't have been out of fear of offending the league's sponsors. Not when many of those sponsors were busy tweeting their support for marriage equality, including Bud Light, Pepsi, Gatorade, Microsoft, Visa, Snickers, Skittles, Gillette, Tide, CoverGirl, SAP, and Barclays.

Was the NFL simply afraid of the "comments section" of its fan base? If so, poor excuse. "Opposing discrimination takes courage," wrote Tim Cook in The Washington Post in March. "With the lives and dignity of so many people at stake, it's time for all of us to be courageous." Given the league's dominant position in the American sports entertainment market and the fact that it has no real competitors—as opposed to MLS, which competes with other professional soccer leagues both at home and abroad—the NFL's failure to be proactive and public on equality and inclusion looks downright cowardly.

Really, how much courage does it take to stand up with much of the business community, including your own sponsors, and say, "This is what's right"?

Take a look at the 49ers' supportive tweet. It's simple, but powerful. Posting it literally cost nothing. But for so many people, seeing it means everything. The tweet received more than 3,000 retweets and almost 5,000 favorites. Of course, there were a few unhappy commenters. It's safe to assume the 49ers will survive.

The same result could've been achieved even without the lovey-dovey rainbows and hashtags. The Giants tweeted this statement: "We salute the LGBT community & are proud to know that today's ruling speaks directly to our core values of equality & social justice for all." A NFL spokesperson could have said something similar. League commissioner Roger Goodell—a man who once protected his gay brother from bullies and last year warmly welcomed openly gay player Michael Sam to the league—could have said something similar.

Instead, the NFL froze. As a result, its public connection to the marriage equality decision became Josh Robinson. The Minnesota Vikings cornerback tweeted that legalizing same-sex marriage was a slippery slope to legalizing pedophilia. That earned him a Deadspin post. That was the cost of inaction.

Here's what Twitter was celebrating last week: Equality. Dignity. Respect. Love. If you're the NFL, why wouldn't you want to associate your brand with these values? If your fan base doesn't yet fully embrace these values, why wouldn't you take a simple step to move the community in the right direction?

If not now, when?

The league had an easy opportunity to score. And it choked.