Cowboys Head Coach Mike McCarthy has figured out how to stop his players from kneeling during the national anthem once and for all: Fine them huge amounts of money.

“You have to hit them where it hurts,” said McCarthy, “these are NFL players. They care more about dollars than protests.

McCarthy’s fines are steep, too. To kneel on his field costs $500K, up from $300K a year ago. “It may seem crude,” said the coach, “but it works.”

Indeed it does. According to fans, they’ve only seen one player, Center Joe Barron, take a knee during the anthem this season. It cost him a half-million dollars.

ALLOD Sportsball Analyzer Tara Newhole says she’s not sure where the story came from or who authenticated it, but that it seems to be “patently false.”

“Yeah nobody kneels anymore,” she reported, “that was over like two years ago. A straggler here and there but as a movement, it’s pretty well ended. Nobody cares.”

Newhole seems to be correct. While searching for corroborating information, we came up with nothing. “It’s as if the kneeling thing only exists in satire,” I said to me, “which is okay, since it’s one of our all-time most-clicked subjects.”

Special thanks to fictional John Elway for making all of this possible.