Getty Images

Texans owner Bob McNair is not sorry he said the NFL was at risk of having the “inmates running the prison” last year. He is sorry for apologizing for that comment.

McNair told the Wall Street Journal that he doesn’t think he did anything wrong and doesn’t think he should have been pressured into saying he was sorry.

“The main thing I regret is apologizing,” McNair said. He insists the “inmates” he was referring to were not NFL players, but rather league executives who he felt had more control over major decisions than the owners. “I really didn’t have anything to apologize for.”

McNair said he sees nothing objectionable about the comments he made at a league meeting and thinks if people were offended, that just means they didn’t understand what he meant.

“In business, it’s a common expression. But the general public doesn’t understand it, perhaps,” he said.

McNair denied what former Texan Duane Brown told PFT last year, that McNair had expressed dismay to the team in 2008 after the election of Barack Obama.

“I don’t go into meetings and express views like that,” McNair said. “I never said that. He has no problem saying things that are not true.”

McNair also denied talk that he would keep the Texans from signing players who kneeled for the national anthem. McNair says he does think, however, that politics should be kept off the football field. McNair’s own comments, however, may make the players who disagree with him decide they need to make their statements more strongly.