John Steigerwald: Stop playing national anthem before games - TribLIVE

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Drew Brees was right the first time.

When the New Orleans Saints quarterback was asked by Yahoo! Finance about the possibility of more NFL players kneeling during the national anthem, he said this:

“I will never agree with anybody disrespecting the flag of the United States of America or our country. Let me just tell you what I see or what I feel when the national anthem is played and when I look at the flag of the United States. I envision my two grandfathers, who fought for this country during World War II, one in the Army and one in the Marine Corps. Both risking their lives to protect our country and to try to make our country and this world a better place.

“So every time I stand with my hand over my heart looking at that flag and singing the national anthem, that’s what I think about.”

It took 24 hours and outrage from other NFL players, including some of his Saints teammates, to get Brees to apologize.

Why? Because thinking about exactly what “The Star-Spangled Banner” has always been intended to make him think about is no longer allowed.

If you do, it means you don’t agree with the Black Lives Matter movement and that you’re probably a racist.

NFL commissioner Roger Goodell issued a wide-ranging apology and said the league was wrong for not listening to its players when it came to racial injustice.

This is why it’s time to stop playing or singing the song before games. As political commentator and author Mark Steyn said about protesting during the anthem, “It’s a subversion of a most basic civic ritual.”

“A national anthem can be a national anthem or it can be an opportunity for self-expression, but it can’t be both. People have taken the most basic civic ritual and constructed an entirely different ritual around it, hollowing out of one of the few communal acts remaining in a divided nation.”

That’s right. It’s a communal act. And from the first time “The Star-Spangled Banner” was sung at a game, during the seventh-inning stretch of Game 6 in the 1918 World Series, the purpose has been to honor the flag and the troops. Back then it was to honor the 100,000 men who had been killed in World War I.

Twenty-five years later, they were thinking of the men who died in World War II.

You might think it’s corny, old-fashioned or passé to say the song is meant to honor the flag and the people who died defending it, but that’s why we sing it.

Of course, Brees was trashed far and wide for saying the song made him think of exactly what it was supposed to make him think about.

Colin Kaepernick insists he had no intention of disrespecting the military or the flag by kneeling, but it’s a communal exercise designed specifically to honor the flag and the people who died defending it.

We are asked to stand to show respect and to acknowledge the sacrifice. If you kneel, regardless of the importance and/or the worthiness of your cause, you’ve chosen to make your point by disrespecting the flag and the memories of the people who we’re asked to remember.

The validity of your cause doesn’t change that.

The showing of disrespect is exactly what makes it effective. Kaepernick got his point across. Four years later, we’re still talking about it. It worked.

So, what happens the next time “The Star-Spangled Banner” is played before an NFL game? Someone asked running back Adrian Peterson if he will be kneeling. “Without a doubt. We’re all getting ready to take a knee together.”

Which means the communal exercise, meant as a way to show despite our many disagreements and problems, we can still acknowledge the imperfect country we live in still exists because millions of people were willing to die for it, will have become a political rally.

And if most of the sports media and possibly Goodell now think it’s OK for players to use that time to air their grievances, how do you think they would react if a player held up a picture of an aborted baby during the anthem?

Would that be OK? How about a player wearing a policeman’s hat to show his support for the cops?

Imagine if during every rendition of the song, there were multiple and sometimes opposite political agendas being promoted by players kneeling, sitting or hopping on one foot.

The tradition lasted 102 years.

It has run its course.

Time to just shut up, line up and kick off.

John Steigerwald is a Tribune-Review contributing writer.

Categories: John Steigerwald Columns | NFL | Sports