While the first couple weeks of the NFL season have been filled with excitement and great games, some of the biggest storylines have been taking place during the playing of the national anthem before each game.
Since week four of the preseason, San Francisco 49ers backup quarterback Colin Kaepernick has not stood for the national anthem. He kneels right next to all his standing teammates, and many other players in the NFL have taken the same approach.
They say they are making a stand against racial inequality in this country, especially police brutality, but what they are really doing is abusing their freedom of speech in an untasteful and unproductive way.
The national anthem not only represents the United States of America, but also all the brave men and women who fight for our country every day, both domestically and overseas. They fight to maintain the freedom that lets someone like Kaepernick kneel during the national anthem.
There are plenty of other places in the world where an act like that would be punishable by death, so he should be appreciative of all the freedom he is given, and the people who put their lives on the line every day in order to keep him safe while he makes millions of dollars to ride the bench.
I do not mean to say that America is perfect. There is no argument that there are plenty of problems, especially racial ones, that still need to be solved in this country. My point is that crying about it is not the way to fix anything.
By kneeling during the national anthem, Kaepernick is just complaining about the things that are wrong with this country instead of being proactive to try and help solve them. As a professional football player, he has so much influence, fame and so many resources at his disposal that he could actually lead a movement that works towards actually fixing the problem instead of just complaining about it.
As is, he is just trying to gain back the attention he once had when people thought he was one of the new elite quarterbacks in the National Football League. Because Kaepernick is protesting as a member of a team, his protest reflects poorly on the rest of his team and the rest of the NFL as well.
While he kneels and the rest of his team stands, it reflects a void between him and the rest of his teammates. As a team, you are not a mixture of individuals but one unit. Colin Kaepernick is trying to be an individual with his protest.
The Seattle Seahawks took a different approach to the National Anthem; when asked whether he would sit during the national anthem, linebacker Bobby Wagner said, “Anything we want to do, it’s not going to be individual... The world needs to see people coming together versus being individuals.”
When the time came, Wagner’s teammates showed their solidarity by standing and interlocking arms during the Anthem. Maybe this unity versus the individualism of the 49ers is part of the reason the Seahawks made the playoffs last year while San Francisco came in last place in the division.
With the undeserved widespread publicity and momentum of this entire protesting the national anthem stunt, it has even spread beyond football. Megan Rapinoe of the U.S. women’s national soccer team has knelt during the national anthem to protest LGBT+ inequality.
Again, I will be one of the first to acknowledge that inequality is a problem in America that we as a country need to focus on, but I find it hypocritical for someone to represent their country by playing on its national team and then protesting their country by kneeling during the National Anthem.
Team U.S. Hockey Head Coach John Tortorella said that if any of his players did not stand during the Anthem they would be benched for the entire game, and I agree with that decision. If you do not want to respect your country by simply standing up for three minutes, then you do not deserve to represent your country on the field, court or rink.
Standing during the national anthem does not mean you think your country is perfect, it just means you support the people who do their best everyday to protect the country and push it towards perfection.
As the weeks go on, the story of the one hit wonder quarterback taking a knee during the national anthem will die down, and the actual football being played will take over as it should, because the most suspenseful part of every game should not be seeing what players do during the national anthem.
