Patriotism and sports: A losing combo for 1st Amendment – Chicago Tribune
When Colin Kaepernick of the San Francisco 49ers remained seated during the playing of “The Star-Spangled Banner” at an Aug. 26 NFL preseason game — later telling reporters that he refused “to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people” — he provoked strong reactions of anger and support. Other athletes were inspired to join his protest.
The controversy surrounding the Kaepernick incident made it easy to overlook the fact that it was happening at a football game. Live sporting events, the fulcrum of a more than $60 billion entertainment industry, are the only place Americans now regularly hear the national anthem. This merger of sports and patriotism has troubling implications for First Amendment rights.
The national anthem may seem like an inevitable part of pregame ritual, but its history is intertwined with the growth of sports as a business. The “Star-Spangled Banner” was first played by brass bands to mark baseball’s opening day. Its earliest performance was May 15, 1862, at the Union Base Ball and Cricket Grounds in Brooklyn, a skating rink converted into a fenced-in baseball diamond. The owner, William Cammeyer, was trying to promote sports as a public good (the fence was partly to shield female spectators from “the indecorous behavior of rowdies”), but the idea was picked up by others who saw potential for profit. Soon the practice of selling tickets to fenced-in games had spread, and pregame festivities had come to include marches, concerts and regular renditions of “The Star-Spangled Banner.”
At first “The Star-Spangled Banner” was one of many ballpark favorites, played alongside now-forgotten anthems like “Columbia, Gem of the Ocean.” Patriotic songs were used to fill dead time between innings, and fans usually responded with cheering rather than silence.
Our modern ritual of silently honoring the flag dates to 1918, when Boston Red Sox third-baseman Fred Thomas was granted leave from the Navy to play against the Chicago Cubs in the World Series. The series was a low point for baseball. Owners had called an early end to the season so players could fight in World War I, and a bombing at the Chicago Federal Building depressed attendance. As the Chicago Tribune reported, the game was “the quietest on record” until Thomas, hearing “The Star-Spangled Banner,” saluted the flag “in true military fashion.” The moment was heightened by military planes doing aerial exhibitions overhead. According to The New York Times, by the end everyone had joined in and “a great volume of melody rolled across the field.”
The Cubs’ owners saw commercial possibilities in this confluence of athletic, military and patriotic symbols and hired the band to play at subsequent games. As the series moved to Boston, the Red Sox did one better by bringing veterans onto the field.
The 1918 World Series offered a moment of affirmation for an America that, like ours, was facing terrorism at home and wars abroad, but more than anything it created a new model for selling sports. Anthems, fighter planes and veterans gave an appearance of civic purpose to an enterprise that was in reality pure business. The basic model of using patriotism to sell sporting events soon moved to football and basketball, eventually giving birth to today’s corporate-sponsored renditions of the anthem.
The similarities between pregame festivities a century ago and those of today are seductive, but there is one crucial difference. Americans in 1918 often heard “The Star-Spangled Banner” at school, in military service and at civic societies. Today we hear it almost exclusively at sporting events. Football stadiums have become our de facto spaces of civic engagement, the only place we take a moment to ponder the flag.
This retreat of patriotism into sports has led to what “Star-Spangled Banner: The Unlikely History of America’s National Anthem” author Marc Ferris calls “anthem controversies” — public debates about athletes who protest the anthem. Such protests are a First Amendment right, but we should be worried that sporting events are increasingly the only place we can find them.
Dishonoring state symbols is a powerful form of protest, a sure way to draw attention to a cause, but Americans can neither honor nor protest the flag if we only see it in football stadiums. We should be worried that corporations now control our anthem, not only because they exploit patriotism for profit, but also because they have unprecedented power to decide its meaning for us.
Colin Kaepernick shattered the quiet that typically surrounds the anthem. Already there is talk that sponsors will drop him. Brandon Marshall of the Denver Broncos lost an endorsement deal Friday for kneeling during the anthem Thursday evening.
We need a renewal of national rituals, not just so we can honor the flag, but so we can protest it freely. No one should own our national anthem.
Jeffrey Glover is an Associate Professor in the Department of English at Loyola University Chicago..
About Us
Free Shipping
If your order is $35 or more, you may qualify for free shipping. With free shipping, your order will be delivered 5-8 business days.
