Why is the National Anthem even being performed before NFL games?

Donald Trump, after opening-up his stupid, lurid mouth and demonstrating once again that attending an Ivy League school does not necessarily mean you received an Ivy League education (anyone with enough money can “buy” their son or daughter a place in one of those schools), by twisting a legitimate concern (police abuse of lethal force) that only a small number of NFL players were acting in protest on into a full-blown protest against HIM.  Two Texas NFL franchise owners (Jerry Jones and Bob McNair) bought into his race-baiting tactics with predictable outrage from players. Of course, white fans are “outraged” because, well, if you make a lot of money you should be showing more “respect”—but not necessarily for the flag and National Anthem, but for their attitudes about black players making more money than they are.

To me there is an even bigger question: why is the National Anthem even played at all at non-Olympic sporting events? History.com, quoting from ESPN The Magazine, tells us that the first time “The Star-Spangled Banner” was played during a major sports event was during the 1918 World Series in Chicago, and only because of “heavy hearts” due to news of American casualties during the ongoing war in Europe, an apparent anarchist bombing in Chicago, and the fact that some players need “uplift” because the government had just announced that baseball players would not be exempt from the draft. “Banner” was at the time not actually designated as the “national anthem,” and was still only played sporadically in subsequent years and not “required.” The song did not officially become the national anthem until 1931 (many people then and today  believe that “America the Beautiful” is a much more appropriate song and should be the national anthem), and it was only after World War II that the NFL commissioner required that it be played before every football game. 

The problem with “Banner”—besides its clumsy shoe-horning of words and music—is that it equates freedom with war and violence, while “America the Beautiful” tells us “God mend thine every flaw” and that “success” be for a “noble” purpose, to love “mercy more than life” and a land that “crowned thy good with brotherhood, from sea to shining sea.” Perhaps opposition to that song is due to those sentiments offending bigots, nativists and xenophobes. I suspect that football players who are refusing to stand for the current national anthem would be more inclined to make manifest their support of the sentiments of  “America the Beautiful” if it were the anthem, choosing to demonstrating that it is much of white America that is disrespecting the anthem and the flag it represents.

The irony of Trump’s self-serving racist politicization of a serious social issue is that he made the attack on players before an all-white crowd in Alabama; if that “Blacks for Trump” guy was there, no doubt he still can’t articulate why he supports Trump, or appears to be off his medication. Alabama was the heartland of not just the Confederacy but the nerve center of segregation and Jim Crow, a state that has given us a “gentle” racist as Attorney General. It is the height of conceit and hypocrisy that this nation should taking orders from the opinions of people who should be the last one’s talking about “respect” for the flag and National Anthem. Better yet, let’s just stop the hypocrisy of even requiring its playing during sporting events.