Colin Kaepernick's anthem protest underlines union of sports and patriotism

The pressing question for many viewers tuning in to a preseason football game on Thursday night will be whether San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick will once more refuse to stand for the national anthem.

But that question obscures some more meaningful ones:

Why is the national anthem a staple of sporting events to begin with? Why does the United States stand apart in making the anthem a part of the pregame ritual? And what does it mean to be patriotic?

Kaepernick, once regarded as one of the NFL's top players, has suddenly become its most provocative ahead of Thursday's game in San Diego because, in a country that is unusual in its marriage of sports and public patriotism, he has chosen the anthem as the moment to communicate a message of protest.

After declining to stand during the anthem before a game on Friday night, Kaepernick explained that he was motivated by issues of police brutality and racial injustice in the United States — eliciting vitriol from fans who believed his gesture was an affront and praise from those who admired his decision to take a public stand at a time when few prominent athletes are willing to do so.

Lost in that debate, though, is that while high-level sports are a type of entertainment, few other forms of mass-consumed entertainment — movies or concerts or exhibitions — have the anthem ingrained into every performance.

Tens of thousands of theater goers, for instance, have packed a Broadway musical that is devoted to the life and times of one of this country's founding fathers, yet "Hamilton" does not feature the national anthem. On the other hand, a game between the Cleveland Gladiators and the Arizona Rattlers in the Arena Football League could not begin without it.

For the athletes the juxtaposition might be even stranger: The president of the United States is not required to listen to the national anthem before beginning his day, but Jay Bruce must hear it before taking the field as an outfielder for the New York Mets.

"I don't think it's unusual because every baseball game I've ever played there's been an anthem," Bruce said. "I was thinking about that the other day: Like, how many times have I been involved with an anthem? It's so many times. It's what I'm used to."

Historically, the roots of "The Star-Spangled Banner" in American sports have been traced as far back as baseball games in the mid-19th century, and the song became more widespread in baseball during the heightened atmosphere in this country around the First World War.

Other sports followed, folding the anthem into their own protocols and, decades later, the pattern seems inextricably linked — although it is unclear why.

Pat Courtney, a spokesman for Major League Baseball, said the national anthem has been performed before all of its games since 1942 and that "it remains an important tradition that has great meaning for our fans."

Tim Frank, a spokesman for the NBA, said the anthem has been performed before every game in the league's history (it began in 1946) and that it is done "in honor of the United States and those who have sacrificed to protect it."

Brian McCarthy, a spokesman for the NFL, said the anthem is required because, "We believe there is tremendous value in coming together to honor our nation's history and also remember the men and women who have built and protect our country."

John Dellapina, a spokesman for the NHL, cited minutes from a Board of Governors meeting that noted the league has mandated the anthem be played since 1946 "as a show of patriotism" but has allowed "God Bless America" as a substitute since the 1970s.

The newest top professional league in America, Major League Soccer, was formed in 1996 and, according to Dan Courtemanche, a league spokesman, the original MLS executives had little choice on this issue. Rules regarding the playing of the anthem were enacted because, "At this point, it has become part of the tradition of playing a sporting event in America," Courtemanche said.

The key words there are "in America." No national anthems are played before a French league soccer game or a German handball league game or a Japanese rugby game. So why does the connection exist in the United States?

According to Eric Liu, a former speechwriter and adviser to President Bill Clinton who co-wrote a 2007 book on patriotism titled "The True Patriot," the difference probably lies in America's distinctive foundation.

Unlike a majority of countries in the world, the United States was not created on a common platform of religion or ancestry or, as Liu said, "some origin myth which goes all the way back to the beginning of history."

Instead, Americans are bound by notions and concepts — that all men are created equal, as one example — and the ethereal nature of those ideas makes anything that Americans can latch on to concretely seem more important.

"I think that's why this whole thing strikes so many people in such a passionate way," Liu said. "This is not a country in Europe or Asia that has the traditional patriotic ideas built into it. We are united by a creed and in a creedal society, the outsize rituals — like the anthem — just carry a lot more weight."

Perhaps that is why athletes have used it as an opportunity to protest. The basketball player Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf was sanctioned by the NBA in 1996 when he refused to stand for the anthem. The American track athletes Tommie Smith and John Carlos were kicked out of the 1968 Olympics after raising gloved fists on the medals podium.

Those athletes, like Kaepernick, were explicitly making political statements, forcing the public to reconcile an apparent slight of the national anthem versus the rights bestowed on all citizens that the song symbolizes.

Liu and his co-author, the entrepreneur and activist Nick Hanauer, highlight a quotation from Carl Schurz, a Union Civil War general and senator from Missouri, who in 1872 made the distinction between a popular line of patriotic thinking — that essentially, what the United States is doing is always right — and what he believed to be a more appropriate philosophy.

"The senator from Wisconsin cannot frighten me by exclaiming, 'My country, right or wrong,'" Schurz said on the Senate floor, before adding his own corollary. "My country, right or wrong," he said. "If right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right."

Is sitting for the national anthem, as New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees said in his criticism of Kaepernick's actions, "being disrespectful to the American flag?" Is it, as Brees continued, "an oxymoron" that Kaepernick is sitting down because it is the anthem, and the flag, that give him the right to speak in the first place?

Or is it the reverse: that the contradiction comes from those who trumpet the freedoms the flag represents but then criticize someone who exercises those freedoms? Is Kaepernick simply doing his duty, as Schurz said, by trying to set right that which he sees in his country as having gone awry?

More than 60,000 spectators in San Diego and an international TV audience can wrestle with this again on Thursday night. Game time at Qualcomm Stadium is scheduled for 10 p.m. Eastern time. The national anthem will be sung a few minutes before.