Media Matters: A Super Bowl Stand for Kaepernick, and the Case for Benching the Anthem

“Since our complex societies are highly susceptible to interference and accidents, they certainly offer ideal opportunities for a prompt disruption of normal activities.” - Jurgen Habermas

America has a complicated relationship with disruption. We are quick to celebrate it on the biggest stages. In business, visionary disruptors are heralded for upending industries grown stagnant. In sports, superlatives are showered onto the rare player cable of rendering even the most intricately tailored game plan useless with audacious derring-do. Yet when confronted with disruption on a more pedestrian level, disruption to that which we take for granted in our daily existence, our first instinct is often to coral it; to lasso it with the ropes of convention and pull it back into our narrow comfort zone. Or to simply quelch it all together. 

In school, “disrupter” is a label generally reserved for the class rabble-rouser; the gifted but free-spirited sprite forever subverting the regimented structure of the day’s lesson plan, often through strident challenges to authority, or uncomfortable questions that push beyond the confines of standardized test prep. Instead of being lauded and nurtured as the future innovator that he may well become, the disrupter is saddled with a series of disciplinary measures and pharmaceutical remedies. If the disruption continues, he may ultimately be removed from school, a sacrifice at the altar of order and harmony. On the eve of Super Bowl LII, former 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick finds himself kneeling at that very altar.

It has been nearly a year since Kaepernick has been part of an NFL roster, yet he has proven to be the league’s greatest disruptor of the 2017 season, the reverberations of his principled refusal to stand for the national anthem felt in every NFL stadium, every week of the year. The aftershocks will likely rumble every bit as loudly as the fighter jets that flying above U.S. Bank Stadium prior to kickoff on Sunday, as every viewer will pay special attention to the anthem presentation, analyzing the positioning of each and every player. That’s all thanks to Kaepernick, who placed the anthem, previously an afterthought to the average viewer, front and center when he began sitting, and later kneeling during its performance, in protest of police brutality and racial discrimination in the criminal justice system.

There’s no way of knowing for sure that Kaepernick’s inability to land so much as a tryout with an NFL franchise for the entirety of a season in which quarterbacks were lost to injury at a historic rate is related to his (non)stand. But in a year when marginal talents like Dan Orlovsky, Josh Woodrum, and Ryan Mallet managed to find work, and renowned locker room cancer Jake Cutler was lured out of retirement for a lucrative contract, it most certainly was not ability or attitude that kept Kaepernick - who led the 49ers to a Super Bowl and was honored by his teammates for “inspirational and courageous play” - off the gridiron. 

Kaepernick’s peers clearly felt that his exclusion was not performance based, as many notables kicked off the 2017 season kneeling or raising fists during the anthem presentation. Among the first and most visible is Philadelphia Eagles’ Pro Bowler Malcolm Jenkins, who will be on the field Sunday. Any hope the NFL might have had of containing the uprising was torpedoed in late September when President Donald Trump weighed in at an Alabama rally, railing, “Wouldn’t you love to see one of these NFL owners, when somebody disrespects our flag, to say,’Get that son of a bitch off the field right now. Out. He’s fired. He’s fired!’”

A brush fire promptly turned into a forest fire, as what had been a protest carried out by a hand full of players became a full on movement. Players, coaches, and even owners locked arms and took knees the following week. That’s the nature of disruption. Once the status quo has been shaken, it often continues to waver, even after the initial disruptor has been removed; sometimes with even greater velocity. Had the NFL deployed a “bend but don’t break” defensive strategy, encouraging quarterback-deficient teams to consider Kaepernick, and clarifying its anthem policy to explicitly permit standing or kneeling, the issue likely would have faded by mid-season. Tom Brady’s age-defying heroics, the unexpected emergence of the Eagles, and numerous other football related storylines would ultimately have proven far more intriguing than the pregame ritual of (perhaps) the Baltimore Ravens’ backup quarterback. As a martyr, Kaepernick’s specter loomed larger than his presence, standing as an avatar for injustices reaching far beyond the NFL in a time of unprecedented civic unrest. Unfortunately, as breadth grows more sprawling, focus is often lost. To a large extent, that appears to be precisely what happened as Kaepernick’s protest picked up steam sans Kaepernick. 

“I am not going to stand up to show pride for a flag that oppresses black people and people of color,” Kaepernick explained in 2016. “There are bodies in the street and people getting paid leave and getting away with murder.” It was a pointed commentary on the spate of recorded police shootings of unarmed black men that flooded social media in the months leading up to the 2016 season. As his protests continued, Kaepernick began to add more depth to his critiques of the treatment of minorities in the the criminal justice system. Throughout 2017, the feverish debate surrounding the ongoing protests careened from the military, to freedom of speech, to the meaning of the anthem itself, and ultimately, as with most topics into which Donald Trump clumsily inserts himself, Donald Trump. When the protests reached their peak on September 24th, players were not locking arms in solidarity against police misconduct or racism, they were locking arms against Trump attempting to tell them what to do, turning Kaepernick’s measured social commentary into a partisan political shouting match.

Caught in the crossfire, the NFL has taken flesh wounds from both sides. In a recent Survey Monkey/Ozy Media poll, a third of respondents claim to have stopped attending or watching NFL games in 2017. Of those, 32% reported curtailing their viewing in support of Trump, while 22% said they stopped watching “in solidarity with the players kneeling,” and another 12% tuned out “in support of Colin Kaepernick.” With players such as Jenkins likely to continue protesting next year, and the president almost certain to continue his broadsides as long as his Twitter finger works, the NFL must find a way to disrupt the disruption. Here’s how they can do it: retire the anthem from football.

It’s not as though “The Star-Spangled Banner” was penned by the founding fathers as a sacrosanct paean to solemnly initiate exhibitions of sport. Quite the contrary. Francis Scott Key’s patriotic poem was scored to the tune of a popular British drinking song in 1814 as a sort of jingoistic novelty: think James Brown’s “Living In America” for the Indian Removal era. The song didn’t take on any official national standing until 1916, when President Woodrow Wilson ordered it played at all military ceremonies and fitting government sponsored events. Coincidentally, Wilson’s daughter had recently released a popular rendition of the song. (Let’s all hope Ivanka doesn’t cover “American Boy,” or things could get seriously weird at the West Point commencement ceremony.)

Two years later, the song entered the sporting lexicon, when attendees at a World Series game spontaneously erupted into song when the record was played during the 7th inning stretch in support of American Troops deployed in World War I. Due to the enthusiastic response, the ritual continued throughout the series, and spread across the league the following year. The war ended, but the song stuck. In 1931, Congress passed a resolution making “The Star-Spangled Banner” the national anthem of the United States. It is hardly a stretch to wonder if, had the song not been adopted and promoted by America’s game, “The Star-Spangled Banner” ever would have earned official anthem status.

Regardless of it’s lowbrow origins, “The Star-Spangled Banner” is undoubtedly a beautiful composition, capturing America in its complex totality. Like the country it celebrates, the anthem is at once soaring and dynamic, inspirational and aspirational; an ode to fearlessness and determination. Its higher ideals are also sharply contradicted by a brutal undercurrent of racial animus. While our ritualistic recitations tend to trim the anthem to a concise single verse, the song actually contains four stanzas. The third verse essentially amounts to Key’s bloody revenge fantasy against the Colonial Marines, a battalion of runaway slaves who fought on behalf of the British Army in exchange for their freedom. The unit had summarily mopped the floor with Key’s District of Columbia Militia Troops in the War of 1812’s Battle of Bladensburg mere weeks before he set pen to paper. Still licking his wounds, Key waxed poetic:

And where is that band who so vauntingly swore,

That the havoc of war and the battle’s confusion

A home and a Country should leave us no more?

Their blood has wash’d out their foul footstep’s pollution.

No refuge could save the hireling and slave

From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave

Just because we don’t sing the racist lyrics, doesn’t mean they aren’t part and parcel of the song, just as racial profiling by police and racial iniquities throughout the justice system are woven intrinsically into the fabric of modern day America, whether or not we talk about them. Kaepernick chose to use the pristine part of the anthem to shine a spotlight on the ugly underbelly of the country. Those offended by his protest preferred not to see the ugly underbelly of America sully the pristine portion of the song. It’s a complex and nuanced conversation worth having, and one deserving of a forum far more measured than the set of ESPN’s First Take.

It is understandable that the NFL does not want the long overdue reckoning with one of our most uncomfortable issues playing out on their sideline. For generations, fans have turned to sports to escape precisely such intellectually and morally draining realities. However, the league has boxed itself into a corner. If it mandates that players stand during the anthem, it will no doubt be pilloried by not only civil rights activists, but free speech advocates, and risk mutiny up and down largely African-American rosters. If they come out firmly in support of the players’ right to do as they please during the anthem, just as sizable a contingent, very possibly with a sitting president leading the way, will deride them for not respecting the flag and the military. By actively seeking to link their brand to patriotism, the NFL (and the other pro sports leagues), unwittingly opened the door to politics, which have now commandeered the sports world just as they have nearly every other sphere of American life. Patriotism is a unifier. Politics, particularly in the current moment, are the great divider; a high voltage third rail for any business trying to promote a universal brand.

Attending a professional sporting event is not an inherently patriotic activity. It is not a military ceremony, or government sponsored event. It is popular entertainment; no more, no less. We are not instructed to rise for a rousing rendition of “The Star-Spangled Banner” before the start of a Bruno Mars concert, the latest Star Wars film, or a round of online video gaming. If anything, the argument could be made that we are actually degrading the anthem by exploiting it to initiate an ethically compromised corporate concussion dispensary brought to our flat screens courtesy of Budweiser and Cialis. By quietly removing the anthem from the game day proceedings, the NFL can begin to to gently extricate itself from the toxic politics of the moment, and re-direct the focus back to its on-field product. Would they take a bludgeoning from conservative pundits? Almost certainly. But it would be short lived, compared to another season in which fans are reminded on a weekly basis of the simmering discord tearing at the fabric of their own communities by the nationally televised sight of kneeling players.

As “The Star-Spangled Banner” rings through U.S. Bank Stadium on Sunday, most on the field and in the stands will likely rise, but a sizable number will not. Born out in those who will take a knee on the field, remain seated in the stands, or find themselves in heated debate with their Super Bowl Party companions in overcrowded living rooms across the country as the camera zooms in on Jenkins, fist to the sky, Colin Kaepernick will have had a greater impact than any player on the field, exemplifying the “disruptor.” For that, whether or not you agree with his message or his method, he deserves a salute. For his proven talent, leadership, and character, he deserves a chance to compete for an NFL job in 2018 and beyond.

Media Matters is an exploration of the news of the day, and what it can teach us about communications, contemporary culture, and life in the digital age.

About the Author Jeffrey Harvey is a Washington, DC based writer and content strategist with experience in broadcasting, strategic communications, public relations, marketing and media analysis. He has written prolifically on subjects including technology, healthcare and arts and entertainment. His original one act play, Coffee won a staged reading at the Kennedy Center in the Source Theater Festival.