Southpaw 21: The National Anthem Tantrum Continues
And it sounds more hollow than ever.
Dear readers,
Happy Valentine’s Day! All of you, of course, are our Valentines. Last week, we wrote about how while portions of the NFL are getting more woke, the ethos of the league remains largely stuck in the past. This week, within 36 hours, new Jacksonville Jaguars coach Urban Meyer hired and then accepted the resignation of sports performance director Chris Doyle. Doyle, who had recently taken a buyout at Iowa to the tune of $1.1 million after consistently yelling racist and otherwise derogatory insults at his players, seemed to Meyer like a great fit for a very bad, very young NFL team until public outrage convinced him otherwise. Doyle’s method of coaching—the idea that if you’re not consistently yelling horrible insults at your players, you’re somehow “soft”—still exists everywhere anyone plays sports. It’s demeaning, unnecessary, and it should make us even more mad when it happens to high schoolers than when it happens to professional athletes. Real scandals go unnoticed every day. But this week, we’re flipping it around, and writing about a non-issue that became a scandal. Enjoy!
-Calder and Ian
The National Anthem tantrum sounds hollower than ever
Basketball is a business. Just to get in the door at an NBA game, you’re likely to pay somewhere around $100. The median ticket at an MLB game hovers around a more reasonable $34, but the price of entry is only the start. Once you’re inside the gates, organizations take advantage of the basic economic principle of scarcity to sell you $12 beers, $8 hot dogs, and terrible $10 pizza.
To decide to go to a sports venue in America (back when we could do so without risking our lives) is to accept this fact. Commercially, it’s similar to treating yourself to anything else—a concert, a nice new pair of pants, a fancy sandwich, an overpriced cocktail. Establishments that sell these goods function in the same broad economy as sports franchises.
The difference is, when you splurge on pants, the store doesn’t compel you to listen to the national anthem at checkout. Your cute local cocktail bar likely does not play “The Star-Spangled Banner” on loop—unless you live in Bushwick and it’s ironic.
Before the start of the 2021 NBA season, Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban decided (at least temporarily) to stop playing the anthem before home games. Cuban said he spoke with NBA commissioner Adam Silver before making the decision, and for the first couple months of the season, no one noticed. Eventually, a reporter over at The Athletic did, the issue blew up, the White House press secretary Jen Psaki got a question about it at a briefing, the NBA issued a statement saying that all teams would play the anthem before games, and Cuban folded on the issue.
The argument for playing the national anthem at sporting events, as far as we can understand it, is that sporting events are an expression of the collective strength of America. A display of national fortitude was obviously the calculus, for example, when—soon after the 9/11 attacks—President George W. Bush chose to throw out the first pitch at Yankees’ Stadium during the 2001 World Series. Plenty of people have correctly pointed out there is nothing that makes a sports stadium intrinsically more patriotic or collectively-inclined than a full theater or concert hall, neither of which feature the anthem. And yet the tradition persists, in part thanks to multimillion-dollar infusions of cash from the Department of Defense.
But more to the point: though playing the anthem at sporting events has emerged as a tradition in America, most fans actually don’t care much. As Cuban pointed out, fans often show up mid-way through or after the anthem, concession stands don’t stop serving food while the anthem is playing, and people keep moving around the stadium as if nothing were happening. COVID protocols meant that there were no fans in the Mavericks stadium when the anthem wasn’t played, but there were plenty of stadium personnel and athletes on hand, none of whom cared enough about the change to raise a stink about it in the press.
We don’t feel particularly worked up about whether teams play the national anthem before sporting events or not. It’s incidental, but it’s also tradition. The whole thing is a bit Orwellian, and “The Star Spangled Banner” does have colonial, racist undertones and history, but so does America. We could change the anthem, but for now, it’s the one we’ve got. The more ridiculous part of this whole episode is how angry people on the right got after they belatedly learned about Cuban’s decision. The same day, Texas’s Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick announced plans to introduce “The Star Spangled Banner Protection Act” into the Texas legislature, which would force the anthem to be played at all events that receive public funding from Texas—yet another reason taxpayers maybe shouldn’t be footing the bill for new arenas.
Such melodramatic anger fits into a larger narrative of grievance and marginalization on the right, which has taken to shrieking about patriotism and clinging to performative flag-waving while simultaneously inciting violence against the Capitol. A recent Fox News headline reads, “Matt Gaetz blasts House Democrats for mocking request to recite Pledge of Allegiance at hearing,” after House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler denied Gaetz’s request that the Judiciary Committee recite the pledge before every single hearing, given that the entire House begins each day with the pledge. Of course, neither Republican nor Democratic caucus meetings begin with the pledge or the anthem, but here we are.
The furor over the anthem, just like the furor over the Pledge of Allegiance, is obviously contrived. Luckily, though, this kabuki theater doesn’t seem to hold much weight anymore. Matt Gaetz and Dan Patrick will continue to do what they do, but after the Trump Era of American politics, it’s increasingly difficult for the average person, regardless of her political persuasion, to get truly worked up over this pablum. Gaetz in particular, molded in the image of Trump, cares only about attention. And while these stunts might still get him a few appearances on Fox News, fewer people are tuning in. These manufactured scandals are vapid, and the NBA’s response to Cuban is vaguely disappointing. But Cuban’s experiment proved that Americans don’t really care. On this issue, that’s a positive development.
RODNEY’S ROUNDUP
Do you want to read about . . .
. . . Colin Kaepernick turn to full-on capitalist? “Colin Kaepernick Targets a Socially-Driven Billion-Dollar Company With New SPAC,” by Andrew Beaton in The Wall Street Journal (February 9, 2021).
. . . the overwhelming cognitive dissonance on display at the Super Bowl? “The Super Bowl’s Woke Capitalism,” by Dave Zirin in The Nation (February 8, 2021).
. . . Urban Meyer’s brush with reality? “Urban Meyer learns he can't run an NFL team like a college fiefdom,” by Nancy Armour in USA TODAY (February 13, 2021).
. . . the NFL’s wokest team getting even more woke? “Former cheerleaders settle with Washington Football Team as program’s future is in doubt,” by Beth Reinhard in The Washington Post (February 10, 2021).
. . . the little-known-story of the first interracial tennis match? “Overlooked No More: Jimmie McDaniel, Tennis Player Who Broke Barriers,” by Cindy Shmerler in The New York Times (February 11, 2021).
. . . a growing multi-sport effort to fight racist speech online? “English football hopes for US sports link-up in fight against online abuse,” by Paul MacInnes in The Guardian (February 11, 2021).