All right, that does it. Stop playing the national anthem at sporting events, please. If something is not working, then why do it? If you take the family on vacation and nobody is having fun, then just go home. If singing the national anthem fails to unify and is continually hijacked for (fill in the political cause), end it. That was never its purpose. In NFL stadiums around the country Sunday, entire teams spent the national anthem kneeling, linking arms or simply remaining in the locker room. We’ve gone from Whitney Houston’s unifying, goosebump-inducing, electrifying rendition of the anthem at the 1991
Super Bowl to this: players looking at their feet. Consider this first as a practical matter: The NFL has enough troubles without this. TV ratings are down, again. Last year it was blamed on the election. Well, NFL ratings are down again this year. Maybe the biggest problem is that there is just too much of it – as Mark Cuban predicted three years ago, the NFL got greedy by adding Thursday night games and is headed for an “implosion.” And yet TV ratings are up for college football, which also turns up on the TV frequently. READ MORE
