They say money is the root of all evil. If the old adage is true, then the patriotic displays we see during athletic competition are dripping in evil. Universities and professional teams in every one of the four major sports have received green from the military to pay homage to the red, white and blue.
Many people believe that Stephen A. Smith and Max Kellerman were the first to blow the whistle on this atrocity during an episode of ESPN’s First Take, but they weren’t. They were the first to point out that the league was paid to tell players to take the field for the national anthem in 2008. The honor of calling out the actual scandal first goes to Republican senators from Arizona, John McCain and Jeff Flake.
In a May 2015 article on NBC Sports by Darin Gantt, Flake was quoted as saying, “You get a good feeling in your heart. Then to find out they’re doing it because they’re compensated for it, it leaves you underwhelmed. It seems a little unseemly. They realize the public believes they’re doing it as a public service or a sense of patriotism,” Flake said. “It leaves a bad taste in your mouth.”
While a large chunk of the story has been about about the NFL receiving pay for patriotic displays, it definitely was not the only league to do so. In a November 2015 article on sbnation.com, Dave Hogg reports, “The Los Angeles Angels received $450,000 dollars as one of 10 MLB teams involved, while the Atlanta Hawks led eight NBA teams with $230,000. Six NHL teams had DOD contracts, led by the Minnesota Wild, whose $570,000 total ranked among the biggest in all of sports, while the Seattle Sounders got $128,000 to lead eight MLS teams.”
These teams and whoever is signing off on these contracts in the Pentagon should be ashamed of themselves. These leagues should have been obligated to provide context for these moments. For example, they could say things like, “Sgt. Smith hasis just surprised his son at midfield, and it only cost you all a few hundred dollars each.” That would be a more accurate representation of what is going on.
With all of the negative publicity that VA hospitals have been getting, you’d think the wallets of the military would be airtight, but such is not the case. I figured these events were supposed to be recruiting tools but a 2015 Huffington Post quoted Goodell saying, “We strongly oppose the use of recruitment funds for anything other than their proper purpose.” So this money was taken just to be taken, if it wasn’t meant to boost recruitment. Where did a man as intelligent as Goodell think the money was coming from?
Although there have been multiple reports of the NFL pledging to give back a little over $700,000, it’s still not enough for so many reasons. The first and largest problem for me is the fact that no other league has pledged to return a dime of the paid-patriotism money. My second problem is, why did they even take money in the first place? If these owners are as patriotic as they have claimed to be, wouldn’t they have made these displays free of cost out of love for their country? Lastly problem, why isn’t the NFL giving every dime they took back to the veterans or taxpaying citizens?
