Don’t rip ESPN for not showing the national anthem on Monday Night Football. There are plenty of better reasons to criticize them.
When President Trump speaks at one of his campaign-style rallies, he is bound to hit on more than just which economic policies he prefers. Normally, he brings up a wide array of topics, including cultural ones. At his West Virginia rally on Tuesday night, this trend continued as he fired back at ESPN after the network announced its decision to not air the national anthem during its NFL Monday Night Football broadcasts this season.
“You’re proud of our country, you’re proud of our history, and unlike the NFL, you always honor and cherish our great American flag,” Trump told his West Virginia crowd. “It was just announced by ESPN that rather than defending our anthem, our beautiful, beautiful national anthem, and defending our flag, they’ve decided that they just won’t broadcast when they play the national anthem. We don’t like that.”
Sure, this seems to fit the trend of ESPN’s leftist agenda, but this is one instance where people should not be so infuriated with the network.
Why? Because it’s not common occurrence to show the national anthem on TV prior to a sporting event. Prior to the game, there’s normally a brief intro from the broadcasters, a commercial break, and then the game starts as the production crew finishes setting up. For football games in general, the national anthem is usually only shown on special occasions, like at the Super Bowl when someone famous is singing it.
ESPN only showed the national anthem three times last season — once after Hurricane Harvey, another time after Trump’s comments about the anthem at a rally for Republican Sen. Luther Strange in Alabama, and once again after the Las Vegas massacre.
[Also read: Trump: NFL should adopt Dallas Cowboys’ policy, stand for national anthem]
Fox Sports drew ire from conservatives when they announced they also would not be showing the anthem last year, but their president, Eric Shanks, told reporters that it was “standard procedure” to not show it on an NFL broadcast. After all, while the anthem is being played, the networks are trying to recoup the costs of their broadcasting rights by packing in as many advertisements as possible to keep their businesses afloat.
That’s not to say ESPN does not deserve criticism or have a political agenda — because that’s definitely the case. After all, they’re the network who hired Keith Olbermann despite his attacks on Trump and conservative women — and yet, they fired Curt Schilling for his beliefs. Their former employee, Jemele Hill, called Trump a “white supremacist” on Twitter last year and was not disciplined. They gave Caitlyn Jenner their “Arthur Ashe Courage Award” for suffering from gender dysphoria. And they are politically correct to the point where, last year, they had a sideline reporter, Sergio Dipp, on a Monday Night Football broadcast who struggled to speak English to his largely English-speaking audience. The list goes on and on.
There are a lot of problems with the self-proclaimed “worldwide leader in sports,” and some of their employees’ takes on the national anthem debate have been egregious. However, trying to bash them over the head because they are not going to air the national anthem prior to their games is not a strong argument. People who watch a lot of sports know that’s never really been a common occurrence.
Not to mention if they did show the national anthem, they very well may show the players who kneel on the broadcast. Does any Trump fan really want those players receiving even more national attention for their vapid protest? I didn’t think so.
Tom Joyce (@TomJoyceSports) is a freelancer writer who has been published with USA Today, the Boston Globe, Newsday, ESPN, the Detroit Free Press, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Federalist, and a number of other media outlets.
