A national anthem protest made its way to college basketball on Saturday afternoon, when eight Ole Miss men’s college basketball players knelt during the playing of the national anthem prior to their game against Georgia.
The players were protesting a pro-Confederate demonstration which occurred a few hundred feet away from their arena in Oxford, Miss., according to the Associated Press. The Confederate 901 and the Hiwaymen held the demonstration because they are upset the school may remove a monument featuring unnamed Confederate soldiers on its campus, the Clarion Ledger reports.
While the Ole Miss basketball players absolutely have the right to disagree with the pro-Confederacy groups, kneeling for the Union’s national anthem probably isn’t the best way to protest a pro-Confederate rally.
The Confederate States of America were not loyal to the “stars and stripes;” they were loyal to the “stars and bars,” and the rebel flag has remained popular among neo-confederate groups. The Confederacy had no regard for “The Star-Spangled Banner” either. “Dixie” was their de facto national anthem.
The Confederates wanted to divide the United States in half. There were slave owners among them. It’s easy to see why a roster mostly composed of African-American players would be against the Confederacy, given the country’s ugly history when it comes to the treatment of blacks. However, wouldn’t it make more sense to stand for the United States flag in response to a pro-Confederacy group? Wouldn’t it make sense to celebrate the way the country has made extensive progress in its treatment of minorities and women?
Groups that support the Confederacy in 2019 are fringe, as they should be. What good does it do to give them a bunch of national press by making a political statement against them? It seems like the best way to deal with such a group is to ignore them outright. If no one showed up to their rally, that would be a significantly more crushing defeat than legitimizing them with free advertising.
Plus, mixing sports and politics tends not to be a great idea.
In May 2018, a Washington Post-Kaiser Family Foundation survey found that 53 percent of Americans agree it is “never appropriate” for athletes to kneel during the national anthem as opposed to 42 percent who say it is “sometimes appropriate.”
Even if NCAA athletes are not making seven figures to play basketball, perhaps they should keep this in mind so that their program can continue to thrive and pro scouts do not see their behavior as any sort of a distraction that could hurt the team’s bottom line. After all, the NFL’s TV ratings during the 2016 and 2017 seasons dropped by more than 17 percentage points. Both a UBS poll and JD Power poll each found the top reason for the decline was the national anthem controversy, among other reasons.
When pro leagues are profit and rating-driven, odds are they don’t care so much for players trying to be “woke” if it costs the league money.
Whether or not people like it, sports in recent years have been needlessly politicized. Ole Miss is just the latest example of it, but it surely won’t be the last.
Tom Joyce (@TomJoyceSports) is a freelance 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.
