Clemson

STOP WAVING THE FLAG

STOP WAVING THE FLAG

I usually hate it when football teams carry the American flag into the stadium before a game.

We’ve all seen the pre-game ritual at a big time college football program, that awkward commingling of sport and patriotism. Ninety thousand fans, some intoxicated and shouting profanities at an out-manned opponent who’s mostly just there to collect a $1 million check. The out-manned opponent’s program has historically been so sad the school fight song is by Sarah McLachlan. There are six different mascots cavorting across the sidelines as the big time school’s student section aggressively chants a rhyming obscenity, many of the students shirtless and inebriated, when here comes the home team with a designated player, perhaps a linebacker who was ejected earlier this season for spearing a guy who was lying prone on the ground, carrying the American flag.

NIX THE BALLOON RELEASE, NEBRASKA

NIX THE BALLOON RELEASE, NEBRASKA

I sort of hate it when the University of Nebraska football team scores its first touchdown in a game because it means that thousands of red balloons will be released into the atmosphere and eventually land where the balloons may be encountered by hungry wildlife. Some of that wildlife will be strangled to death; entangled in the balloons and not be able to get to real food sources; or possibly have the balloon just eaten block their intestines or bind to their beaks leading to a slow, tortuous death. None of those sound like a good way to go.

Imagine you’re a beaver or a sea turtle or even a skunk. (C’mon, skunks have feelings too!) You’re hungry and haven’t eaten in days when along comes this bright, floating object and it plops down right in front of you. It’s basically the animal version of Jimmy John’s. It landed beside you so of course you’re going to eat it, right?