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 $1 million check. The out-manned opponent’s program has historically been so sad the school fight song is by Sarah McLachlan. There are six different mascots cavorting across the sidelines as the big time school’s student section aggressively chants a rhyming obscenity, many of the students shirtless and inebriated, when here comes the home team with a designated player, perhaps a linebacker who was ejected earlier this season for spearing a guy who was lying prone on the ground, carrying the American flag.
He’s carrying our flag which represents freedom and victories in real wars, not these games that way too many liken to war. I once heard a cable TV football analyst refer to New Mexico State vs. Utah State as “a war.” No. No. No. FOOTBALL GAMES ARE NOT WAR. Even Alabama vs. Clemson and Ohio State against Michigan.
Every sportscaster who refers to a football game as war should be required to visit a veterans’ hospital and talk to men who’ve experienced real war and see if he still sees strong parallels.
The Nebraska Cornhuskers began consistently carrying an American flag onto the fake war field during the Bo Pelini era. It made for a weird dichotomy. One minute you’re observing the flag and the next Pelini, incensed over something important, like, say, an opening coin flip that did not go his way, was telling a referee to stick his %^#$ing head into a horse’s ^** and to then #$$% the horse up the $%^.
So back to the pre-game. The home team takes the field with a mohawked kid who possesses some vaguely Satanic-looking tattoo sleeves carrying the American flag. He may very well be a citizen-scholar who knows the Articles of Confederation backwards. Or, possibly, he’s a guy who couldn’t identify the name “Francis Scott Key” and thinks Betsy Ross is a hot sideline reporter for FS1. He’s waving the flag like it’s a giant selfie stick. He sees nothing wrong with his actions and looks as comfortable as John Daly at the Albuquerque Hooters on Dollar Pabst Blue Ribbon Night. (Which, if memory serves me, is on Thursday.)
I propose this: Any college or high school team that insists on carrying the U.S. flag out of the locker room must send the flag-bearer to the 50-yard-line before kickoff. He is then required to answer a series of basic questions similar to the following:
1). Name two countries that participated in WW II.
2). Recite the lyrics to the national anthem that’s about to be played in the stadium. (No Googling!)
3). Name and explain any amendment to the U.S. Constitution other than the first or second.
4). Name one founding father.
5). Name two celebrities that John F. Kennedy supposedly boinked.
6). Who did the U.S. defeat in the Revolutionary War? (Hint: it was not Villanova.)
7). Name any U.S. Supreme Court justice. “Some really old guy who always looks constipated” will be accepted as a correct answer.
8). What does the vice president of the United States do? (The correct answer is “Nobody knows.”)
9.) Who was Alexander Hamilton? (Anyone who answers “A Broadway choreographer” is suspended for the remainder of the season.)
10). For Nebraska players: You’re about to play a game in Memorial Stadium. Exactly what does it memorialize?
If the flag-toter can answer these simple questions his team will be awarded three points. If he cannot that team faces potential sanctions.
When the NCAA can impose draconian punishments after a coach texts “How ya doin?” to a recruit, a college student who doesn’t know who lost the Revolutionary War should merit some sort of punitive punishment.
Whether you agreed with them or not at least most players who kneeled for the national anthem seemed to have an authentic cause. The ones carrying our flag may not be so enlightened nor as passionate.
If players don’t appreciate the significance of the American flag and what it represents then lugging one onto the field is just as hollow as first graders stumbling over the meaningless-to-them lyrics of “America The Beautiful” in monotone which I’m also against.
I call for sticking to the solid, time-tested traditions in college football: vandalizing goal posts if you win and setting fire to the furniture in your dorm room if you lose; poisoning your rival’s trees before the big game; and, in my house, putting Husker caps on all four cats before kickoff, which can legitimately be compared to war.
Enough of this misplaced, keeping up-with-the-Joneses’ patriotism. Let’s stick to real, sincere patriotism. Lose the flag carrying, guys. If you need to have something in your hands as you run onto the field how about a textbook?
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Brad Dickson is a former writer for "The Tonight Show," a humor columnist for the Omaha World-Herald newspaper, a best-selling author of two books and a professional speaker. You can find Brad on Twitter at @brad_dickson.
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