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.