When he announced his reasons for not standing during the “Star-Spangled Banner,” San Francisco 49ers quarterback, Colin Kaepernick entered a decades-old debate over the song’s straddling of politics and sport. A number of teams and individual players have dropped the anthem, or refused to acknowledge it, since it became part of gameday routines in the early half of the 1900s. In just about every case, the moves sparked public backlash — and, in the end, tradition won. The practice dates at least back to the Civil War era, when the “Star-Spangled Banner” — written a half-century earlier — first became part of athletic events.
How the National Anthem and Sports First Became Linked
