You have a right to not watch. Absolutely. You have a right to tell Joe Ellis to go jump in the nearest lake.
But know this, too: The Broncos who kneel during the National Anthem do not unilaterally hate the troops. Nor the brave souls unseen, the real heroes, the ones who put their necks on the line for the Stars & Stripes every day.
It’s not a binary argument. It never was. And anyone who tells you otherwise is trying to buy your vote or your soul.
These Broncos, the ones prostrating in front of their bench, don’t hate the flag. Nor do they hate the servicemen and servicewomen given the honor of presenting it.
They don’t hate veterans. Or the fans singing in unison behind them. They don’t hate the rocket’s red glare, the bombs bursting in air.
They don’t hate America.
They hate things about it. And justifiably.
Or have you forgotten George Floyd already?
Are our collective attention spans that fleeting?
“Everyone’s got a right to do as they please, express themselves as they feel,” Ellis, the Broncos president, told reporters earlier this week when asked about players kneeling during the National Anthem. “I’m going to respect that. We’re going to respect that as an organization.”
Welcome, Joe, to the right side of history.
What took you so long?
The Boston Tea Party? Protests.
The American Revolution? Protests.
The Civil Rights Movement? Protests.
The Women’s Rights Movement? Protests.
“Never be afraid to make some noise,” the late Congressman John Lewis, a Civil Rights icon who passed away last weekend, tweeted a few years back. “And get in good trouble, necessary trouble.”
If you’re a black man and you’re fed up, kneeling for The Star-Spangled Banner isn’t trouble anymore. It’s necessary.
If you’re Ellis, to condemn kneeling risks being hopelessly out of step with your locker room, never mind the big hitters in corporate America, most of whom finally grasped Colin Kaepernick’s point about four years too late.
He also knows, barring a medical miracle, that the Broncos probably won’t have to deal with a full, or even a half-full, Mile High this fall because of the coronavirus. Nothing thins out a chorus of pregame boos quite like masks and social distancing.
As colors go, this was never about black or white. For Ellis and his NFL peers, it’s about the green.
Which also makes it awkward for a league office that’s spent more than five decades wrapping a bear-hug around the flag. Visionary NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle, a Navy veteran and a consummate marketer, once said that it was a “conscious effort on our part to bring the element of patriotism into the Super Bowl.”
The nation’s game. Your game. Whitney Houston. Carrie Underwood. Grown men reduced to tears. Goosebumps that never leave you. Sacred stuff.
Sundays are when we put on someone else’s jersey, slap some paint on our face, align with the tribe, scream ourselves hoarse, and escape from reality for a few hours. A majority of Broncos fans don’t want to be reminded during the national pastime that their nation has problems.
Or have you forgotten Breonna Taylor already?
Are our collective hearts that cold?
The most patriotic thing any American can do is protest those in power peacefully. What makes America the shining city on the hill, what makes it exceptional, is the freedom for her citizens to tell the powers that be, blue or red, to get stuffed.
These Broncos, the ones kneeling in silent prayer, don’t hate those freedoms. Nor those who have given their lives to protect them.
“When you see something that is not right, not just, not fair, you have a moral obligation to say something, to do something,” Lewis said in late 2019, a year that seems so long ago now.
“Our children and their children will ask us, ‘What did you do? What did you say?’”
When they ask, what will you tell them?
That you turned in your season tickets? That you killed your RedZone subscription?
The sword of cancel culture cuts both ways. And sometimes, the only way to move the sticks is to take a knee.