{"id":38,"date":"2026-05-26T22:11:56","date_gmt":"2026-05-26T22:11:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/longdistancemoversusas.com\/?p=38"},"modified":"2026-05-26T22:11:56","modified_gmt":"2026-05-26T22:11:56","slug":"the-nfl-ought-to-throw-a-flag-on-the-pentagon-heres-why-it-probably-wont","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/longdistancemoversusas.com\/?p=38","title":{"rendered":"The NFL ought to throw a flag on the Pentagon. Here\u2019s why it probably won\u2019t."},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

About 10 years ago, the Republican Senators from Arizona, Jeff Flake and the former prisoner of war John McCain, called out an unusual $7 million allotment\u00a0 in the National Defense Authorization Act that had nothing to do with munitions or housing or tangible programs such as healthcare for the troops. Instead, it was\u00a0money\u00a0being paid mostly to our behemoth $20-billion dollar industrial athletic enterprise, the NFL for patriotic displays that appeared organic: Salute to Service appreciation game days, color guard presentations, reenactments of enlistment ceremonies and celebrations of Wounded Warriors. And, of course, the now routine military flyover, which, in 2012, was included in a quarter-million dollar payment to the Buffalo Bills.<\/p>\n

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Given that recent history of promoting the U.S. military, we shouldn\u2019t be surprised that the NFL has not publicly demanded that the Trump administration cease its callous use of game footage to promote its war against Iran. The administration first spliced snippets of Hollywood action movies and violent video games with footage of its bombing of Iran. From there, it wove clips\u00a0 of NFL players making vicious hits on their opponents with scenes of strikes on Iran.<\/p>\n

And though some retired NFL stars have complained \u2014 for example, Hall of Fame safety Ed Reed objected to the government using footage of him on X by writing, \u201cI do not approve of this message\u201d \u2014 we\u2019ve heard nothing from the NFL players\u2019 union or the league itself. The league\u2019s silence is disingenuous at best or hypocritical at worst\u00a0 given the disclaimer we hear at the end of its games: \u201cAny rebroadcast or other use of this telecast without the express written consent of the NFL is prohibited.\u201d<\/p>\n

I asked the league by email for a response to the Trump administration\u2019s apparent blatant disregard of the NFL\u2019s copyright. I haven\u2019t received a response.<\/p>\n

The NFL and the military have slept in the same bed at least since the second Super Bowl in 1968 when then NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle, a World War II Navy veteran turned pitchman, helped orchestrate the first military flyover at an NFL game.\u00a0Earnie Seiler, the man Rozelle hired to produce the event, told the Chicago Tribune, \u201cBefore these two great football teams take to the field, we\u2019ll present a real All-American team, the 11 most decorated flyers in the air force. As they\u2019re being introduced, there\u2019ll be a fly-over by fighters from the Homestead Air Force base. Then, wait until you catch this, the planes will give the signal for the downbeat which will launch that 1,000-piece band into the national anthem.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

In 1968, the country was torn over the Vietnam War, just as it is torn now over the bombing of Iran. Muhammad Ali was being punished for refusing conscription. Flag-burning protesters were portrayed as enemies of the state. But Rozelle married the NFL, already often staged in stadiums named to pay homage to war and veterans, to the military. We in the media mindlessly regurgitated it all with our language: calling long passes bombs and anointing quarterbacks field generals, none of which escaped the great comedian George Carlin, who skewered the game\u2019s militaristic coding.<\/p>\n

\u00a0And ever since, the NFL has promoted itself as an antidote to protest and a promoter of the military.<\/p>\n

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Cowboys Super Bowl-winning quarterback Roger Staubach, a Naval Academy graduate who served a tour in Vietnam, was a face of the NFL in the 1970s. Pittsburgh running back Rocky Bleier, who was wounded in Vietnam, was lionized by the league upon returning to the Steelers with whom he won Super Bowl rings, too. There would be others, including Pat Tillman, who in 2002 famously surrendered his multimillion-dollar contract with the Arizona Cardinals to enlist with the post-9\/11 war effort in Afghanistan. He was killed by friendly fire. A statue of Tillman in his football kit was erected outside the Cardinals\u2019 stadium. NFL broadcast partner ESPN now bestows the Pat Tillman Award for Service at its ESPY Awards to those \u201c\u2026 who have made a significant impact through service, leadership, and community involvement.\u201d<\/p>\n

On the other side is Colin Kaepernick, the San Francisco 49ers quarterback who after protesting unchecked police lethality against Black men by refusing to stand for the national anthem, had his NFL employment ended almost at once.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u201cThe shield is red, white and blue not by accident, but by purpose,\u201d former NFL Players Association executive director DeMaurice Smith, told me Monday. Smith, who last year wrote \u201cTurf Wars,\u201d a piercing memoir on how the league treats its labor, said, \u201cIt\u2019s another level of cobranding.\u201d<\/p>\n

And for the players, more co-optation.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The NFL didn\u2019t require players to be on the field for the national anthem for all games until 2009, and it didn\u2019t require players to stand for it until 2018, almost two years after Kaepernick\u2019s protest. Around that same general time, as Flake and McCain exposed, our tax dollars were flowing to the NFL.<\/p>\n

But the NFL allowing the Trump administration to use its copyrighted footage as propaganda \u2014 and\u00a0suggest a war that has already killed several thousand people is entertainment \u2014 is not patriotism but complicity.<\/p>\n

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The league allowing the Trump administration to use its copyrighted footage as propaganda is not patriotism \u2014 it\u2019s complicity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":37,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-38","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"yoast_head":"\nThe NFL ought to throw a flag on the Pentagon. Here\u2019s why it probably won\u2019t. - Long Distance Movers USA<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/longdistancemoversusas.com\/?p=38\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The NFL ought to throw a flag on the Pentagon. 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