As a Veteran and Conservative allow me to express my opinion on this whole mess.

It started with one player at first sitting, then taking a knee during The National Anthem (Kapernick).  This happened during last season under a different President when the country was already pretty divided.  It is my understanding that he did it to "protest" his perceived "racial inequality" and "police abuse towards blacks".  A few other players joined him, though it wasn't widely televised or spread.  I personally didn't think that his platform, time and place was the proper way to do it, but it's all in hindsight.  It's also very much his right to do so.

Throughout the off-season and even into the preseason, the MSM was reporting on the player not having a job.  Some said it was because of his "protest" actions while others said it was because of his talent or lack thereof.  That's a whole other debate, but the fact of the matter is the media kept pushing the story line, much like the Michael Sam story line of just a couple of short years ago.

Fast forward to this past week/weekend.  President Trump opened his mouth (wrong thing to do in my opinion) and the media immediately picked up on it.  Do I agree with The President?  In some aspects yes in that I would not use our National Anthem as a form of protest by any means.  However, how he worded it was very wrong and only "added fuel to the fire" of our divided country.

Many players and teams had issues with that and teams were scrambling with a way to deal with it.  Coach Mike Tomlin explained it the best in that the team was going to do something "united and together as a team".  Their choice was to try to remove themselves from the politics by staying off the field during The Anthem.  It wasn't a "snub" towards The Anthem, The Flag, the military or veterans.  They just didn't want any part of it.  Unfortunately, the MSM didn't report it that way.

The Jaguars chose to lock arms with one another in a display of unity during The Anthem including the owner of the franchise, players that stood and players that took a knee.

The media (see a pattern here yet?) made it out to be more than what it really was.

Quite frankly I see teams and players uniting more than dividing, and that's not a bad thing.  Using The National Anthem and display of The Flag is probably not the right venue for doing so, but one thing that it did accomplish was to get people talking about it, the same way that President Trump should not have said what he did, but at least it got a conversation going.

My hope is that this whole thing fades away and that we do work together to fix whatever problems that we have as a society.

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