Willingness to jump into controversies ruining football

Bear with me while I take a whack at a national story that refuses to die.

Can we please have our football back without controversies being created that have nothing to do with the sport? Is it too much to ask for a three-hour game void of distractions, goofy stories from the commentators, or replay officials who analyze each disputed play like it’s the Zapruder film?

I had a flashback of Elvis Presley when I first read about the fading quarterback from San Francisco who decided six years into his professional career he didn’t want to stand anymore for the national anthem. I remembered a clip of Elvis from 1972 and his response when a female reporter tried to drag him into the controversy over the war in Vietnam.

“Honey, I’d just as soon keep my own personal views about that to myself,” Elvis said. “I’m just an entertainer. I’d rather not say.”

Oh, what an idea. One that apparently died with disco in the 1970s.

Now, celebrities and athletes leap into controversies without the slightest hesitation or an understanding of what they’re talking about. Case in point, former NFL player Rodney Harrison.

“I’m a black man,” Harrison said while delivering his tirade. “Colin Kaepernick, he’s not black. He cannot understand what I face and what other young black men and black people face, or people of color face, on an every single (day) basis.”

Harrison spouted plenty more before someone apparently tapped him on the shoulder and said that, yes, Kaepernick is biracial. Duh, never mind. I don’t care that Tom Brady is married to a super model or that he likes to deflate instead of inflate before kickoff. I don’t care about the religion of Tim Tebow, who tried last week to convince scouts he is now a baseball player with bigleague potential. And I don’t need to be told over and over and over that Michael Sam is gay.

I just want football for three hours without the complexities and controversies of the outside world.

Kaepernick was joined by a teammate in his refusal to stand for the national anthem before the 49ers’ final preseason game at San Diego. Don’t know about you, but if this becomes a movement among players in the NFL, I’ll drop them like I did Major League baseball when the players went on strike in the 1980s. Yep. I hold a grudge. No one questions whether Kaepernick, like all Americans, has a right to express his view on any subject. But he should do so in a different forum and not while he’s on the clock, when he is supposed to be earning a portion of the $11 million dollars his employer is paying him this season.

Selfishly, Kaepernick has put the 49ers in an awkward position and now the police who provide security for their home games are threatening to boycott. And don’t give me the nonsense that Kaepernick has brought the issues of race, oppression, and gun violence to the forefront by his protest. Those problems have existed for decades and they’re shown each day, fresh with video, on the 24-hour news channels.

I was probably 12 years old when I received a life lesson about patriotism and the flag of the United States from a woman I had never met. We were in the bleachers for a baseball game when she turned and scolded me for goofing off and talking during the playing of the Star-Spangled Banner.

It was embarrassing and my friends snickered as my face turned red. But she was right and from that moment forward I have stood attention and honored the flag, like all of you.

So, why is it that Kaepernick decided to sit or kneel during the national anthem in the sixth year of his NFL career? Could it be he is just another disgruntled and overpaid athlete who is in danger of losing his starting quarterback job to Blaine Gabbert, who was a bust in Jacksonville?

At this point I will repeat what I put on Twitter moments after reading about Kaepernick’s protest.

Kaepernick doesn’t have to stand for nat’l anthem, but the 49ers don’t have him as an employee. He can play in Canada and not stand there either.