Bob Costas, saying what I think:

BOB COSTAS: Part of what’s happened is that sports and patriotism and the flag have been conflated to such an extent that people can’t separate out any nuance. If you go to see “Hamilton,” which is about the founding of the republic, no one said, wait a minute. Don’t raise the curtain until we hear the national anthem. Went to see “Saving private Ryan” no one said turn off the projector until we’ve had the national anthem. It’s in sports where this stuff happens.

Sometimes movingly, sometimes I submit cynically, because wrapping yourself in the flag and honoring the military is something which no one is going to object to. We all respect their sacrifice. We all honor their sacrifice, and yet what it has come to mean is that the flag is primarily and only about the military.

This is no disrespect to the military. It’s a huge part of the narrative, but Martin Luther King was a patriot. Susan B. Anthony was a patriot. Dissidents are patriots. School teachers and social workers are patriots. And yet at Yankee stadium, if we can shift sports, not only play the national anthem before the game but “God bless America” at the seventh inning stretch 81 games a year and say, please rise as the Yankees honor a military guest. I have no problem with that. I stand every time I’m in the ballpark no matter what it is, I stand. And certainly respect the military person they bring out there. But never a schoolteacher, or social worker. Patriotism comes in many forms, and what has happened is that it’s been conflated with — with kind of a bumper sticker kind of flag waving, and with the military only. So that people cannot see that in his own way, Colin Kaepernick, however imperfectly, is doing a patriotic thing and so, too, are some other players.