Mark Cuban stops playing National Anthem at Mavericks games. He’s getting flack for this, but the entire concept of playing the anthem has had a long and tortured history. It started in Chicago after a bombing there and to commemorate the death of 100,000 American troops in WWI. A few teams quit playing the anthem for a period, but relented and began playing it again.

What I find more objectionable is the militarization of the anthem and pre-game rituals, like the flybys.