With fourteen NFL games on Sunday, and the 49ers on that list, there’s no question that some players will protest during the national anthem.
However, Marine Colonel (Ret) Jeffrey A. Powers is sick of it. So he wrote a letter to NFL Commissioner Roger Gooddell.
Former Congressman and Lt. Colonel (Ret) Allen West posted the letter to his site:
Commissioner,
I’ve been a season pass holder at Yankee Stadium, Yale Bowl and Giants Stadium.
I missed the ’90-’91 season because I was with a battalion of Marines in Desert Storm. 14 of my wonderful Marines returned home with the American Flag draped across their lifeless bodies. My last conversation with one of them, Sgt Garrett Mongrella, was about how our Giants were going to the Super Bowl. He never got to see it.
Many friends, Marines, and Special Forces Soldiers who worked with or for me through the years returned home with the American Flag draped over their coffins.
Now I watch multi-millionaire athletes who never did anything in their lives but play a game, disrespect what brave Americans fought and died for. They are essentially spitting in the faces and on the graves of real men, men who have actually done something for this country beside playing with a ball and believing they’re something special! They’re not! My Marines and Soldiers were!
You are complicit in this! You’ll fine players for large and small infractions but you lack the moral courage and respect for our nation and the fallen to put an immediate stop to this. Yes, I know, it’s their 1st Amendment right to behave in such a despicable manner.
What would happen if they came out and disrespected you or the refs publicly?
I observed a player getting a personal foul for twerking in the end zone after scoring. I guess that’s much worse than disrespecting the flag and our National Anthem. Hmmmmm, isn’t it his 1st Amendment right to express himself like an idiot in the end zone?
Why is taunting not allowed yet taunting America is OK? You fine players for wearing 9-11 commemorative shoes yet you allow scum on the sidelines to sit, kneel or pump their pathetic fist in the air. They are so deprived with their multi-million dollar contracts for playing a freaking game!
You condone it all by your refusal to act. You’re just as bad and disgusting as they are. I hope Americans boycott any sponsor who supports that rabble you call the NFL. I hope they turn off the TV when any team that allowed this disrespect to occur, without consequence, on the sidelines. I applaud those who have not.
Legends and heroes do NOT wear shoulder pads. They wear body armor and carry rifles.
They make minimum wage and spend months and years away from their families. They don’t do it for an hour on Sunday. They do it 24/7 often with lead, not footballs, coming in their direction. They watch their brothers carted off in pieces not on a gurney to get their knee iced. They don’t even have ice! Many don’t have legs or arms.
Some wear blue and risk their lives daily on the streets of America. They wear fire helmets and go upstairs into the fire rather than down to safety. On 9-11, hundreds vanished. They are the heroes.
I hope that your high paid protesting pretty boys and you look in that mirror when you shave tomorrow and see what you really are, legends in your own minds. You need to hit the road and take those worms with you!
Time to change the channel.
What else can be said? Bravo.
So tell me was it disrespectful when my grandfather came home from the war and couldn’t even get served a meal at the same dinners as his fellow white solidiers? Oh just forget about that right? And for your info football players even being on the field during the national athem is something only 15 years old pre-9/11 they were still in the locker room doing whatever…. So fuck your service your country and flag
So correct! Nothing but a bunch of disrespectful overpaid brats!! I believe anyone who does not show respect for the flag and the soldiers, police officers, firemen who protect and serve this great country should lose their U.S. citizenship. Let them go live in another country if they feel they do not have fair treatment in ours. Thank you to all of our soldiers, law enforcement and firefighters! You make this country great!
Agree. I will not support any of this disregard to the true heroes in this country. Our American Servicemen/women, also the policemen and firemen whose give they’re lives everyday. Screw the NFL. This is part of how they were raised by disrepectful, ignorant parents. God help this world.