Anthem: Sports columnist should butt out

“Don’t want to stand for anthem? Then walk away from football,” (TNT, 8/15).

I was decidedly unimpressed with John McGrath’s column. The obvious problem was the white, middle-class entitlement oozing from an opinion that boiled down to “black athletes can express their political opinions, just not where I might actually notice.”

This in a column printed prominently on the front page of the sports section, where even readers (like myself) who usually ignore sports coverage entirely wouldn’t miss it.

And why does McGrath feel entitled to express his political opinion in the sports section while berating black athletes for expressing themselves politically in the stadium? Maybe he should take his own advice and keep politics out of sports.

This story was originally published August 17, 2017 at 5:45 PM with the headline "Anthem: Sports columnist should butt out."