I was at a high school football game recently, doing what people have done at high school football games for generations: watching the game, visiting with people I hadn’t seen in a while, eating something I probably didn’t need to eat, and generally enjoying the familiar chaos that comes with Friday night under the lights.
And then came the national anthem.
Now, I’m not trying to turn this into a political dissertation. Lord knows we have enough of those. But I couldn’t help noticing how many people were still milling around, talking, laughing, goofing off, or apparently engaged in something of great national importance that could not possibly wait two minutes
And it got me thinking.
Maybe I’m just nostalgic. Maybe I’m getting old. Although I prefer to think of it as having historical perspective.
Because I remember when the national anthem at a ballgame or school event was just… the national anthem. You stood up. You took your hat off. You faced the flag. You didn’t have to make a political statement out of it. Nobody needed to explain what it meant. It was simply one of those little rituals that said, This is our community, this is our country, and for the next couple of minutes, we’re all in this together.
The same was true of school spirit.
You cheered for your school—even if the team was terrible. Especially if the team was terrible. You wore the school colors. You knew the fight song, or at least enough of it to fake your way through the parts you didn’t know. You stood in the stands with people you might disagree with about practically everything else and somehow managed to spend a Friday night rooting for the same kids.
There was something wonderfully uncomplicated about that.
And I realize the world is different now. Our political landscape is incredibly charged, and symbols that once felt almost universally shared have become tangled up in political arguments and cultural divisions. I understand why some people have complicated feelings about them.
But I also think we’ve lost something when every expression of national or community pride has to be viewed through a political lens.
You can love your country without believing it is perfect.
You can be proud of your community while recognizing its shortcomings.
You can respect the flag without agreeing with every decision made in Washington.
You can cheer for your high school without pretending the principal, the superintendent, the coach, the parents, or the referees have never made a questionable decision. And believe me, at a high school football game, there will be plenty of questionable decisions.
That’s kind of the point.
These things give us a reason to belong to something bigger than ourselves.
A high school football game is actually a pretty beautiful little snapshot of a community. Generations gathered in one place—kids, parents, grandparents, teachers, former students, neighbors. People who probably disagree about politics, religion, taxes, traffic, and whether the coach should have gone for it on fourth down.
But for a couple of hours, they’re all sitting under the same lights, watching the same kids, wearing the same colors.
That matters.
School spirit matters. Civic pride matters. Community traditions matter. Those little rituals matter. Not because they require everyone to think alike, but because they give people who don’t think alike a reason to stand together anyway.
And maybe that’s what bothers me most when I see people ignoring those moments. It isn’t simply that someone didn’t stand for the anthem. It’s that I wonder if we’re slowly losing the habit of belonging.
Because without some sense of shared identity, a community eventually becomes nothing more than a collection of individuals who happen to live in the same place.
And that would be a shame.
So call me nostalgic. Call me old-fashioned. I’ll gladly accept both. I still like standing when the anthem plays. I still like seeing kids get excited about their school. I still like hearing a fight song, even when the band is occasionally one beat away from needing a police escort.
And I still believe there’s something special about a town coming together on a Friday night to cheer for its kids.
Maybe we could use a little more of that these days. Not less individuality. Not less disagreement. Just a little more we.
Because once we lose the things that remind us that we belong to one another, we lose a little bit of what makes a community a community.
And honestly, that would be a pretty sad trade for being too busy talking during the national anthem.
Okay, that’s it. I’ll hop off my soapbox now. Just my two cents.
But I do hope to see you at the next game. And if you catch me there, I may just buy you a hot dog and a Coke, and we can shoot the breeze for a while.
After all, that’s kind of the point, isn’t it?
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