Playing A Dangerous Game

Authored by Jeff Gardner via The Epoch Times,

Commentary

This October, during games 1 and 2 of the 2026 WNBA Finals, players from the Atlanta Dream and Golden State Valkyries walked off the court before the playing of the national anthem.

In an interview concerning the walkoff, Vice President JD Vance called it “disgraceful,” saying, “Without love of country you are going to be a disordered human being.”

Vice President Vance’s comments echo those of Vice President Mike Pence, who, in 2017, walked out of the San Francisco 49ers vs. Indianapolis Colts NFL game when members of the 49ers players knelt during the national anthem, saying, “I don’t think it’s too much to ask NFL players to respect the Flag and our national anthem.”

From 2017 forward, protests during the national anthem spread through the NFL, then to the NBA, and now to the WNBA.

In 2020, in the wake of Black Lives Matter-fueled George Floyd riots, the NFL commissioner responded to the demands of many African American players by green-lighting the singing of the hymn “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” now commonly known as the black national anthem, during the Super Bowl. At every Super Bowl since 2021, “Lift Every Voice and Sing” has been performed.

As of October 2026, the WNBA commissioner has refused to comment on players walking out during the national anthem or the possibility of an additional anthem.

We should all cry “foul” when professional athletes take on the role of in-game political activists. In doing so, they are driving out of bounds the meaning of three images crucial to our national unity: our flag, the anthem, and the athlete.

The first two images, our nation’s flag and anthem, are either symbols of justice and freedom or, if some on the political left are to be believed, of inequity and tyranny. The third, the athlete, is either an inspirational actor in a physical theater or a righteous social justice warrior.

Images, the physical items and mental pictures that anchor beliefs in our minds, are tricky things. They can carry almost any meaning we give them. What images cannot do, at least not very well, is carry more than one meaning at a time, especially among the same group of people.

Take the cross, for example. For the Romans, the cross symbolized the state’s right to punish, humiliate, and kill those who challenged its authority.

For the early Christians, the cross became a symbol of an authority beyond that of any earthly power, a gateway to individual freedom and salvation. The cross, even an image of a cross, could not stand for the two contradictory meanings simultaneously. One of the meanings had to give way to the other.

This brings us back to the flag, the national anthem and, especially, our athletes. Throughout the history of the West, athletics has played the role of physical, rough-and-tumble theater. And theater in the West, whether it is on a stage, screen, or field, has been the venue through which we Westerners work out (play out, if you like) our issues and conflicts, all while avoiding real civil strife and bloodshed.

In the West, actors, either on the screen or on the field, take on certain roles and, with them, certain expectations from the audience.

In football, and increasingly in the “knock-her-down!” atmosphere of the WNBA, the image of the athlete has come to embody many of our national aspirations: a love of rough competition, self-restraint, a sense of fairness, the operation of justice and the notion that anyone, regardless of his or her station at birth, can, through hard work, sacrifice, and discipline, rise to great heights of achievement and wealth.

The NFL and the WNBA are keenly aware of their athletes’ images and have a long list of “dos and don’ts” that govern players’ behavior both on and off the field or court. Those players who will not conform to the rules are fined or removed from play entirely. Adopting “a dignified posture along the sidelines” during the playing of the national anthem is still listed among the “dos” for WNBA players.

The flag and the national anthem are symbols of the values that are acted out on the field of athletics: universal fairness and equality of opportunity, justice and the belief that through personal and collective sacrifice, we can achieve a more perfect (note, not “perfected”) union.

America is a multiethnic society, and these creeds are the ties that bind us together as a nation. Nations that lose their common bonds, their national glue, come apart, and often violently.

In contrast to the common meanings of the flag, the national anthem, and our athletes, groups like Black Lives Matter and the NAACP, which pushed “Lift Every Voice and Sing” as the black national anthem, claim that the flag and anthem should be seen and heard as symbols of oppression against black Americans. If such claims were true, I would be the first to kneel, cut down every flagpole from sea to shining sea, burning their odiously fluttering rags in one giant heap.

But the claims are not true. I live not far from Ferguson, Missouri, where, in 2014, police officer Darren Wilson shot and killed Michael Brown, and Black Lives Matter became a national movement. As documented by the Obama Justice Department, “hands up, don’t shoot!” never happened. Brown was shot because he tried to take Wilson’s gun, not because he was black.

Black Lives Matter, as well documented, has repeatedly lied about race and our judicial system. America’s legal system, especially the police, is not focused on the destruction of anyone. There are violent forces loose in black communities, but they are not grounded in “systemic racism” or oppressive law enforcement.

In the hands of the politically unscrupulous, facts play little to no part in the meaning infused into an image. Even though Brown did not put his hands up and cry “don’t shoot,” both the slogan and the gesture were appropriated as symbols of protest, and, in the words of Matt Pierce, staff writer for the Los Angelous Times, “transformed into a different kind of weapon.”

Political and racial tension is running high in 2026, and today’s athletes, be they in the NFL, the NBA, or the WNBA, are playing, or perhaps being played, in a dangerous game, both for them and for our nation. To reassign meaning to the flag, the national anthem, or themselves as athletes further opens a Pandora’s box of national conflict and hostility that no player or commissioner can foresee or control.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.