The Seattle Seahawks. Once again expected to win the NFC West and go to the playoffs for Mike Holmgren’s last season. Seattle sports fans have anticipated the beginning of football season for months, not because the Seahawks have consistently been our sole quality franchise over the last five or so years, but because we’ve already lost a basketball team and seen a potentially good Mariners team turn into the worst in the American League. Needless to say, I, along with many other fans, have been frothing at the mouth for this day.

I don’t follow football in the off-season too much, so I figured that the Buffalo Bills were going to be a pretty easy win for the Hawks. At the very least, going in, I expected an even-handed match. But Jesus Christ, the Seahawks looked like the Mariners: they were God-awful. Sure, the team has some excuses – Hasselbeck has been injured for weeks and has neither practiced himself or built up trust with his receivers; the receivers, of course, are a cluster, as both Branch and Engram are injured, leaving only Burelson and a bunch of rookies. But no one could have predicted a 34-10 ass raping.

Granted, the Bills look good. While they started off as poor as the Seahawks, they finally picked it up in front of their home team and went on to dominate in passing, running and defense. But the Seahawks looked downright terrible. When Hasselbeck had people open, he’d fail to convert. The receivers dropped what seemed like a hundred passes, and only so much can be blamed on rookie mistakes. The defense, understandably, got worn down as the offense failed to give them a rest, but things just went from bad to worse as the game went on. Ultimately, this was one of the worst Seahawks game in recent memory… what a way to start the season.

I found this article on Yahoo! News this morning, which was originally written by Mike Klis of the Denver Post. In the article, Klis writes this:

The NFL and the Pittsburgh Steelers decided to start their Monday Night Football game without the National Anthem according to the Denver Post. Bad enough football has taken away all our free time in the fall and early winter. Now, it’s going to take away our patriotism?

This time, it seemed like the NFL had gone too far.

And I have to ask Mr. Klis, “Are you f**king kidding me.” I hate how sensitive people are these days, and I really, really hate when people accuse others of being unpatriotic. I hate it when Republicans criticize others for questioning the President and policies and calls those critics unpatriotic – isn’t it more patriotic to question what isn’t right? (balance of powers, freedom of speech, etc.) I hate it when… well, I just hate unpatriotic talk altogether. Unless someone goes and joins Al Qaeda and actively fights in one way or another against the U.S., they’re probably not unpatriotic. And this story just rubbed me the wrong way.

The article stems from the NFL and Pittsburgh’s decision to forego the National Anthem at the beginning of the game after kickoff was delayed 25 minutes due to horrendous weather, including lightning, rain and near swamp-like conditions. No one wanted to be outside, and I doubt the person singing the National Anthem really wanted to be outside, either. Can you really blame them for wanting to jump right to game play rather than spend ten minutes of the National Anthem, commercial breaks and so on and so forth?

Klis finishes his article with this: “The NFL hardly seemed worthy of its red, white and blue insignia colors by canceling America’s most honorable song so the show could on two minutes less late.” Come on! If anything, the NFL is probably the “most patriotic” sport in the USA, and they pander to patriotic thinking more than baseball, basketball, hockey and any other sport. Missing the National Anthem for one game is not going to kill anyone, and does not imply that the people who made the decision are any less patriotic.