[2006alum]

This might be sacrilegious, but I've always found playing the national anthem before sports games to be kind of silly and anachronistic. Perhaps it injects a moment of common civility before two teams try to bash each other to smithereens, but for me it just reminds me how high the stakes were back in the 1770/80s (and in the 1810s) and how utterly irrelevant the forthcoming football/basketball/etc. game is by comparison...

Edited to add: Interesting footnote is that our one and only Stanford alum cum President signed into law the act that made the Star-Spangled Banner our national anthem.

[2006alum]

This might be sacrilegious, but I've always found playing the national anthem before sports games to be kind of silly and anachronistic. Perhaps it injects a moment of common civility before two teams try to bash each other to smithereens, but for me it just reminds me how high the stakes were back in the 1770/80s (and in the 1810s) and how utterly irrelevant the forthcoming football/basketball/etc. game is by comparison...

Edited to add: Interesting footnote is that our one and only Stanford alum cum President signed into law the act that made the Star-Spangled Banner our national anthem.