Choosing not to stand for the national anthem is a form of speech, and speech is protected by the First Amendment. The actual values of our country are more important than symbols of our country.
The NFL is not patriotic. It uses patriotism to make money.
The Star Spangle Banner is a poor choice for our national anthem, which it has been since only 1931. Francis Scott Key was, in modern terms, a white supremacist.
Have you ever heard the third verse of The Star Spangle Banner?
No refuge could save the hireling and slave
From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave,
And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/king-stand-star-spangled-banner-article-1.2770075"While it has always been known that the song was written during American slavery and that when those words about this nation being the "land of the free" didn't apply to the millions who had been held in bondage, few of us had any idea that the song itself was rooted in the celebration of slavery and the murder of Africans in America, who were being hired by the British military to give them strength not only in the War of 1812, but in the Battle of Fort McHenry of 1814. These black men were called the Corps of Colonial Marines and they served valiantly for the British military. Key despised them. He was glad to see them experience terror and death in war — to the point that he wrote a poem about it. That poem is now our national anthem."
Maybe it is time to change the national anthem again.
http://www.capradio.org/music/classical/2014/07/04/americas-five-national-anthems
