Fervor by NFL for Military Displays Shouldn't Surprise After How Much Defense Department Paid for Them

On-field events recognizing military service members — including ceremonial first pitches, honor guards and Jumbotron tributes — have become common at professional sports venues over the past several years.

Many in the stands assume the team or league puts on the tributes, but often it has been the Department of Defense, meaning tax dollars were used to foot the bill.

A report released Wednesday criticized the Department of Defense for spending millions in sports marketing contracts and called to task the professional sports teams that took the money, saying they were engaged in “paid patriotism.”

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:  DoD paid $53 million of taxpayers' money to pro sports for military tributes, report says


Whenever military jets do a flyover for sporting events, you paid for the gas money to do it.  Of all the skanky things the Defense Department has done, this aspect is singularly egregious since they scream bloody murder about patriotism if anyone fails to snap to attention for it.


Prepared by U.S. Sens. John McCain and Jeff Flake, both Arizona Republicans, the report found that all military branches reported spending $53 million on marketing and advertising contracts with professional sports organizations between 2012 and 2015. More than $10 million of that went to the NFL, MLB, NHL, NBA and Major League Soccer.

“Given the immense sacrifices made by our service members, it seems more appropriate that any organization with a genuine interest in honoring them, and deriving public credit as a result, should do so at its own expense and not at that of the American taxpayer,” the report said. “Americans deserve the ability to assume that tributes for our men and women in military uniform are genuine displays of national pride, which many are, rather than taxpayer-funded DOD marketing gimmicks.”

- PPG

When the Defense Department tries so hard to force people to stand for the Anthem, they should be as willing to pay them do it as they were to pay the NFL to force the situation as we saw in such a base manner from Jerry Jones of the Dallas Cowboys.

Some take deep umbrage over the matter but the Rockhouse can't take it seriously in the face of so many matters which urgently need attention such as abandoning the Americans in Puerto Rico before they even have a functioning power grid.  The Rockhouse will proudly salute those who help Puerto Rico back to its feet such as Elon Musk with his solution for power and Google with its solution for enabling cellphone communications again.  As to whatever people do in football games, we just don't care.