ESPN won’t televise the national anthem prior to the Week One Monday night game between the Rams and 49ers. Unless it will.
The network changed course on Thursday, deciding to televise the anthem live. That’s what ESPN’s Mark Gross told ESPN public editor (f/k/a ombudsman) Jim Brady.
The fact that the game comes after the Steelers-Washington contest means the anthem could be aired live on ESPN2. It would be addressed when the broadcast slides to ESPN.
ESPN previously said it wouldn’t show the anthem because it normally doesn’t, reasoning that reminded some (i.e., me) of the inexplicable refusal to address the sexual assault lawsuit filed six years ago against Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger by taking the position that the network doesn’t report on civil lawsuits -- even thought it previously had.
Ultimately, ESPN made the right decision. With 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick sitting down during the anthem, the anthem becomes a news issue that can’t credibly be ignored. Still, it’s hard not to wonder whether the NFL nudged ESPN not to make a big deal about the situation, or whether ESPN presumed that the NFL wanted the same network that was nudged into dropping Playmakers more than a decade ago to look the other way on a story line that may have eventually appeared in a Playmakers script, if the plug hadn’t been pulled on the show.
