The Anthem Question Never Really Left

Every few years the anthem returns to the front page and is treated as a new controversy. It is not new. It is a recurring test of whether an institution means what it says during quiet seasons.

What has shifted is the vocabulary. Statements are faster and more polished. Foundations are announced. But the underlying question is the same one athletes asked decades ago: does the platform belong to the player, or only to the sponsor?

We keep returning to this because the answers change with the money. And because the people asked to be silent are usually the ones who filled the building.