Before Football Players Kneeled on the Playing Field, They Fell on the Battlefield

Men on battlefields fell defending the flag. Millionaires on playing fields refuse to rise to honor the flag.

This rubs many Americans raw. It also represents an end-around of sorts on the tradition of football.

The first intercollegiate football game took place between Princeton and Rutgers four years after the last internecine battle of the Civil War. This did not occur by coincidence. Boys who missed the cutoff for the battlefield mimicked what they saw there on the playing field.

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