It's not been an auspicious start to the 2025-26 NFL season.
On Thursday night, the game between the Super Bowl Champion Philadelphia Eagles and one of their fiercest rivals, the Dallas Cowboys, was mired in controversy from the start. The song "Lift Every Voice and Sing," referred to in some quarters as "The Black National Anthem," was sung prior to the real national anthem.
If that wasn't bad enough, the start of the game was marred by an incident in which the Eagles' all-pro defensive tackle, Jalen Carter, spat on the Cowboys' star quarterback, Dak Prescott.
During an injury timeout six seconds into the game, Carter and Prescott exchanged words while helmet-to-helmet. Prescott said: “He was trolling, I guess you could say, trying to mess with Tyler Booker. I was just looking at him.”
“I was right here by the two linemen, and I guess I needed to spit, and I wasn’t going to spit on my lineman and I just spit ahead. … And he goes, ‘Are you trying to spit on me?’ At that point, I mean I felt like he was insulting me. I wouldn’t spit on somebody. ‘I’m damn sure I’m not trying to spit on you.’ We’re about to play a game. … ‘What would I need to spin on you for?’ He just spit on me in that moment; it was more of a surprise than anything.”
Carter was ejected for unsportsmanlike conduct, but other angles of the incident show Prescott spitting first.
It actually got worse.
A bout of lightning delayed the game for about an hour. The Eagles eventually prevailed 24-20, but I doubt many people saw it, as the game ended after midnight.
Not a very elevating start to the NFL season.
On Friday night, it was YouTube's time to shine, as it finagled an exclusive streaming contract with the NFL for the Kansas City Chiefs game with the LA Chargers in Sao Paulo, Brazil.
YouTube was smart enough to offer the game free of charge, rather than include it in its $82.99 a month NFL Sunday Ticket offering. As it was, YouTube probably wishes no one was watching until kickoff.
The U.S. national anthem was performed by Grammy-nominated jazz saxophonist Kamasi Washington, accompanied by a tone-deaf bass player.
I love jazz, especially jazz saxophone, but Washington tried to make the national anthem into something it wasn't: a free-form, improvisational extravaganza that showed off Washington's musical chops, but did little for the "Star Spangled Banner."
The bass player either couldn't hear Washington's playing or was really, really bad. I couldn't tell which.
Needless to say, X erupted.
The NFL is playing in Brazil because it is trying to tap the Latin American market. With a population of over 200 million, that's a lot of potential American football fans in a soccer-crazed country.
Was Washington's rendition of the anthem the worst in history? It's a subjective issue, of course, but here are a few other anthem renditions that were better left unsung.
The national anthem tune is a song in praise of wine and drinking, called “To Anacreon in Heaven." To sing it like a funeral dirge is insulting to America and Francis Scott Key.
In contrast, here's Whitney Houston's shockingly beautiful version of the anthem.
The NFL will get its act together. After all, people don't watch the games for the anthem or the controversies. But if the NFL keeps going like this, creating controversies where none should exist, they're going to start losing audience.
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