Mike Tomlin's failed attempt at neutrality

The conservative opponents of the protest started by Colin Kaepernick have bemoaned the injection of politics into football over the past year, especially since Donald Trump escalated tensions last week. This is a strategic attempt to make the status quo a sort of antiseptic middle ground when really it’s anything but.

The problem with this reasoning is that politics has existed in football in several forms. This includes the pregame ritual of making players stand on the sidelines while the national anthem is performed. It's not a practice like Thanksgiving football that was forged into tradition over generations. It's only a relatively recent development and was a form of paid propaganda by the Department of Defense until the public became aware that it was being manipulated.

To some degree, it’s understandable that Steelers head coach Mike Tomlin would want to skirt the issue. The job of an NFL head coach is one of single-minded focus on the task at hand. What happens during the anthem isn’t relevant to what transpires once the game clock is in motion. While it was a team decision to remain in the tunnel during the anthem, Tomlin has defended it, saying neither he nor the team wanted to “play politics.”

What the Steelers and Tomlin failed to understand was that there was no option for dealing with the anthem that would be perceived as anything but at least somewhat political, especially when the president attacked protesting players days before and the two teams that had already played on Sunday set the tone by either kneeling or locking arms during the anthem. The majority of NFL teams had weighed in with statements by the start of Sunday’s games, and intense scrutiny would be given to how each conducted itself during the anthem.

Even though Tomlin sought a removal of politics, many still interpreted the Steelers’ team decision as an attack on national pride. For those people, anything but an overt display of veneration for the flag might as well as be disdainful of the country and military, even if Kaepernick’s protest was never intended as a commentary on the armed forces. In reaction to the Steelers’ decision on Sunday, a Pittsburgh-area fire chief called Tomlin a racial slur on Facebook before later apologizing and resigning from his post. That a black coach got this reaction for attempting to avoid a protest aimed at drawing attention to racial inequality is cruel irony.

The perception that the Steelers were flouting their patriotic duty was fostered by left tackle Alejandro Villanueva standing alone outside the tunnel with his hand over his heart during the anthem. Given that Tomlin had explained on TV nearly an hour earlier that the Steelers would remain in the locker room during the anthem, this was seen as an act of defiance by a former Army Ranger who had been publicly critical of Kaepernick’s tactics in the past. Conservatives were so impressed by what they thought to be Villanueva’s unilateral move that his jersey instantly became the league’s top-seller, though the decision to buy a jersey from the official shop of a league that is supposedly being boycotted is a curious one.

Villanueva apologized to his teammates, telling the media he had never intended to be on the field alone. The left tackle said he had received texts from wounded veterans the day before the game asking him to stand for the anthem. That led him to ask the team to alter its original plan of staying in the locker room. Villanueva suggested that he and the team’s other captains should stand together at the front of the tunnel. That didn’t end up happening due to what Ben Roethlisberger described as chaos in the tunnel before the anthem was played.

During his Tuesday presser, Tomlin said Villanueva had nothing to apologize for. The day before, in a post on his personal website, Roethlisberger explained his position that, though the aims of the protesters are just, the anthem is a solemn thing during which no demonstrations should be held, an opinion similar to Villanueva's. According to several accounts from Steelers teammates, the debate over what approach to take on Sunday was a amicable one. Only linebacker James Harrison seemed to be taken aback by what Villanueva ended up doing.

"We thought we were all in attention with the same agreement, obviously, " Harrison told PennLive.com. "But, I guess we weren't."

The Steelers weren’t the only team on Sunday to take this tack, yet they endured the most criticism for it, in part because of the confusion that ensued. Both the Titans and the Seahawks stayed in the locker room during the anthem prior to their game in Nashville. Whereas the Steelers don’t have any players who had taken part in anthem protests before Trump got involved, the Seahawks have defensive end Michael Bennett, who has not only previously sat during the anthem, but has been a key part of the conversation regarding NFL players and police brutality following an incident in Las Vegas when Bennett alleged that police used excessive force against him and threatened to kill him.

The anthem will continue to be a flashpoint in the NFL in the weeks and months to come. Exploring the justification for playing it before games is a reasonable discussion to have. That said, were the NFL to stop playing it right now, the league would look like it was retreating from a standoff with the president, which would only embolden Trump further on matters of culture war. According to a report from Politico, Trump told fellow conservatives at the White House on Monday that the he felt his dispute with the NFL was going well and that the president intended to press on with it.

As for Tomlin, he’s left to express frustration that neither sports media nor the political moment will allow him to sidestep the issue.