Do we really need national anthems before games anymore?

This is not a column about whether fans should boo national anthems at sporting events.

The Canadians who have been doing this during renditions of "The Star-Spangled Banner" have their reasons. So do the Americans who have booed "O Canada" in a tit-for-tat response. The right to express one's disapproval of something publicly is one of those freedoms that each anthem rightly celebrates.

But the anthem controversies raise a broader question: Why do we still have them before sporting events anyway?

There was a time when the idea made some sense. "The Star-Spangled Banner" was played spontaneously by a military band during the seventh-inning stretch of a World Series game in Chicago in 1918, as U.S. soldiers were fighting in World War I. The crowd is said to have stood up and joined in singing the anthem, which ended with loud applause. The practice didn't become standard until decades later, though, during World War II. By then, sound systems made it possible for a singer to be heard throughout the stadium.

At times of heightened patriotism and sacrifice, national anthems were played before movies, stage shows, and all kinds of public events.

But as time has gone by, anthems have become an odd anachronism at sporting events. Most of the time they are rote and uneventful, with fans (and athletes) standing awkwardly while the song passes.

José Feliciano, the Puerto Rican musician who created one of the first anthem controversies with a Latin-jazz interpretation of the American anthem during the 1968 World Series in Detroit, would later say he chose to do his version of the song because he was tired of watching people stand there, bored, while the anthem was played.

It's only this kind of straying from the norm that makes anthems notable. People get mad when someone performs a particularly unusual version of one, or if someone kneels during an anthem or declines to take the field or court while an anthem is played. The Dallas Mavericks briefly dropped the playing of the anthem in 2021, only to be told by the NBA that it was a mandatory part of pregame ceremonies. Former Mavs majority owner Mark Cuban said at the time that he respected that the anthem meant different things to different fans of his team, but he complied with the league's edict.

Cuban had a point. A tradition that was born out of the swell of patriotism associated with most of the world's democracies going to war against tyranny and oppression has evolved into something else entirely today.

Major League Baseball in the 1940s was an exclusively American affair: fans, athletes, teams. But whether in baseball or any of the other major North American sports nowadays, players from a handful of countries are likely to be in any given game, and all the leagues are pursuing global audiences. How meaningful is it for a Swede or a Finn or a Slovak to have to stand there and sway on skates while someone sings not one but two anthems that are not their own?

The pointlessness of the North American pro league experience, with an anthem sung before a game between two teams that are not representing any country, is proven further when compared with what happens for a big international match in global sports such as soccer or rugby. Watch the crowd - and the players - in a place such as Wales absolutely belting out their version of an anthem, tears streaming down their faces, because it is before a game in which actual national pride is on the line. Compare that with a random Tuesday in Orlando, where someone on the floor sings it while most of the arena isn't paying attention, followed by some perfunctory clapping. Emotionally stirring it is not.

It is probably worth noting that the removal of national anthems from pregame festivities is one of those things that will not be debated rationally. Any time an anthem controversy pops up, the loudest voices tend to be those who insist that the ritual is about respecting the military and honoring the troops who are willing to sacrifice themselves for our freedom.

And of course, those people should be honored. There's just no way that's what's happening in the vast majority of arenas on most nights. When people head to the fainting couch and insist that the playing of the national anthem is some kind of sacred practice in which countries are saluted and tribute is paid to fallen soldiers, you can't help but ask: Have you been to a game? The audience produces some muffled droning and quiet applause, and then everyone gets back to sipping their $17 beers.

Would we miss the anthems? We would not. And before the "but-the-troops" crowd complains about this idea, the same sporting events could also include a moment for fans to salute the military at some point. Salute to the Military, it could be called. People tend to clap enthusiastically for those.

Scott Stinson is a contributing writer for theScore.