NBC omits national anthem from Sunday Night Football at Soldier Field

NBC did not televise the national anthem before Sunday Night Football at Soldier Field on Nov. 8, three days before Veterans Day and during the NFL’s Salute to Service week.

After the booth introduction of analyst Cris Collinsworth and play-by-play announcer Noah Eagle, viewers saw a pregame interview with Bears quarterback Caleb Williams, then an aerial shot of flag bearers carrying a folded field-sized American flag back into a stadium tunnel, as Fox News reported. The anthem itself was not part of the broadcast. NBC did air Carrie Underwood’s performance of the show’s theme song.

The omission landed at a moment loaded with military symbolism: a stadium named for soldiers, a league-wide week honoring service members, a holiday honoring veterans arriving Wednesday. The decision to televise the anthem is the network’s, not the NFL’s or the team’s, per Yahoo Sports, which republished Fox’s reporting. NBC had not responded to questions from OutKick about why the anthem was left out as of publication.

The broadcast was already off schedule. Lead announcer Mike Tirico, 59, was pulled from the game seven hours before kickoff due to a health issue, the Daily Mail reported, with Eagle replacing him on what was supposed to be Tirico’s 300th NFL game. Tirico said in a statement he expected to return next Sunday in Cincinnati. The Bears beat the Buccaneers 27-24 on Cairo Santos’ 38-yard field goal as time expired to move to 7-2.

Viewers noticed. Social media filled with complaints, several from people who said they had family serving in the military. “Shame on NBC for not showing the National Anthem,” one wrote, per the Daily Mail. “My son is serving overseas. You suck.” Another called the network “pathetic” and urged Americans to “speak out against these traitors.” The anger crossed the usual lines because the anthem was not shown during a week the NFL set aside for the military, at a stadium built as a memorial to soldiers killed in the world wars.

This was not the first anthem-related controversy before a Bears game this season. On Sept. 28, ESPN and ABC carried a mariachi performance of “The Star-Spangled Banner” by Mariachi Herencia de Mexico as part of the Bears’ Hispanic Heritage Month “Vamos Bears” celebration, as Fox News noted. The instrumental version drew mixed reactions, and Williams was seen pacing the sideline during the performance while limited by a hamstring injury. NBC may have been trying to avoid a repeat of that kind of attention. If so, it failed.

The anthem at sporting events is a century-old tradition. “The Star-Spangled Banner” was played during the seventh-inning stretch of Game 1 of the 1918 World Series, and the practice spread through baseball during World War I. Congress made the song the official national anthem in 1931, and it became a fixed pregame ritual at professional games after World War II. Networks have not always televised it. For decades the anthem was treated as stadium business that happened before the broadcast began, and viewers at home heard it only if they tuned in early enough to catch the stadium feed.

That changed in 2016, when San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick began kneeling during the anthem to protest police violence against Black Americans. The protest made the anthem’s televising a political question, and networks began showing it more consistently to cover the controversy. After the league and the players’ union reached a 2018 settlement allowing teams to keep players in the locker room during the anthem, the cameras moved on. Most broadcasts now skip it unless the game carries a patriotic theme, a Super Bowl, or a national moment.

Sunday night fell into the patriotic category, which is why the omission stood out. The NFL’s Salute to Service week is the league’s annual military appreciation campaign, with camouflage uniforms, on-field ceremonies and donations to veterans’ organizations. Soldier Field opened in 1924 and was rededicated in 1926 as a memorial to soldiers killed in World War I. Veterans Day, which honors all U.S. military veterans, was Wednesday. The combination made the anthem’s absence a story in a way it would not have been in Week 2.

NBC’s silence has fed the criticism. OutKick contacted Greg Hughes, NBC’s executive vice president of communications, and Chris McCloskey, senior vice president of communications, and neither had responded by publication, per Fox. Without an explanation, viewers are left to guess, and the guesses split along the country’s usual lines: either NBC was avoiding another anthem controversy after the mariachi episode, or the network made a scheduling call to fit more commercials and studio time into a tight pregame window. Both readings are plausible, and NBC has let both circulate.

What I think

NBC owes its viewers an explanation, and the explanation had better be boring. A network that pulls its lead announcer hours before kickoff and then skips the anthem during Salute to Service week at Soldier Field has made at least two editorial decisions that need defending. The first one, Tirico’s absence, was disclosed with a statement. The second one has been handled with silence, and silence is the worst possible answer when the question is why you did not show the anthem three days before Veterans Day at a stadium named for dead soldiers.

I don’t think NBC set out to disrespect anyone. I think a producer made a call about pregame runout, the anthem got cut for time, and nobody up the chain flagged it because the people who would have flagged it were busy covering for Tirico. That is how most of these things happen. But the result is the same as if it had been deliberate, and the network has only itself to blame for the reaction.

The anthem should be shown during Salute to Service week. It should be shown at Soldier Field. It should be shown three days before Veterans Day. If NBC has a reason for not showing it, the reason should be stated plainly and quickly. The longer the network stays quiet, the more the omission looks like a choice rather than a slip, and the more it hands ammunition to people who want to make every missing anthem into a statement about the country. NBC can end this story with one sentence. It has not.