BATON ROUGE — In his 33 years of coaching, Brian Kelly can recall only a handful of times when his football team was present on the field for the pregame playing of the national anthem.
“It’s just the way that it has been scripted,” Kelly said after LSU football’s spring practice Saturday afternoon. “And I’ve been doing this for 33 years. On my hand, I can tell you how many times I’ve been out for the national anthem in 33 years.”
But if Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry has his way, Kelly and his football team would be required to be on the field pregame for the national anthem as Landry is calling on the NCAA to mandate all student-athletes be present or risk losing their scholarship.
Landry publicly came out with his stance after the LSU women’s basketball team was not on the court for the national anthem prior to its NCAA Tournament Elite 8 game against Iowa last Monday, a game that shattered women’s college basketball viewership records at 12.3 million. Iowa’s team stood hand-in-hand during the anthem but as LSU coach Kim Mulkey said when asked about it following the game, while it was played, it has been her team’s pregame script since she’s been the coach in Baton Route to be in the locker room at the 12-minute mark.
“Honestly, I don’t even know when the anthem was played,” Mulkey said after LSU lost to the Hawkeyes, 94-87. “We kind of have a routine when they’re on the floor and they come off at the 12-minute mark. I don’t know, we come in and we do our pre-game stuff.
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“I’m sorry, listen, that’s nothing intentionally done.”
But Landry has doubled down on his stance, appearing on multiple national outlets, including doing interviews on Fox News, criticizing college athletics’ approach to how the national…
Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/lsu-football-coach-brian-kelly-184905577.html
Author : The Daily Advertiser
Publish date : 2024-04-06 18:49:05
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