Given that we have the largest army in the world, do we really need to advertise it? We spend more on the military than a hefty chunk of the world combined. We're fine.
Um, actually we do. Unfortunately, due to things like poor life choices, intelligence and other things there is a small pool of citizens who could be accepted into the military. Of those, there is an even smaller pool who would consider the military so like any other post-high school option for today's young people, the military needs to advertise itself as a viable life choice and also to counter all the anti-military hate coming from certain groups. When my son was 13 or 14, I gave him The Talk, the post-high school talk about what he needed to do with his life. I told him that he would need to get a job and there are really only three options. He could go to college or he could join the military. The third option, sitting at home and playing video games or working at a minimum wage job, wasn't an option with a future. Of college and the military, the military is the only job that will teach you a skill, give you a place to live, feed you, provide free healthcare and pay you to do it. And as an added bonus, your 18-year old son will have to do some maturing very fast where he learns what is really important in life. As it was, my son chose college which was best for him. As much I wanted him to join the military, I could tell that he wasn't cut out for a military life. The military might have lots of advantages over other post-high school choices, but you have to be able to handle being in the military.
Easy there, you might be destroying peoples' world views here. Good parenting. I have one kid who's not thriving and I need to figure out how to help him see it. You provided a solid idea.
Hey he could've became a Twitch streamer and made money while playing video games at home! I can see where you're coming from about them needing to advertise, but is the anthem at sports games really doing anything? I'd wager a lot of people just assume it's something we do, and not because it's being paid for by the military. There's no real advertising there other than singing the anthem.
I don’t know that the playing if the anthem is paid for by the DOD. It’s the accompanying activities that are: unfurling large flags, fly-over, surprising the family and similar activities.
The singing of anthem at sports events starts 100 years ago at the World Series while the country was fighting WWI, even though the anthem didn't become officially The National Anthem until over a decade later. The anthem singing is not a DoD advertisement, per se. It's intended as a reminder of jingo... erh, patriotism and only costs teams money to the extent that they pay for equipment and singers. The DoD started leveraging it for overt advertising via big money with, if I'm not mistaken, NFL games. I'm sure they branched out to other sports, too. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...nd-getting-no-respect/?utm_term=.6013e912abe1
It's worth saying, though... DoD deciding that soccer is a worthwhile place to spend advertising $$ suggests the increasing level of cultural buy-in for the sport. Though, the cynical part of me thinks that they and the ad agency sit around the conference table and decide it's a great way to reach Hispanic audience and increase recruitment there.
The first soccer camp I went to back in the early 1980s was put on by the US Army. We all got ARMY soccer socks.
Yeah, I would think it was kind of weird also, but as I recall, it was something that happened a lot during World War II. According to Wikipedia, Hispanics make up the largest minority group in the USMC and where better to find recruits than at soccer games. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hispanics_in_the_United_States_Marine_Corps