If there’s anything the NFL knows how to do, it’s to honor U.S. military members and veterans.
As such, Veterans Day celebrations were a gimme all weekend long across the league’s games, here and abroad.
It’s that abroad game that left ESPN’s Chris Berman a bit befuddled on Monday night.
While running through his fastest three-minute highlights of Sunday’s NFL slate, Berman made sure to stop and take note of the fact that the New York Giants and Carolina Panthers celebrated Veteran’s Day Weekend while playing in Munich, Germany.
“Veterans Day Weekend in Germany? REALLY?” – Chris Berman, introducing highlights from the Giants-Panthers game in Munich. pic.twitter.com/5rk9Qa3Dp5
— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) November 12, 2024
“Veterans Day Weekend in Germany? REALLY?” asked Berman. “Giants and Panthers go to overtime…”
Germany, as you might remember from high school history class, was on the other side during World War II. It’s approximated that as many as 300,000 Americans died in Europe fighting against Adolph Hitler’s Nazis. So, you can see where Boomer is coming from.
The flip side to that would be that we live in a very different world in 2024 and most people would agree that Germans are the least of our problems. Also, there’s obviously no purposeful connection between the NFL playing a bad football game in Germany and Veteran’s Day (Not to mention America has had military bases in Germany since the 1950s…).
Perhaps if the NFL had sent the New England Patriots to play in Germany, that would have made the metaphor better.
[ESPN]
