Florida Panthers fans react at the end of Game 5 of the Stanley Cup Finals against the Edmonton Oilers, on June 18, in Sunrise, Fla.Wilfredo Lee/The Associated Press
They don’t disrespect the opposing anthem, but the hockey crowd in Florida isn’t exactly standing at military attention.
When they get to the part in O Canada about “true north strong and free,” a well-refreshed gentleman hanging off a railing in front of us yells “TRUE SOUTH!” over it. The impressive thing is that he’s remembered the bar this lyric is found in.
Once the anthem ends, another group of men – led by a guy in a No. 1 Panthers jersey with the nameplate ‘DAD’ – starts it.
“U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A!”
Though we haven’t heard it much lately, the form has not changed. Starts out slow and gets faster. Fists pumping directly overhead, gradually moving to a more aggressive 45-degree angle. Quickly burns itself out and becomes a free-form yowl.
Not everybody loves it, but everybody knows U-S-A, U-S-A. It is the chant of our time.
Throughout Tuesday’s Stanley Cup game – the very early part when the Panthers were still in it – the new battle hymn of their republic was flaring up here and there. It didn’t catch on in a general way, but people were trying. It was like a wave that couldn’t make it all the way around the arena.
This follows last weekend’s U.S. Open victory by Bryson DeChambeau. The chant followed the fratty golf star around Pinehurst in North Carolina for all four rounds. It was present during his victory speech. It trailed him off the course.
Maybe it’s because we are south of Mason-Dixon, or maybe because it’s an election year, but U-S-A is making a comeback.
Nobody seems sure where this favourite of patriotic attention seekers started. It’s popped up all over the place – Berlin in ′36, the Miracle on Ice, some random speech by Ronald Reagan.
It was a mainstay of the Olympics. It made boorish sense in the Iron Curtain era, but less so in the friend-zone period that bookended the turn of the century. That never seemed to hurt it.
At the Sochi Olympics, the Russians had stolen the IP and repurposed it. ROS-SI-YA, ROS-SI-YA doesn’t sound exactly right. Something about the short-a on the last beat. But it does have three syllables.
Just based on metre, Canada could have gone down this road, too. It’s a source of pride that as a rule, we do not. Canadians do not chant the name of our country at other people. All our bile is kept in-house. We don’t even like to riot with strangers around.
In the Aughties, U-S-A morphed into an all-purpose battle cry. It was something Americans did whenever they were excited.
It made less sense in the professional-sports context. A Venezuelan hits a triple in the eighth that scores two for the Yankees against the Blue Jays? U-S-A, U-S-A, U-S-A.
The idea is that the country is rallying around a common sporting cause. Ask them in Boston how connected they feel to the accomplishments of the Bronx.
One of the first things Donald Trump did in office was get U-S-A cancelled. At the 2018 Olympics in Pyeongchang, I don’t recall hearing it once.
It’s never been hard to spot an American on sporting tour. They are the ones wearing Stars and Stripes jackets and boots, sucking up all the oxygen in the velodrome. One on one, they are delightful. In groups, they are insufferable.
Trump’s arrival made public jingoism déclassé among the sort of Americans who hold passports. So no more U-S-A on tour. The chant went dormant in its traditional haunts. I suspect that if you did it now during an international women’s soccer match, you would be ejected over the top lip of the stadium.
Generally speaking, famous Americans tend to reflect the mores of American media culture, which even more generally speaking puts them at odds with the sort of people who do the chanting.
Athletes know which side their marketing bread is buttered on, and it isn’t the one promoted by Ted Cruz or Ron DeSantis. I still believe most U.S-based pros vote Republican, but few of them talk that way. It’s bad for business.
Though maybe less so in the last little while. When Kansas City kicker Harrison Butker went on the sort of traditionalist rant would have made Pat Robertson cheer during a recent college commencement, a funny thing happened.
Nothing, at first. Most people didn’t care. Advertiser-friendly teammates such as Patrick Mahomes and Travis Kelce declined to disavow him, which is its own sort of endorsement.
Then something did happen. Butker became a commodity. He’s done what every ambitious athlete wants to – make his face familiar to people who are not sports obsessives.
Butker is a mainstream brand now. If he’d tried the same thing five years ago, it would not have turned out so well for him.
There’s just something in the air in sports at the moment – a return to the rootin’, tootin’ America that existed pre-2008 meltdown. Back when money was free and everyone on both sides of the American divide felt as if they were winning.
If you believe the mainstream is drifting right, the fact that fans feel freed once again to invoke their constitutional right to yahoo’ism may be a marker of that change.
The real test of this will be Paris in six weeks time. It is one thing for a bunch of Fort Lauderdale louts waving around tall cans of Corona Light to do it. If I’d been pregaming in the Amerant Arena parking lot for six hours under a June sun, I might say all sorts.
But it is a different thing if the coastal elites who blow a packet on attending a European Olympics are also back on the U-S-A bandwagon. That would mean that the chant has become broadly acceptable again.
Whenever I hear it, my knee-jerk is irritation. I have to see you. Must I hear you as well? Do you want to climb onto my back so we can make this a full five-sense experience?
But I also recognize that the U-S-A chant is like a house in the suburbs and a trip to Disney – a sign that the American middle-class is feeling affluent and at ease. When the U.S.A. is U-S-A’ing, the revolution is deferred for the time being.