By BARBARA HOWARD

This stupidity of disrespecting the American Flag and the National Anthem by the NFL is getting on my last nerve. All the men in my family – my father, stepfather and husband fought for this country. So I am not only disappointed but angry by the blatant disrespect by these overpaid ballplayers, who have now decided that their “right to free speech” gives them the right to disrespect this country.

What foolishness!! YOU DON’T HAVE THE RIGHT TO PROTEST WHILE YOU ARE ON THE JOB!

How many people would dare protest while they’re on the job or wearing their company uniforms? THEY WOULD BE FIRED!

Where is the courage? Most of these black ballplayers come from inner cities where playing ball is their only way out of the ghetto. But Colin Kaepernick was blessed; adopted by a white couple who gave him a nice life. He lived the American Dream.

But then he decided to spit on the very country that afforded him these great opportunities that he could get nowhere else. Now hundreds of these ballplayers are “protesting;” but Trump is the villain because he hurt their feelings?

Do they care enough about the hundreds of black men, women and children dying from black-on-black crime in the inner cities? NO! They only care about those black criminals who police shot while doing their jobs of keeping the “hood” safe.

All these players protesting “police brutality” are nothing but hypocrites and the NFL is full of cowards. When players wanted to honor fallen police officers killed in the line of duty – the NFL denied them that right.

When a player wanted to wear pink shoes to honor his mother and all those women who died from breast cancer, the NFL said no.

Now little league coaches are teaching their kids how to disrespect the flag but would be fired if they taught their kids how to pray before their games. Cowards and hypocrites all.

Someone shared a post on Facebook with me. Retired Marine Col. Jeffrey A. Powers sent an open letter to the NFL.

“Commissioner, I have been a season pass holder at Yankee Stadium, Yale Bowl and Giants Stadium. I missed the ’90 – ’91 season because I was with a battalion of Marines in Desert Storm.

14 of my wonderful Marines returned home with the American Flag draped across their lifeless bodies. My last conversation with one of them, Sgt Garrett Mongrella, was about how our Giants were going to the Super Bowl.

He never got to see it. Many friends, Marines and Special Forces hypocrisy? Soldiers who worked with or for me through the years returned home with the American Flag draped over their coffins.

Now I watch multi-millionaire athletes who never did anything in their lives but play a game, disrespect what brave Americans fought and died for. They are essentially spitting in the faces and on the graves of real men, men who have actually done something for this country besides playing with a ball and believing they’re something special.

They’re not! My Marines and Soldiers were!

You are complicit in this! You’ll fine players for large and small infractions but you lack the moral courage and respect for our nation and the fallen to put an immediate stop to this.

Yes, I know, it’s their 1st Amendment right to behave in such a despicable manner.

What would happen if they came out and disrespected you or the refs publicly?

I observed a player getting a personal foul for twerking in the end zone after scoring. I guess that’s much worse than disrespecting the flag and our National Anthem. Hmmmmm, isn’t it his 1st Amendment right to express himself like an idiot in the end zone?

Why is taunting not allowed yet taunting America is OK? You fine players for wearing 9-11 commemorative shoes yet you allow scum on the sidelines to sit, kneel or pump their pathetic fist in the air.

They are so deprived with their multi-million dollar contracts for playing a freaking game! You condone it all by your refusal to act. You’re just as bad and disgusting as they are.

I hope Americans boycott any sponsor who supports the rabble you call the NFL.

I hope they turn off the TV when any team that allowed this disrespect to occur, without consequence, (is) on the sidelines.

I applaud those who have not. Legends and heroes do NOT wear shoulder pads. They wear body armor and carry rifles. They make minimum wage and spend months and years away from their families.

They don’t do it for an hour on Sunday. They do it 24/7 often with lead, not footballs, coming in their direction. They watch their brothers carted off in pieces not on a gurney to get their knee iced. They don’t even have ice! Many don’t have legs or arms.

Some wear blue and risk their lives daily on the streets of America. They wear fire helmets and go upstairs into the fire rather than down to safety.

On 9-11, hundreds vanished. They are the heroes.

I hope that your high paid protesting pretty boys and you look in that mirror when you shave tomorrow and see what you really are, legends in your own minds. You need to hit the road and take these worms with you.

Time to change the channel.”