As someone who moved from Europe to the US, the pervasiveness of the military in televised professional and college football game is incredibly jarring to me ye

As someone who moved from Europe to the US, the pervasiveness of the military in televised professional and college football game is incredibly jarring to me yet is so normalized to Americans. Count the number of times there is a reference to the military, a cutaway to uniformed people in the stands or by the touchline, a clip of troops watching the game while deployed overseas, flyovers etc. Still, after 10 years, my reaction is "what has that got to do with sport?". I've always assumed this to be a very deliberate strategy to build an implicit association between the "nobility" of sport and war, to boost recruitment and win over the hearts and minds of the American public for past, current and future military action. Now count how many times you've seen any sign of the military at a sports event in Europe - rare to never. It's not normal and it's sad to me that it is so normalized in the US.