On the last day of a year in which football will be remembered as much for sideline posture — and posturing — as for on-the-field play, there were fewer than 20 N.F.L. players kneeling or sitting for the national anthem, according to reports. That was about 1 percent of the league’s players, not counting some locked arms, a few hands on shoulders and at least one fist in the air.

Television barely showed them, and the president made no immediate comments. The national conversation was about playoffs, not protests.

It was an oddly quiet end to an incredibly loud season.

President Trump’s response to the N.F.L. protests was the country’s biggest sports story of the year, according to The Associated Press, although it had little to do with sports. The competition played out on the sidelines, kindled by Colin Kaepernick, a quarterback without a team who spent the season in restrained silence, fully ignited by a president throwing torch bombs on Twitter.

Americans ended up arguing over gestures and posture and the original meaning of the lyrics of “The Star-Spangled Banner.” What began as a debate over the state of the oppression of people of color became knotted into an argument about patriotism and the military. Some cheered the First Amendment and emergency medical workers (because who can argue over that?) but jeered when others exercised those First Amendment rights.