Patriotism — and the national anthem — Bob Costas said, is more than about just our brave military.

“Martin Luther King was a patriot. Susan B Anthony was a patriot. Dissidents are patriots. Schoolteachers and social workers are patriots,” he pointed out.

But somehow, patriotism has been conflated with the military only. And not that they aren’t people who we shouldn’t have the utmost respect — but patriotism is about more than just our brave soldiers, Costas argued.

“Patriotism comes in many forms and what has happened is it’s been conflated with a bumper-style kind of flag-waving and with the military only so that people cannot see that in his own way Colin Kaepernick, however imperfectly, is doing a patriotic thing,” he said. “And so too are some of these other players.”