Sunday afternoons from early September through the end of the year are the same at the Waynesburg Veterans of Foreign Wars as they are at any bar or restaurant in the United States.

Drinks and food are served to the patrons. Music is played, and on TV, an football game is on. But at the VFW, the second a player follows in San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick’s footsteps, dropping to one knee during the Stars Spangled Banner, the TV goes off, no matter who is playing. Whatever takes place over the next few hours is irrelevant.

“We actually quit showing [the games] here, for a while,” said Terry Hoyle Jr., who served in the U.S. Army from 1994-2000 and was involved in Operation Iraqi Freedom. “Once we started to see that they weren’t kneeling, then we started bringing it back. If they kneel, then we shut the TV off. We made a lot of patrons upset. We have patrons that aren’t veterans that come in and do stuff, and I don’t think they understood what it meant to us.”

The national anthem has always been important to Hoyle Jr. His father, Terry Hoyle Sr., had six years of military experience, primarily serving in the U.S. Air Force. Now, both are involved heavily with VFW Post 4793. For Hoyle Jr., the movement that Colin Kaepernick started in August 2016, is against what himself, his father and everybody else at the VFW fought for.

“That flag is our holiness, basically, if that’s what you want to say” he said. “You’re taught that the flag means everything, and that’s what it does. That’s why you serve your country.”

Some at the VFW have almost entirely shut the NFL out of their lives.

“I think in general, as a whole, this VFW really doesn’t care for the NFL anymore the way they used to. In particular, the Pittsburgh Steelers,” said Surgeon Rick Black, a Vietnam veteran. “Personally, I don’t watch 1/8 of what I used to watch for that fact.”

Another Vietnam veteran, Director Ron Hamson, used to be invested in the NFL, but now only watches the Steelers “towards the end of the game.”

While Hoyle Sr. hasn’t abandoned his fandom yet, if protests during the national anthem are a part of an NFL Sunday, his interest dissipates.

“I am a fan of the National Football League,” Hoyle Sr. said. “However, if I go to start watching a game, and if the players don’t stand for the national anthem, I’ll shut the game off. I will not watch it then.”

Since August 2016, when Kaepernick announced his intent to kneel during the playing of the Stars Spangled Banner that season to protest wrongdoings against African Americans in the United States, “taking a knee” has become a movement. No Pittsburgh Steelers player has individually protested, but last September, head coach Mike Tomlin announced that his team wouldn’t be taking the field for the National Anthem before an away game against the Chicago Bears.

Most of the team stayed in the runway of Chicago’s Soldier Field, while offensive tackle and U.S. Army veteran Alejandro Villanueva came out of the tunnel alone for the anthem.

Hoyle Sr. was watching the game at home, and almost a year later, still finds it hard to understand why that sequence transpired the way it did.

“I still don’t understand how they could have stood there and let Villanueva come out and do his thing, and just stand there and not support him,” Hoyle Sr. said. “Because that’s supporting their teammate and their country.”

This past May, the NFL announced a policy that would required players to either stand on the field for the anthem or stay in the locker room, and any player who didn’t choose one of these options would face a fine. Plans fell through, however, due to a conflict with the NFL Players Association, who were not consulted on the matter beforehand. The two sides then entered discussions, and it was reported last week that those talks won’t lead to an anthem policy for the 2018 season.

Black believes the higher-ups in the league offices made a mistake by going back on their original policy change.

“The NFL has no backbone,” Black said.  “What I read is they’ve backed off.”

The protests were again in the spotlight shortly before the new season started. Although Kaepernick, who started the movement, hasn’t played an NFL game since 2016, his name continues to grab headlines. Nike recently launched a campaign centered around Kaepernick, accompanied by the slogan; “believe in something, even if it means sacrificing everything.”

“I hate seeing Kaepernick on the Nike commercial,” Hoyle Jr. said. “It’s not that I hate him or anything, I just feel that he started a bunch of stuff, and it really to hurts me to see that kids are looking up to him. Because they’re following him as a role model.”

Hoyle Jr. said that he won’t buy any more Nike products as a result of the campaign.

“I’ll wear generic shoes if I have to,” he said.

Kaepernick filed a grievance against the league last October for collusion, and many feel that he and his former teammate, safety Eric Reid, aren’t playing on Sundays as a punishment for their protests. Hoyle Jr. would be open to Kaepernick playing in the NFL again–as long as he stands.

“If he wants to [play], I don’t see any reason why [he can’t.],” Hoyle Jr. said. “The thing is he still needs to respect the flag and stand for the national anthem.”

Black was less sympathetic towards Kaepernick.

“He should be gone from the NFL,” he said. “No questions asked. That’s my only response.”

For Hoyle Jr., the dominance of social media makes it impossible for NFL players to not know how veterans could perceive the protests— and doesn’t understand those who condone taking a knee.

“They have to know what they’re doing,” he said. “I think it’s all just trying to get their name out their to be another Kaepernick and get more money. If you look at Tim Tebow, he knelt for prayer. That was not ok [for some people]. So why is kneeling for the flag ok?”