One of the greatest traditions in Chicago – and in all sports – is the singing of the national anthem at the United Center before Chicago Blackhawks games.

For those of you who don’t know, the Blackhawks have an anthem singer named Jim Cornelison and during the national anthem the whole crowd stands up to wildly cheer, scream and clap the entire time. If you ever attend a Blackhawks game, it is near impossible to not get the chills from the atmosphere in the building during that tribute to America.

The Blackhawks are the only team who does this (to my knowledge) and Cornelison has sung his rendition at a Chicago Bears and Bulls game due to its popularity in the city. The tradition of cheering during the national anthem started in 1985 in a conference finals matchup against the Edmonton Oilers in the old Chicago Stadium.

The Hawks were down 2-0 in the series and fans were so jacked up and ready for the team to get the series back they all started cheering during the national anthem. I guess it worked because the Hawks went on to win their next two home games, before falling in five games.

Still, 26 years later this tradition is still going strong, and now that the Hawks are good again, it seems to be better than ever.

For a while, the Blackhawks weren’t televised so they lost a lot of fans and many people didn’t know about this tradition. Now that the Hawks are on national TV, everyone is getting to see this tradition.

Since this is now out in the public for everyone to see it has sparked a lot of debates on whether it is un-American to cheer. The reason this tradition started was not because of patriotism though, it was just because they wanted to pump up the crowd and to get the players excited.

A report released by the government said that in the United States Code there is no mention of being silent during the national anthem. All the code says is that all non-uniform men should remove their caps, place their hand over their heart, and look at the flag.

There are a lot of rules when it comes to the American Flag and flag etiquette, so if the only rule we are breaking is not having our hand over then nobody has a reason to call foul on the way we do things. When we cheer for the national anthem we are doing nothing negative towards America, but you can even say we are being extra patriotic because we are cheering louder than anyone for it.

All I ask is that if you do not agree with cheering or clapping during the national anthem then you need to go to a Blackhawks game and try to not join everybody else. It is nearly impossible, and the chills down your back will change your mind faster than you can say “Jose can you see.”