Former football long snapper Nate Boyer said he misses, “more than anything,” how football fans used to flock to the stadiums every week “regardless of politics, color, sexual orientation” to wear the same jerseys and cheer for the same teams. He shared his thoughts during an interview Monday on “The Laura Ingraham Show.”

Boyer, a U.S. Army Green Beret who served in both Iraq and Afghanistan, played for the Seattle Seahawks in the National Football League in 2015. Pointing to the ongoing controversy that President Donald Trump reignited over the weekend when he criticized football players who protest racial injustice by kneeling during the national anthem, Boyer said that “it’s frustrating” and “kind of sad” that politics have seeped into sports.

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“I miss more than anything the fact that for three hours every week, you know, on an NFL team, you go to the stadium, regardless of politics, color, sexual orientation, whatever. Everybody wears the same jersey, same colors in the stadium, and cheers for the same team and kind of forgets about all that stuff,” Boyer said. “And we’re losing that right now. And that sucks, to be quite honest.”

NFL free agent Colin Kaepernick instigated the anthem protests during the 2016 NFL season. Over 100 players from different teams knelt while “The Star-Spangled Banner” played Sunday to protest Trump’s criticism.

“I feel like at this point everyone in our country has to like, you know, pick a kickball team to play with and be on one side or the other. And it’s just further division,” Boyer said. “I feel like we’re gearing up for, you know, Civil War II or something. It’s kind of sad.”

“We are being pulled apart by everybody. It’s not one person. It’s not one side. It’s both sides, and I’m waiting for somebody to step up,” Boyer added. “I’m waiting for … someone in a high place to step up and show some humility and just kind of let it go and reach across and meet with the other side, sit down with the other side.”

The president also caused controversy when he rescinded the invitation to Golden State Warriors guard and two-time NBA MVP Stephen Curry to visit the White House with his team. Trump did so on Saturday after Curry told reporters Friday he did not plan on accepting the invitation because of his dislike for the president.

“I’m a huge Steph Curry fan,” Boyer said. “And so this — the whole thing about not going to the White House — in my opinion, I’m like, ‘Look, man. I followed you. I think you’re an intelligent young dude. You’re obviously a great athlete. Go to the White House. You don’t have to like the president. You don’t have to agree with him. But go to the White House, and maybe that’s an opportunity to sit down and have that conversation that needs to be had.'”

“Maybe that’s where we start moving forward and actually develop something and coming back together,” Boyer added.

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He said that Trump’s repeated weekend criticism didn’t help alleviate national tensions at all.

“If he didn’t say that, there wouldn’t have been all those people kneeling and staying in locker rooms as much,” Boyer said. “It wasn’t so much that [the kneelers] were protesting the anthem, and it wasn’t even that they were protesting the anthem and the flag — it’s that they were protesting the president’s remarks.”

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“And they’re using the anthem and the flag as the time to do that, which I don’t agree with because the anthem and the flag represent 300 million people. It doesn’t represent one person,” Boyer continued. “That’s not Donald Trump’s song. That’s not the president’s anthem. It’d not his flag. It’s ours, you know what I mean?”

Former Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Andrew McCarthy also discussed the ongoing NFL controversy during a separate appearance Monday on “The Laura Ingraham Show.”

“Standing is about what unites us, which is supposed to be … our love for the country. I must say, to have this now be a Trump thing — when it started during Obama — makes it, I think, demonstrates to me that it’s even more incoherent what the kneeling is all about than it was when it started,” McCarthy said.

A contributing editor for National Review, McCarthy said Kaepernick’s initial protest was built on the notion that “the police are on a jihad against black men in America.”

“It’s built on a lie, so it might as well morph into a protest of Trump,” McCarthy said.

“I really think, Laura, it’s the activist Left, which is projecting this protest as if it were representative of what large segments of the population think, which I don’t think it is,” McCarthy added. “It goes to show where the country is, versus where the elite are.”

Boyer noted NFL ratings are slumping as conservative viewers turned off by the national anthem protests and liberal viewers unhappy that Kaepernick remains unsigned both boycott the games.

“I think that’s why a lot of people are upset, because what’s really interesting is people on kind of both sides of the spectrum here — the political spectrum — are not watching right now because of that,” Boyer said. “Ratings are dropping already, and I think we’re in trouble here. We’re going to have some scary times in sports if we don’t figure a way out to come together and to address this stuff.”

Boyer begged NFL players to follow the example of the “school pride” felt by college football players and “have more pride in our country in the stadiums” by protesting in other ways.

“I got to run out of the tunnel in the Seahawks stadium with the American flag in my hand leading the team out, you know,” Boyer recalled. “And I’m standing on the sidelines during the anthem and all that, and everybody’s standing and everybody’s respectful. It’s like a powerful moment. And so, that’s not really about politics or anything.”

“I felt extreme pride in my country and everyone in the stands is, you know — you get that sense of unity, at least. And this is in 2015, so this is just a year before everything kind of changed,” Boyer added. “And now it’s like, it’s just a different game. And I don’t [think] anyone even gave a damn about the outcomes yesterday. It was all about — all we talked about and focused on and talked about was this.”