Much of my childhood involved watching and playing sports. I am not unique in that respect. Tens of millions of Americans enjoy are just like me. High school, collegiate, and professional sports teams dot the American landscape from the largest cities to the smallest towns.
Unfortunately, leftist politics has ruined American sports in recent years. As a wise man named Dennis Prager once said, “the Left destroys everything it touches.”
The Downfall’s Beginning?
In my lifetime, the downfall of sports seemed to begin in 2016. Of course, the seeds of political activism existed in sports well before 2016. However, I believe that the recent form of sports activism has been completely unnecessary and incredibly toxic/divisive. So, let’s go back into to an NFL preseason game in 2016.
We can all probably guess which athlete I am going to start talking about here: Colin Kaepernick. I see former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick as the catalyst for where we find ourselves today. Before a preseason game back in August 2016, Kaepernick kneeled during the singing of the national anthem.
For curiosity’s sake, Kaepernick gave his reason for kneeling during the national anthem:
“I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color,” Kaepernick told NFL Media in an exclusive interview after the game. “To me, this is bigger than football and it would be selfish on my part to look the other way. There are bodies in the street and people getting paid leave and getting away with murder.”
In his own words, Kaepernick stated that he would not stand for the national anthem due to police brutality. As a side note, I thought that I should include a picture of the socks that Kaepernick wore to some 49ers’ preseason practices. Pretty classy stuff there.
The whole “kneeling during the national anthem” situation landed the NFL in hot water. Plenty of people weighed in on the drama—including President Donald Trump at the time.
In a 2017 rally, President Trump made a comment that reflected how at least half of America felt about kneeling during the National Anthem
“Wouldn’t you love to see one of these NFL owners, when somebody disrespects our flag, to say, ‘Get that son of a b**** off the field right now. Out! He’s fired. He’s fired’,”
Even the flag kneeling ordeal pissed a lot of people off, the whole conversation died down in about a year or so. Most people seemed to stop caring about all this by 2018. Unfortunately, the leftist corrosion of American professional/collegiate sports was complete by mid-2020.
But Wait, It gets worse?!
Oh yeah, so the COVID-19-induced lockdowns by US cities and state government kept us in our homes in Spring 2020. So, not much was going on during that time. In fact, live sports in the US did not truly exist between late-March through late-July 2020. In that time span, a flurry of BLM and ANTIFA rallies rocked the country after the death of George Floyd. Of course, collegiate and professional athletes decided to become activists over the summer. Athletes like LeBron James—a multi-millionaire athlete—sure know better than us deplorables, right?
Man, every single sports league did something that angered half of America. In my opinion, the NBA was probably the most obnoxious in tmers of advancing leftist politics.
The NBA—a billion-dollar sports league that’s in bed with CHINA—apparently has the moral authority to tell the rest of America that we’re all bigoted. Yeah, right. In its season restart in the late summer, the NBA fully embraced the Marxist organization Black Lives Matter. Even though many NBA fans just want to watch some basketball, the NBA decided to decorate the basketball court with BLM messaging. Players also got to pick a SJW phrase to exhibit on their jerseys. Some of the 29 approved phrases included “Black Lives Matter”, “Say Their Names”, and “I Can’t Breathe”. After enough fans quit watching the NBA, the league decided to scale back its political messaging.
After seeing all of the recent SJW virtue-signaling and Anti-Americanism in the sports world, I have lost a lot of interest in sports. Millions of Americans feel the same way. If I were truly consistent man, I would not watch sports anymore. I applaud anyone who has completely stopped watching sports in the past year.
My question for traditional Americans is this: how can we support professional/college sports teams that hate our values and our country? It’s a tough answer. Americans used to be able to “agree to disagree” and move on with our lives. Heck, Michael Jordan once famously quipped “Republicans buy sneakers too,” when asked about his lack of political activism. We don’t live in that America anymore.
The leftist politicization of sports is truly sad. Sports used to be a water-cooler topic that many people enjoyed discussing. With an increasingly fragmented media landscape, there aren’t many topics/events that many Americans hold in common. Almost nothing is holding this country together at this point. Sports was one of the few remaining elements in America that could still unify people and communities. Unfortunately, that’s not the case anymore.