NFL chooses sides in divisive world of Trump
Sports, like everything else, lives in the world. It can be tempting to believe sports is a shiny, ridiculous bubble of wins and losses and dingers and dunks. It’s like closing your curtains and pretending the stadium down the road was built by magic. It’s one of many comforting illusions. Stick, as they say, to sports.
And then Sunday the sports world found itself more enmeshed with politics and protest than at any point in modern history. A little over one year ago then-San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick knelt during the American national anthem before a pre-season game to protest against systemic racism in the United States. Nobody even noticed at first. He kept kneeling. He left the 49ers after last season, and was not signed by any NFL team. He isn’t a Top 10 QB, but he’s being blackballed without shame.
One year later, the argle-bargle-belching president of the United States decided to play to his canker-sore ego and his racism-fuelled base by attacking the athletes of the National Football League and the National Basketball Association, which by sheer and utter coincidence are the two pro sports leagues in North America with the most Black players. At a rally in Alabama — another coincidence! — he called players who kneel to protest during the national anthem “sons of bitches,” and said they should be fired. Then, after Golden State Warriors star Steph Curry said he didn’t want to visit the White House to celebrate their NBA championship, Donald Trump rescinded the invitation. Sunday, on the only Twitter account in the world that may start a nuclear war, he called for a boycott of the NFL.
Suddenly sports hasn’t been this political since Muhammad Ali.
LeBron James called Trump, with devastating precision, “U Bum.” Jim Harbaugh, the football coach at Michigan, said, “Read the Constitution.” People across the NFL criticized Trump: Even former coach Rex Ryan, on ESPN, said: “I supported Donald Trump . . . and I’m reading these comments and it’s appalling to me, and I’m sure it’s appalling to almost any citizen in this country. And I apologize for being pissed off, because right away I’m associated with what Donald Trump stands for.”
Ryan was mighty late to the party on this one, but at least there was a party. There were sideline protests and demonstrations during anthems across the NFL, some of which were booed by fans in the stadiums. It had already spread: Saturday night, Oakland Athletics’ rookie catcher Bruce Maxwell became the first MLB player to kneel during an anthem. During the anthem before Game 1 of the WNBA final Sunday, the Los Angeles Sparks stayed in their locker room. In the NFL, anthem performers knelt. It’s a hell of a day when Terry Bradshaw takes time on the Fox NFL pregame show to explain that the president might not grasp the concept of freedom of speech.
And every piece of it became, thanks to the howling unquenchable ego of the most powerful man in the world, a choice. Seattle and Tennessee stayed in their locker rooms during the anthem, and so did the Pittsburgh Steelers. But Seattle cited “the injustice that plagues people of colour in this country;” Pittsburgh tried to make it about avoiding politics, even as Steelers offensive lineman Alejandro Villanueva, a decorated army veteran, left the locker room to stand for the anthem.
“People shouldn’t have to choose,” Steelers coach Mike Tomlin told CBS. “If a guy wants to go about his normal business and participate in the anthem, he shouldn’t be forced to choose sides. If a guy feels the need to do something, he shouldn’t be separated from his teammate who chooses not to. So we’re not participating today.”
But that’s not how things work anymore. Trump is a human lie detector, revealing what you are, and he divides people as naturally as he breathes. And as much as anything, Trump is a force for white nationalism and white supremacy. You can’t find a middle ground on white supremacy: When you try, there are suddenly very fine people among the KKK and Nazis. As former NFL player Charles Woodson said on the NFL Network, “This is choose-your-side Sunday. It really is. And what side are you on?”
This is the era of everything is politics, and sports has been pulled into the ever-widening gyre. NASCAR owners threatened to fire drivers who protested during the anthem.
The Stanley Cup-winning Pittsburgh Penguins put out a statement that said they would indeed visit the White House and that “any agreement or disagreement with a presi- dent’s politics, policies or agenda can be expressed in other ways. However, we very much respect the rights of other individuals and groups to express themselves as they see fit.” It was so mealymouthed and tin-eared it could have sung, “If I only had a heart.” Now the Penguins get to stand next to Trump after he trumpets what can now be considered, in the wake of the protests, their support.
It might not seem like it, but Kaepernick didn’t kneel to protest Trump, or the military, or the anthem itself, any more than Gandhi’s hunger strike was about protesting food. Last year, Kaepernick explained himself by saying, “I have great respect for men and women who have fought for this country. I have family, I have friends that have fought for this country . . . they fight for liberty and justice for everyone, and that’s not happening.”
He talked about police brutality, systemic racism, empathy for those who didn’t have his platform. He wasn’t protesting America. He was protesting racism in America. That’s what it was about, and is about, and the real conversation here. Other players joined him, but only a few. And Donald Trump dumped rocket fuel on the spark because that’s the only thing he knows how to do.
Stick to sports, as an idea, was always a childlike fantasy or a disingenuous barb, and it is as dead as it has ever been. That, along with humiliating Chris Christie, might be the only good thing Trump has ever done. Everyone picks a side now. Sports is part of the fight, and there’s no turning back.