Leagues often get political — why shouldn’t athletes?
Last week, the NCAA and the Atlantic Coast Conference took a political stand. Two months earlier, it was the NBA.
Politics is everywhere in sports. So why do people get so angry when an athlete takes a political position?
In case you missed the news, the ACC — which has its headquarters in North Carolina — pulled all of its conference championships and tournaments out of the state last week. One day earlier, the NCAA announced it would relocate seven championships that were scheduled to take place in North Carolina in this academic year.
In July, the NBA said it would move its 2017 All-Star Game from Charlotte to New Orleans.
All of these are protest moves, intended to effect change. North Carolina passed a bill discriminating against the LGBT community, known as HB2 or the “bathroom bill.” The bill limits the civil protections of LGBT individuals, including mandating that transgender people use the bathroom that corresponds to the gender listed on their birth certificate. Since its passage, North Carolina has been under fire from activists.
Entertainers such as Bruce Springsteen also have pulled out of commitments in North Carolina. But the latest salvos from the world of sports actually might cause some movement in the standoff.
Why? Because sports are a powerful platform. We pay attention to sports. That’s why the military likes to have its soldiers on the football field — why the Defense Department paid the NFL for patriotic displays. It’s a recruiting tool and advertisement. The “paid patriotism” issue became embarrassing enough that this year the NFL announced it would return the money.
Sports has provided the women’s national soccer team with a platform about equal pay, a huge political issue in
this country but one that few women can raise as a collective, powerful entity. It was the influence of the NFL that forced Arizona to finally approve a holiday honoring Martin Luther King, Jr.
You can take a cynical view that the NBA, NCAA and ACC simply don’t want to risk any financial backlash by being associated with discrimination. That they will make as much or more money by moving their events and save themselves a giant headache in the process.
But the organizations are portraying their decisions as a form of protest. NCAA President Mark Emmert talked about fairness and gender equity. ACC Commissioner John Swofford cited his conference’s commitment to “equality, diversity and inclusion.” The NBA said it had been working, unsuccessfully, to effect positive change. Commissioner Adam Silver said the league had “a long record of speaking out where we see discrimination.”
Around the time that the NBA was moving its All-Star Game for political reasons, the WNBA — the women’s league owned by the NBA — fined some of its players for wearing T-shirts that supported Black Lives Matter during the anthem. The league quickly rescinded the fines, perhaps sensing the hypocrisy that the bosses could protest something but that the players couldn’t.
The backdrop to the North Carolina issue is one of anger and reaction. Earlier this year, the city of Charlotte passed an ordinance extending antidiscrimination protection to the LGBT community. The state of North Carolina retaliated by passing HB2, which nullified the Charlotte ordinance. Now state officials refuse to consider repealing HB2 unless Charlotte rescinds its progressive ordinance (which would go back into effect if HB2 is repealed). Charlotte officials are refusing, so the entire situation is in a standoff while the economic damage grows deeper by the day.
Obviously, some positive change and grown-up dialogue in North Carolina would be a good thing.
That’s what Colin Kaepernick, and other athletes who have joined him in his anthem protest, are trying to do. By kneeling during the national anthem as a form of protest to the injustices they see happening in the black community, they are trying to bring about positive change. To open a dialogue. It is far riskier for them as individuals to take such stands than it is for huge organizations to do so.
In recent weeks, the “don’t bother me with the real world” fans have raised their heads. They say they want their sports to be escapist. To not be bothered with any thoughts except of down-and-distance, of who’s on second or shooting percentage.
That’s ridiculous because sports have long been political. The Dodgers took one of the most courageous political stands in history when they put Jackie Robinson on their team in 1947 and made integration part of the national conversation. Muhammad Ali risked jail and his entire career by refusing to be drafted into the Vietnam War, impacting the most volatile political issue of his generation. Title IX is the result of politics, and has changed both the perception and reality of women for two generations.
You cannot separate sports from the real world. They are intertwined. So why shouldn’t athletes choose to use their voice and their platform?