The President Versus Professional Sports and Athletes
When I left the sports media world at the end of 2013 I was done with the sports business. After more than 15 years working at the intersection of sports and “digital meets analog” media, I’d become fairly disenchanted and jaded by the evolution of professional sports. What for decades had been a focus on on-field performance seemed to have essentially transitioned to the “starification” of athletes and an overemphasis in coverage of what athletes did off the field or court. And of course, much of this extracurricular activity strayed far from what most of us would define as the stuff in which role models are made. [Note: In full disclosure, I was very much a part of promoting and building this transition as the leader of Yahoo! Sports, Fox Sports Interactive, and ultimately the CEO of Bleacher Report who sold that business to Time Warner in 2012.]
Since stepping out of the sports media world, I’ve certainly missed many of the great people I had the opportunity to work with, but I haven’t missed much of the charade and misaligned priorities that seem to now drive the sports business. I’ve been fortunate to be able to turn my attention to personal areas of interest like health and education that resonate with me because of the important role both these industries play in the lives of people. Health and education really should be more critical areas for us to get right than covering who wins the Super Bowl or NBA Championship. But something happened a week ago that sparked hope in me that the sports world might play an important role in driving social change moving forward. Thanks to comments made by the President, I’ve come back to pay attention to sports and the opportunity this industry now has to make a difference in people’s lives.
As we all know, the President decided to specifically target two sports — the NFL and the NBA — that are the most racially diverse, but also the most popular nationally. In his initial rants (and subsequent public statements) geared at NFL players’ actions during the pre-game national anthem, the President has characterized these protests simply as employees disrespecting the flag and our military. Wrong! What the President has missed is that: 1) these protests are very much responses to racial injustices that continue in this country, and 2) sports is different than scripted television or the watered down reality TV world he aims to craft around himself.
The President has picked a fight with the wrong foe — professional sports and the popularity of athletes. From a pure business standpoint pro sports leagues (and by extension individual franchises) are monopolies — they have antitrust exemptions and frankly their live events are the only reason the cable and satellite TV business model is still (barely) intact. More importantly, sports has the unique power to galvanize people like nothing else in popular culture. It’s the most merit-based work environment that exists in this country, and thankfully it’s color blind to who it employs. Sports operates such that a wealthy father can’t just give his kids the starting quarterback or point guard job on a team, (though they can buy pro franchises and put their kids in roles running the teams with oftentimes deleterious results).
So why have I suddenly regained an interest in pro sports? The President’s utterance to “fire those sons of bitches” barked towards NFL players who choose to kneel or sit during the pre-game national anthem is not only flat out inappropriate, it’ll never happen because the best employees available are the ones choosing to kneel. The President apparently didn’t learn his lesson from his time trying to prop up the USFL that in pro sports there is simply one tier of “the best employees” and that firing them without cause is a non-starter business proposition for owners.
But there’s a more compelling undercurrent forming here and one that the athletes themselves are in a unique position to affect moving forward. Many of the President’s base of staunch supporters are sports fans. By firing invectives towards athletes when he calls out the entire NFL players union or when he cancels the White House visit of the Golden State Warriors, he’s bringing LeBron James, Stephen Curry, and basically every professional athlete to the front line battle against the divisive mantra he spews. These athletes — whether they know it or not or like it or not — have some of the loudest voices on the planet. On one hand their voice and view will reach many in the President’s supposed “base” because after all, they love their Falcons, Red Sox, etc. But the more powerful role that professional sports can play in this debate is for these athletes to keep speaking to the majority of voters who disagree with what our President says and believes.
I hope that the pro athletes that were so incensed last weekend to speak up keep talking and protesting the divisiveness sparked by the President’s remarks. Athletes speaking out forcefully on this topic every time they take a post-game podium or have a microphone shoved in their face will become one of the strongest forces we have to get the true majority of this country — the majority that absolutely stands for what the American flag, the national anthem, and the commitment of our men and women in the military mean — to come out and vote for leaders who believe in the same.
The reason I’m back paying attention to the sports world is that I truly believe that LeBron, Stephen, and all of the NBA and NFL (as well as all athletes with similar beliefs from every sports league) have the influence to push back on the President’s views and to galvanize their huge bases (and social media followings) to do the same. Ultimately, these athletes can spur fans to become powerful constituencies that vote for change in 2018 and 2020. If through their actions athletes step up to make this happen moving forward, we can look back at the weekend before Week 3 of the 2017 NFL season as a turning point in which what happens off the field or court in sports drives positive social change.
