I’ve been a professional sports fan since before I even cared about politics. I have always thoroughly enjoy watching games on TV and going to them in real life. I’ve been numerous professional sport events ranging from Major League Baseball to the National Football League, in addition to both the National Basketball Association and National Hockey League. I never remember much politics being involved within the sports environment. The high political action was usually done at the beginning of the game with the national anthem. But nowadays, almost every league is quite literally cancelling games in the name of political action. I’ve written about Colin Kaepernick before when he first took the knee. I wrote about it again when Kaepernick settle his lawsuit with the NFL over allegations of purpose blocking him from getting a QB gig. (If we’re honest, his QB skills weren’t up to par when he last played.) It seems that Kaepernick’s attitude has spread throughout the leagues.
In my personal opinion, politics and sports do not mix. I think they each serve different purposes. Politics serves to fill the greed and self interest of politicians who don’t give an actual fuck about you. Meanwhile sports is supposed to be wholesome competition and entertainment. Whether or not you enjoy sports, I think everyone can agree that sometimes activities are best without weird and unnecessary interruptions like political movements. Imagine if you’re favorite activity got cancelled for a political movement. You would probably feel the same way. You might be thinking “ok dude, but aren’t athletes allowed to have opinions and thoughts off the field, plus what if I agree with them?”
Yes, athletes can believe whatever they want, they can hold opinions and thoughts without any of my criticism. However, keep those political opinions off the field or court of play. Let me be clear: I don’t care if any particular athlete is communist, democrat, republican, BLM… it doesn’t matter. Just don’t push your philosophy on me in the sport you play. I don’t watch sports to get politically assaulted by politics that I do not partake in nor want to hear propaganda for. Play ball and keep your politics off the field. Sports is purely entertainment so if you aren’t gonna play sports then go retire to do politics. I really DON’T care.
So I haven’t addressed what exactly I’m referring to when I say “woke sports”. Recently the NFL, NBA and MLB all have adopted the policy of allowing players to take a knee and wear political messages on jerseys. In the case of the NBA, there have been games cancelled. The next logical question about all this is why is it such a problem now? I think woke sports has come about for two main reasons and one lesser reason. The first reason is money. Professional sports is a trillion dollar industry. Nearly every league makes billions of dollars. The owners of the teams are extremely wealthy. Professional sport garners huge TV contracts and billions in advertising revenue. Having all this money involved means it comes from somewhere. In this case of the NBA, the money comes from China which is a huge market share. Its the reason why you see Lebron James bending over for Chinese political interests. The second reason is influence. Nowadays, professional athletes have more influence than they ever have. They have social media platforms with millions of followers. They are on TV which can be streamed anywhere and anytime. There is a third lesser reason which is the background of these athletes. Many of them grew up poor and struggling to just survive. This garners a lot of empathy from public. The last ingredient that brings all the money, influence and empathy together is the political climate today.
We know that politics has changed recently into being much more toxic. I believe this is due to people adopting politics into their personality. It also has a lot to do with the technology that brings us news and happenings instantly around the clock. I’m on twitter and every time something crazy like riots happen, I literally can’t look away. Every event is being politicize and instantly streamed or uploaded to social media. Its a real shame that access to events and information is used the complete wrong way. Instead of accessing useful information to help make informed opinions, people would rather just react and give uninformed opinions. I think that sports was insulated from the politicizing of events until Kaepernick starting taking that knee. He was the Trojan horse. Every league had (yes had, in the past tense) rules against political messaging and political protests on the field. Now every league is bending to mob mentality over fear of being cancelled or losing fans who pay the money.
To conclude this post, I think the only and very unfortunate way to help sports league get the message that some or possibly a lot of people don’t like their politics in sports, is by not watching or buying jerseys. This will be really hard for most of us, including myself. But I think if fans are unhappy. we should vote with our wallets and viewership. If the political messaging bullshit stops, I would gladly tune back in. Sports is for entertainment. Politics is toxic and stressful. In all honestly, the ruining of sports by woke makes me blame the government even more. There no reason why we need a president for people to protest. Self ownership and voluntarism could easily replace the current system if people actually realized its never going to change.
Thanks for reading!
Check the social media
Twitter- @GforAnarchy12
Facebook- Garrett’s Life Experiences Blog
Technically Analytics 
I like sports, but at this point the mixing of politics and sports has gone too far. I will be most pleased to see all of these pro leagues fail, don’t buy tickets, don’t buy their merch, don’t tune into the games. The absolute worst part about this is supporting BLM is truly supporting Communist insurgents. Idk if you caught any of my coverage in June, I actually drove down to Tulsa for the Trump rally. I didn’t actually go in, we stayed out on the streets. It was really a turning point, or wake up call, my first face to face with antifa. Specifically I observed that a Chicago antifa group known as Revcom, the Revolutionary Communist Party was bussed in. I learned about the BLM-Revcom connection back in ’14. I’ve noticed Revcom banners and T shirts at every BLM march. BLM is most assuredly a front group for Revcom. I do believe that Revcom is the big player in all the riots. Hadn’t seen a post from you for a while, good to have you back!
Nice, interesting insights and I believe its the exact same “backers” of both BLM, Antifa and the movement among athletes in professional sports. It stands to reason that athletes from poor backgrounds would be sympathetic to such a movement.
As for me, I got a new job, been working 60 hours a week overnights. So im either too tired to write or don’t have time lol Hoping to post more often again.