Messages such as “end racism” and “choose love” and an assortment of oddly emotionally evocative phrases will once again have a place on an NFL field. But do they need to?
Politics is the antithesis of athletics. Athletics is a result-based endeavor. How a fan or player feels doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters is the result on the scoreboard.
A ref made a bad call. That’s terrible, but what happened the other 49 minutes of the game? The opposing team used a tactic you didn’t like, then why didn’t you stop it? For every excuse, sports have an answer.
Politicians, which my favorite pundits describe as people too ugly for entertainment but too uncoordinated for athletics, use excuses as their primary weapons.
Some Republicans, and I am a Republican, say President Trump did not lose the 2020 election. It was rigged. What they don’t say is the day after his first debate with Joe Biden was the first day voters could submit their mail-in ballots. Trump arguably gave the worst debate performance since Nixon vs. Kennedy. Voters watched and made their decision right then and there — no conspiracy needed.
It’s about here in my column, after I expose my own personal bias and conflicts of interest, I offer an even-keeled approach or solution to an issue. However, I wrote most of this before the Charlie Kirk shooting Wednesday afternoon, the rest is what follows.
After the COVID-19 pandemic, the George Floyd riots and three presidential elections with Donald Trump as a candidate, I’m burned out on politics.
Name one political issue solved in the last 30 years that wasn’t just kicked down to the states to decide. In sports, the game ends when the clock hits zero, a team or player reaches match point or when the home team has its final at-bat. In politics, the fighting just goes on and on.
“The front page advertises man’s failures; the sports pages report men’s achievements,” U.S. Supreme Court Justice Earl Warren said.
Messages such as “end racism” or “choose love” do not sully my conservative sensibilities, they simply don’t belong in sports.
The older I get, the more jaded I become, the more I realize some things must be pure — untouchable. I’ve never seen a man or woman shot and killed for something he or she did on an athletic field, at least not in this century, but I’ve seen enough politically motivated murders to see that the most dangerous thing for youth athletes is to join the Democrat and Republican Party.
