The sound of silence in sports right now

When they beat the buzzer, when they drive across that goal line, or when they hit it out of the park, we want them to experience the satisfaction that comes with knowing “you left it all on the field” — a very great expression.  We use it in business.  We use it in everything.  “You left it on the field.”  And we got that expression from sports. – Remarks by President Trump at the White House Sports and Fitness Day, May 30, 2018

In the first four seasons of Donald Trump: President of the TV, America saw him channel many of his social media rants fired off from the toilet into actual consequential political action.  It was pretty much a continuous firehose of WTF-ishness and major media doing little to afflict the comfortable and definitely not comforting the afflicted. 

All the while, there was at least a regular trickle of some of the only prominent figures with an ability to use their voices and visibility to speak out against a POTUS in ways the country had not seen since Nixon and maybe never before period–sports figures.

Women tended to lead the way with this, in pro basketball and soccer most notably. Jemele Hill while at ESPN chose to consistently break ranks and not just be a TV sports journalist who reads a teleprompter (and it cost her that job). LeBron James called Trump a “bum,” while coaches like Steve Kerr and Greg Popovich at the time made it known that they and the president were on opposite sides of decency. Colin Kaepernick’s kneeling, followed by others in the NFL (until it got neutered by the league getting very involved in it) and elsewhere in sports, and Trump’s vitriol for athletes daring to make the audience think about something bigger than the games (that wasn’t the troops or a breast cancer scam) both set the tone for his first term and was one of its defining features.  

The new boss, it turns out, is the same as the old boss. This week involved a flurry of executive orders by the reboot of Donald Trump: President of the TV: Project 2025: Space Force, and they confirmed that cruelty will continue to be the point of the next four seasons of programming. But as the stroke of a pen has sought to upend the lives of many of the most vulnerable in this country for the sake of culture war sandbagging that does nothing for the price of eggs, the sports world has seemed largely silent (and, in one regard, more than willing to engage in some anticipatory obedience).  

As so many in Los Angeles are faced with their lives in literal ashes, several of Trump’s executive orders ensured a worsening of the very climate change that caused those wildfires (and the wildfires that will burn other parts of the country inevitably and the floods in other parts of the country). While sports was happy to vaguely gesture at the horror and L.A. teams professed solidarity with the victims, a declaration of a “national energy emergency,” dropping out of the Paris climate agreement, and requiring departments to very soon submit their plans to eliminate regulations and rules deemed “burdensome” to domestic energy production and consumption, “with particular attention to oil, natural gas, coal, hydropower, biofuels, critical mineral, and nuclear energy”--all part of this week’s executive orders–reverses any recent incremental progress toward averting future climate disasters. But while sports will eagerly call firefighters heroes, like soldiers, it isn’t too concerned with actually keeping them away from danger (or discussing why there’s danger in the first place).

The Statue of Liberty is again going to act as more of a tacky, hypocritical hood ornament on a country that has decided xenophobia is just the standard now. Athletes love to talk about “how great these fans are” when a mic is in their faces after a big win, but what about the fans who are sweating out armed agents sweeping them up on their way to work or now at school or at church, as has been allowed this week, or the kids who root for these athletes and also have night terrors of their parents being imprisoned and then deported. There are pro sports franchises that love to celebrate Asian Heritage Night or put “Los” before the team name on special jerseys, but there has not been a peep from those franchises about members of those cultures they’re seemingly venerating assuredly being disappeared in the coming weeks.

Trump is hellbent on eliminating anything in the federal government even perceived to involve diversity, particularly that which is associated with DEI, an acronym most Americans don’t know the meaning of beyond unfairly giving stuff to “them.” His executive orders also take a hatchet to LGBTQ rights in this country, including participation in sports and Title IX. Again, though, no outrage in the popular sports community. 

All active federal civil rights cases, including those involving reforming in policing that so many athletes demonstrated against and spoke up about, have been halted and no new cases allowed to be filed as of now. What percentage of a major sports game’s viewing audience is probably even aware of that? How many more could easily be made aware of that?

The sweeping pardons of January 6 insurrectionists by the “law and order president,” including those who assaulted cops, portend that if a celebrity were to speak out against the will of the president, and were that celeb subsequently to be assaulted or terrorized by a zealous citizen, the assailant could be confident in not suffering full justice. Trump has clearly shown a willingness to use litigation and the readily-ignited id of his base to lean on a corporation or organization that draws his ire. 

So maybe this time around, those who might have posted criticism to their large online following or worn a spicy shirt in warmups are hesitant, and maybe that’s understandable with this new/old administration feeling the same but eerily different. Maybe networks with big contracts with these leagues are none too keen to get Stephanopoulos’d should any players speak up on behalf of the marginalized whose lives will be made markedly worse after this week.  Maybe the tactic of just exhausting everyone has worked.

Hopefully it doesn’t take something unthinkably heinous to light that spark America saw in an unprecedented athlete movement from 2016 through 2020. Trump will be utilizing the 2026 men’s soccer World Cup and the Los Angeles 2028 Summer Olympics to promote MAGA and, ultimately, himself–and where will the country even be at that point, and in how many layers of sportswashing lacquer will need slapping on? There will probably be some new edition of Burly Sports Boys and Burgers. Who knows if the championship team visits to the White House will still be a point of contention as they were five to eight years ago? So if Trump will use sports to boost Trump, that is an avenue that cannot be one-way or what seems to be a current dead end.

Lots of people need hope right now (and legal protection and funding and safe places to exist). And there are certain people in powerful positions, along with their loyalists, hoping that sports figures choose to “leave it on the field” when it comes to giving those people any hope.