“Don’t bring your politics into sports.”
“Be grateful.”
There is a longstanding tradition of ridiculing professional athletes who openly express their political beliefs.
When quarterback Colin Kaepernick protested police violence against black people by taking a knee during the National Anthem in the San Francisco 49ers’ games in 2016, he was widely criticized for his protest and ultimately lost his job as a starting quarterback.
When soccer star Megan Rapinoe openly supported Kaepernick and did the same in the NWSL, she was attacked online and benched by U.S. Soccer.
Donald Trump aided and abetted online trolls by leveraging anti-patriotic rhetoric against Kaepernick and Rapinoe.
In a 2017 rally in Alabama, he said, “Wouldn’t you love to see one of these NFL owners, when somebody disrespects our flag, to say, ‘Get that son of a bitch off the field right now. Out! He’s fired,’” about Kaepernick.
Trump also tweeted (among other things), “Megan should never disrespect our Country, the White House, or our Flag, especially since so much has been done for her & the team,” after Rapinoe said in an interview that the USWNT would not visit the White House, as is customary, if they won the Women’s World Cup in 2019.
The idea that sports were ever politically neutral is a fallacy — there is a long history of political protest in global sporting events, the most iconic being John Carlos and Tommie Smith’s Black Power salute on the podium at the 1968 Mexico City Olympics.
However, particularly in this election cycle, sports took a front-row seat in the rhetoric of both the Trump-Vance and Harris-Walz campaigns.
Let’s start with Trump. Despite his vitriol for both Kaepernick and Rapinoe, he is no stranger to using sports to reach his political goals.
One of his final campaign pushes in the 2024 election was against transgender people — transgender women in particular — participating in sports. A social media firestorm over Algerian boxer Imane Khelif (who is a cis-gendered woman) this summer during the Olympics reignited a years-long conflict over transgender athletes competing at high levels in collegiate and professional athletics.
In a Trump-sponsored campaign ad that was released in the days leading up to the election, a clip of Khelif flashes with, “Men could beat up women, and win medals,” voiced over.
Trump also leverages the support of professional athletes. On Oct. 27, 49ers defensive end Nick Bosa video-bombed a post-game interview in a “Make America Great Again” hat. As of Nov. 6, he has yet to be fined.
Bosa offers a clear comparison to Kaepernick: same sport, same team. This example shows that the widespread criticism of Kaepernick was never about bringing politics where they didn’t belong.
While Trump made sports central to his political messaging, the Harris-Walz campaign also leveraged Tim Walz’s history as an assistant high school football coach.
Simply called “Coach” in a lot of campaign messaging, Walz coached on the Mankato West High School football team that won the Minnesota 4A state championship in 1999.
At first glance, it’s baffling that the campaign chose to focus on a 25-year-old achievement on Walz’s resume, but it makes sense.
Like it or not, many Americans care about sports — football in particular — more than they care about politics.
That means that what athletes say and do off the field matters. Like most public figures (read: Taylor Swift), they have the power to sway voters.
We need to stop punishing athletes for expressing their political views. Hard stop.
