Can't Keep Politics Out of Sports

Happy Veterans Day, and a sincere thank you to all who have served.

It's November, which in the NFL, means you simply can't keep politics out of sports.

The league is doing their Salute to Service this month all across the country, meanwhile, the President just attended an NFL game for the first time in 50 years so he could be booed in person and jeered on television.

You Simply Can't Keep Politics Out of Sports

For those of you who woke up to early Sunday to watch the international NFL game in Germany—games that should be stopped, but won't be—you may have noticed the Indianapolis Colts and Atlanta Falcons were playing in a special stadium.

In fact, they played in a Nazi stadium, which was opened in 1936 and continues to be used today. Olympiastadion was built by Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party to host the Olympics—think of it as their LA Coliseum, which hosted the Olympics in 1932 right before Nazi Germany as well as the 1984 games and the upcoming 2028 games.

Those 1936 Olympic games were special because a Black man named Jesse Owens of the United States of America won four gold medals, defeating the white, "Aryan" Germans in sprints and the long jump.

Those gold medals held a special significance because Hitler wanted to host the games to support his ideals of racial supremacy and antisemitism.

Owens laughed in his face. Eugenics, white supremacy, and antisemitism are a disgrace.

Back to 2025: American athletes played on that field on Sunday, and when they talked about the Olypiastadion on television, I thought they were going to glance over or completely leave out the part where the Nazis and Hitler built it. But, they at least mentioned all of that.

Meanwhile, the parallels to Nazi Germany in the 1930s and America in the 2020s are startling.

Hitler said Jews were "poisoning the nation's blood." Donald Trump said immigrants are "poisoning the nation's blood" when he was running for a second term in 2023.

Now, Trump is using his own Secret Service, ICE, to wage ethnic cleansing in the United States. Just as Hitler did to the Jews in Germany 90 years ago.

Other parallels—highlighted by Adrian Lipscomb—between Trump and Hitler/Nazism are:

• Manipulation of the electoral system: Hitler in 1933, Trump sowing doubt in the 2016 and 2020 elections
• Control of the military and paramilitary (SS/ICE) forces
• Collaboration of the courts: SCOTUS ruling in 94% in favor of Trump, lower courts ruling 94% against him, Hitler had lawyers acquiesce to him
• Wealthy supporting the leader: Affluent plutocrats supported Hitler, Techbros supporting Trump

Of course, the fanbase of the NFL is overwhelmingly older and white men. They lean heavily right. Think of the New Jersey man who fell on his face in Denver when trying to talk shit to a crowd of protestors before the Broncos beat his Giants.

They were extremely happy to see Donald Trump at an NFL game on Sunday.

Because even though they're the loudest ones screaming "Keep politics out of sports!" they don't mean their politics, they mean your politics.

Donald Trump in the Booth for Lions-Commanders

The reason for this piece in the first place was seeing that orange man in the booth on FOX NFL Sunday.

Irony is all the right-wing dudes screaming, "Keep politics out of football!" but then swooning over their guy in the broadcast booth. It was the first time a sitting president attended a regular-season NFL game in 50 years. He was also the first one to attend a Super Bowl last February, and he got an eyeful of Kendrick Lamar's politically-motivated halftime show that was an all-time great performance.

You can't keep politics out of football.

Even if that's what Roger Goodell said he wanted to do.

Keep in mind, in the leadup to Super Bowl LIX—a glorious blowout of the Chiefs by the Eagles—NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell acquiesced to Trump by taking "END RACISM" off the end lines at NFL games. I drew this cartoon about it 10 months ago.

"END RACISM" was one of multiple slogans the NFL chose after 2020—oops, the NFL was political!—along with "CHOOSE LOVE", "STOP HATE", "INSPIRE CHANGE", and "IT TAKES ALL OF US", though "IT" isn't clearly defined. Apparently the league and Goodell didn't like the negative press, and they brought back "END RACISM" as a slogan six months later.

On Sunday, Air Force One performed the flyover before the game. Then, Trump read a passage over the PA system to the fans, who loudly booed and flipped him off. The narcissist even wants the Commanders stadium named after him.

Then, he went on national television to talk about how he played tight end and the game "wasn't so tough" back then. Soft.

On the field, when he scored, superstar wide receiver Amon-Ra St. Brown pointed at Trump and did the “Trump Dance” as a touchdown celebration. The MLB's team from the same city of Detroit, the Tigers, did the "Trump Dance" with him in attendance on 9/11 this year. They went 4-17 from 9/11 on.

Keep politics out of sports! Unless, of course, they're MY politics. That's what the right-wingers were really saying.

Players’ Politics

Back in 2017, Trump said "Get that son of a bitch off the field" of Colin Kaepernick. Kaepernick was protesting police brutality and the killing of innocent Black men and women by cops, which only continues today. Specifically, the Niners QB knelt during the anthem to protest the police killing Mario Woods in San Francisco in Dec. 2015.

Trump wanting NFL owners to kick him out of the league, though, was laughable. The NFL is its own universe and a president can't tell owners what to do. And yet, Kaepernick was soon out of the league and blackballed.

Finding out the politics of your favorite sports players can suck. The previously mentioned St. Brown apparently is a spokesperson for WeShare, which is opposed to the Affordable Care Act. Former Broncos coach Mike Shanahan campaigned for Trump in 2016. So much for that "Mastermind" nickname. John Elway wrote to the Senate telling them to confirm SCOTUS judge Neil Gorsuch in 2017.

As for current Denver Broncos, there's also this:

Note: Bo Nix has never said anything political, as NFL quarterbacks are supposed to keep quiet on these things. And, it's possible Kirk just asked Nix for a photo after a game. But, it seems very likely Nix at least knew who Kirk was, and agreed to the picture together, smiling, arms around one another.

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Politics Can't be Taken Out of Any Aspect of Life, Definitely Not Sports

Flyovers themselves are displays of political power and might. The National Anthem, standing and putting your hand over your heart, is political. Literal marching of troops on the field during the Salute to Service games, that's political.

My brother and I have been poking fun at these overt displays of patriotism since we were young.

It could be our growing up in a working class family and always questioning why things were the way they were. Why certain people have money and power who seem bad, while good people are poor. Along with our general questioning of everything.

It may be our love of The Simpsons and their poking at reality. The fact that some of these wild displays are too much a farce to be reality.

Take, for instance, when you look up "Denver Broncos Salute to Service" on Google, you first get a link to buy the branded merchandise. Does the NFL really care about veterans as they say, or is it just another ploy to make money? Nothing like a $115 hoodie that's drab brown with a small Broncos and American Flag patch on it.

Trans Women in Sports

Sports-politics reached a boiling point during the last presidential election, and the "debate" over trans women in sports rages on today. The IOC, the body that presides over the Olympics, is likely to ban trans athletes from competition. That was a reversal of their previous stance, and only one trans woman has ever competed, in weightlifting, and didn't win a medal.

Trans women competing in sports has become a dinner table issue in America, even though the biggest sports fans don't even watch, say, women's volleyball. San Jose State Volleyball player Blaire Fleming was in the news last year, and multiple schools refused to play the Spartans, instead forfeiting. Not my alma mater Colorado State, at least.

No one had heard of Fleming until a former teammate outed her. No one cared that San Jose State was a bad volleyball team and Fleming wasn't using some superhuman "male" strength to defeat teams; she's just a woman wanting to play a sport.

This is exactly when people need to remember, it's just a game. It's not life or death. And "protecting women's sports" is not something the majority of these chuds ever cared about until they were told by the right-wing infosphere to make it a thing. In fact, most of them are misogynistic, and some, like Chiefs Kicker Harrison Butker, think women’s place is in the home and making babies. Some even think women shouldn’t be allowed to vote.

Us cis-gender folks need to stand with our sisters and brothers, trans women and men, not just in their playing in sports, but in life. Transgender people are extremely marginalized, and yet, they are under attack by the right and even the left (looking at you, Gavin Newsom).

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Politics in Sports is A Good Thing, Actually

Let's look at a few positive ways politics in sports has changed the worlds.

Jackie Robinson Breaks the Color Barrier

Jesse Owens winning four golds in Nazi Germany is probably the biggest shining example of when politics in sports has made a positive difference. Next behind that is likely Jackie Robinson breaking the color barrier in Major League Baseball in 1947.

Imagine if we still had a Negro League today. How insane that would be. And yet, that was only 80 years ago that Black men were allowed to play baseball with whites.

1968 Olympics

During the height of the Civil Rights movement in, at the 1968 Olympics, two Americans stood with their fist in the air. Tommie Smith and John Carlos famously stood on the podium with the “Black Power” salute that created controversy. A nice wrinkle in the story is Australia's Peter Norman, a white man, gave Carlos and Smith his black gloves to wear on their hands. Ironically, Avery Brundage, who was American and helped bring the games to Mexico City that year, said Smith and Carlos had "warped mentalities." Brundage was also an Olympian and was enthused for the Nazis during that 1936 Olympics we discussed earlier, but thought the act of the black power salute during the anthem was the disgusting salute rather than the Nazi one. Smith and Carlos were using their small platform to the "separate but unequal" reality of Black America in the 1960s, the same year Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated.

The Miracle on Ice during the US/Russia Cold War

In the 1980 Winter Olympics, the United States put college kids on the ice against the professional Russians but still won. That prompted Al Michaels to announce, "Do you believe in miracles? Yes!" The two countries were in a long cold war with either side stockpiling nuclear missiles in numbers that would assure mutual destruction.

1996: Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf refuses to stand during the national anthem  

In 1996, Denver Nuggets star guard Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf refused to stand for the anthem of an NBA game. The act blew up into national news. Abdul-Rauf thought the anthem was “a symbol of oppression, of tyranny.” He received death threats and was suspended and eventually agreed to stand, bow his head and pray during the anthem. OK, maybe this one wasn't that positive, because he was out of the league soon after this incident, but at least he sat down for what he believed in.

George W. Bush throws out the first pitch after 9/11

Political shows in sports really spread like wildfire after 9/11. Patriotism was in 25 years ago. Bush threw out the first pitch during Game 3 of the World Series, which was in late October, but still very close to that dreadful day. Bush was actually wearing a bullet-proof vest under the FDNY sweater. You can hear the fans in the stadium chanting "USA! USA! USA!"

Stick to sports? No.