Election season. Football season. Each of these grips the American imagination – or at least its news cycle – simultaneously every four years. Turning on the television proves that phenomenon in roughly the time it takes to turn the TV back off and return to scrolling.
When general elections are afoot, the intersection of sports and politics becomes more conspicuous. In a heated and tribal political climate nationally, sports (the singular, collective “sports”) offers not an escape from politics, but a place to meet in the middle.
Market researcher YouGov’s 2024 finding of the “most bipartisan brands” features Major League Baseball (MLB) at No. 4, trailing only brands in clothing, dining and hospitality. In other words, MLB led the pack among discretionary-income-driven businesses.
Baseball gets some credit for its old “America’s pastime” label, but football sure consumes more of that title now and amasses the TV ratings to show for it during the regular season and in the Super Bowl. Ipsos poll outcomes released in February last year saw 44% of Americans report being fans of the National Football League (NFL). This gave the NFL a wider popularity lead on MLB than MLB’s two-percentage-point advantage over college football.
The visibility of football in the entertainment marketplace as a home for casual fans and fanatics makes it an attractive target for political appeals. That Super Bowl watch party does not toe party lines in the way that walking into Bass Pro Shops or eating Ben & Jerry’s does. A football function over drinks at a friend’s house does not seem inherently geared toward one stripe or another in the way that listening to country music or hip-hop music might be.
This general awareness of football, and its resulting relatability across party lines, explains the strategic intervention of politics in the sport. Consider it a big plus during vetting that Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walz, the governor of Minnesota, once coached high school football. From Gov. Walz’s leaning into the lovable “Coach” nickname to appearing in advertising that characterizes the Harris-Walz campaign as the game plan, it is all intentional in football’s chance to get across a political message to everyday folks.
The benefit of spreading Walz’s teaching and coaching background to the masses is that it humanizes him as much as viral clips of him with his children do. Sports are humanizing. They are spectated, played, practiced, coached and (mostly) officiated by humans in community with each other across ages.
The humans playing the sports have political opinions like anyone else would. Athletes in the aforementioned most popular sports in the United States have a platform to support or oppose candidates or policies. In this way, it is not just political interests wanting a piece of sports’ popularity – it is the sports world, in light of its popularity, at times featuring its humans who want to voice a message.
The format and the content of that message seem to dictate public response when sports reveal their political element.
The relatively hidden political components that are central to the sports industry, like taxpayer funding of stadiums and arenas and professional team owners’ concealed political donations, are all obscured in comparison to episodes such as San Francisco 49ers defensive end Nick Bosa’s “Make America Great Again” hat appearance on NBC this season.
Bosa crashed multiple teammates’ joint postgame interview with the network to flex the MAGA cap on his head, pointing to it with two index fingers but not saying anything verbally before moving on.
Bosa did not add much substance in the press conference that followed, going quiet despite his preceding bravado.
“I’m not going to talk too much about it, but I think that it’s an important time,” Bosa told reporters when asked about his photobomb.
Setting aside the natural follow-up question of, “Gee, why is it an ‘important time,’ Nick?”, it will be telling to follow the discipline that Bosa could face from the league as compared to former 49er Colin Kaepernick’s experience. Kaepernick became a face of sports and political discourse with his kneeling during the national anthem, demonstrations that brought attention to police brutality and racial injustice.
Much of the opposition to Kaepernick’s peaceful conduct – beyond many’s knee-jerk displeasure with behavior that is not standing as able for the flag – appeared to stem from the notion of keeping politics out of sports.
Keep them away, like the doctor and the apple and all that.
The thing is, if one is looking for an escape from politics, it might be past time to turn for another door.
Sports are as political as anything else, seeing as they are a people business.
College sports might be the most political of all. Funny enough, with college sports’ (college football’s) fervent following in the South that perhaps skews older with generations of alumni, the most passionate fans are the ones whom one might assume would have the least taste for politically infused sports.
Conference realignment runs through organizational politics at institutions and league offices, and it faces more traditional politics in the form of state governments’ headwinds or support for moves. UCLA’s move to the Big Ten Conference from the Pac-12 Conference at one time faced resistance from the University of California system leadership.
Staying in the Golden State, and in more recent developments, conference realignment met political action committee when Sacramento State supporters formed the “Sac-12” committee that wants Sac State to gain entry to the Pac-12.
The Sac-12 includes California state senators and state assembly members, a mayor and a Sacramento city council member. They have coalesced around pitching Sacramento State as a candidate to move up from the Football Championship Subdivision to the Football Bowl Subdivision in the Pac-12.
Entering any athletic conference, especially in the exposure of Division I, generally requires approval from the presidents or chancellors at existing member schools, which is something of a political game as it relates to prestige and desired brand associations.
A great deal relies on perception, popularity, policies and rubbing elbows. Another good deal of it depends on what a conference move would mean for constituents – these stakeholders range from student-athletes to students-at-large, from alumni to faculty to staff.
If it sounds political, it is.
Depending on how one spins it (spin, another political element), that can be a fact of college sports, just a fact of its nature, or it can be a thorn in the side of the industry.
The industry, or at least representative segments of it, has lobbied Congress for help regulating name, image and likeness (NIL) guardrails nationally.
Lawmakers throw their hat in the sporting ring when it suits them, too.
Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry advocated this year for all college boards to mandate student-athlete presence during the pregame national anthem. As part of Gov. Landry’s proposal tweeted in reaction to LSU women’s basketball, Landry pushed for athletes to risk their athletic scholarship if they miss the anthem before competition.
Then there are more lighthearted cases in which politicians take on some of sports’ goodwill, seeing as any elected official can never have too much of that. Take the friendly World Series wager this fall occurring between Governor Kathy Hochul of New York and Governor Gavin Newsom of California: The loser displayed the winning team’s memorabilia in their office for a day.
That publicity move is the younger sibling of Donald Trump planning to attend and then changing course from going to Penn State’s football game against Ohio State on Nov. 2. Trump had been invited to a Beaver Stadium suite by a private citizen, Penn State said. The combination of battleground Pennsylvania and an of-the-people photo op televised by FOX made sense.
After all, the Big Ten states of Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania helped to make the presidential decision of 2024.