The very people who insisted athletes need to stick to sports sure are making it hard to do that these days.
Masked federal agents were spotted outside Dodger Stadium on Thursday morning, and the team later said it had denied ICE’s request to use the parking lots as a staging area for its immigrant roundups. (This in Chavez Ravine, of all places.) Also Thursday, Senegal’s women’s basketball team scrapped a training camp in the United States after multiple players and staff were denied visas.
And on Wednesday, President Donald Trump used Timothy Weah, Weston McKennie and their Juventus teammates as props, inserting politics into what was intended to be a photo op for the FIFA Club World Cup.
‘I was caught by surprise, honestly. It was a bit weird,” Weah, a starter on the U.S. men’s national team, said. “When he started talking about the politics with Iran and everything, it’s kind of like, I just want to play football, man.”
There was a time when Trump and his faithful claimed that’s what they wanted, too. Trump suggested NFL owners fire players who protested police brutality of people of color. Conservative commentators told LeBron James to “shut up and dribble.” Then-U.S. Senator and Atlanta Dream owner Kelly Loeffler disparaged the WNBA’s social justice efforts.
And yet, here we are now, politics and sports mixing as if they’re the most natural of bedfellows.
To be clear, it is impossible to separate politics and sports. Always has been. Sports is a prism through which we view society, our thoughts on thorny issues filtered and shaped through the lens of athletes and games.
There is a direct link between Jackie Robinson breaking Major League Baseball’s color barrier and the civil rights movement. Billie Jean King was, and still is, instrumental in the fight for equal rights for women. Magic Johnson’s announcement that he was HIV positive prompted a seismic shift in attitudes about AIDS and, by extension, the LGBTQ community.
And on and on.
But whether you think that’s a good thing has often depended on how you feel about the politics in question.
Military flyovers and singing the national anthem before games? That’s either patriotic or jingoistic. Politicians affiliating themselves with sporting events or athletes? It’s either what every American does or a shameless co-opt. Team owners donating to politicians and causes that might run counter to the interest of their fans? That’s either their own business or a slap in the face to the people who are helping fatten their wallets!
Players, particularly Black, brown and LGBTQ ones, protesting or speaking out about injustice? That’s either a hell no, athletes ought to know their lane and stay in it, or using their platform to make sure our country is living up to its promises is the ultimate expression of being an American.
All of which is fine. One of the greatest things about this country is we’re allowed to have different opinions, to see the same thing from different angles.
What is not fine is the hypocrisy, the ‘OK for me but not for thee’ attitude that permeates so much of our discourse these days. You cannot howl that athletes need to ‘shut up and dribble’ then turn around and cheer a president who uses sports to burnish his image. You cannot say you just want to enjoy the game and then be OK with politicians inserting themselves into them.
And you absolutely cannot cheer individual athletes while at the same time celebrating the harassment, abuse and discrimination of millions of others who look and love like them.
You want to keep politics out of sports? Fine. You go first.
Follow USA TODAY Sports columnist Nancy Armour on social media @nrarmour.