ESPN’s determination to “stick to sports” took an embarrassing blow Monday night when it allowed its broadcast to become a state propaganda tool. President Donald Trump was given free air time to wish Ohio State and Notre Dame luck and instead delivered a stump speech, spewing lies and painting a vision of this country that can only be described as delusional.
“In recent years, our people have suffered greatly. But starting now, we’re going to bring America back and make it safer, richer and prouder than ever before,” said the man who had just pardoned 1,500 Jan. 6 defendants, including those who violently attacked police officers. Trump also commuted the sentences of some convicted of seditious conspiracy, a crime only slightly less worse than treason.
“We will be respected again and we will be admired again. Admired like we haven’t been in many, many years,” Trump said. “… In less than three months since the election, you have already seen it happening. You can feel the excitement and you can see the confidence and spirit returning to our nation.”
One thing you can’t see is the price of those eggs coming down. But I digress …
Trump is going to do what Trump is going to do. What’s that old saying? How can you tell he’s lying? Because his lips are moving. His second term in office is already on its way to being one big grift, a means of enriching himself, his family and his oligarch buddies while making life harder for ordinary Americans, and there are plenty of us who tried to warn you.
But this isn’t about Trump. This is about ESPN and its parent company Disney licking the boots of a wannabe autocrat, and the people who howl that athletes should “stick to sports” cheering them for doing it.
It has always been impossible to separate sports from politics. Whether it was Jackie Robinson breaking the color barrier or Billie Jean King fighting for equal rights or Colin Kaepernick protesting biased policing of Black and brown people years before George Floyd’s murder, sports are the prism through which we view our society. They give us the vehicle to make sense of some of our most contentious issues and provide us with the common ground to resolve them.
There is a portion of our society, though, that claims it doesn’t like to see politics in sports. What they really mean, though, is they don’t like to see the politics they don’t like in sports. And they especially don’t like to see the politics they don’t like in sports from Black and brown or LGBTQ people.
It’s fine when it’s issues or politicians they support. Or coming from people who share their views. It’s why Kaepernick was blackballed and Nick Bosa gets a shoutout from Trump. When it’s not? That’s when you have people getting big mad about LeBron James addressing systemic racism or Megan Rapinoe calling out sexism and homophobia.
ESPN supposedly didn’t want to get caught in the middle of this. It supposedly just wanted to show games and have people talk about sports while avoiding the real-life issues that impact all of it.
But its actions show that’s a farce.
Remember when SportsCenter anchor Jemele Hill drew Trump’s ire in 2017 after calling him a “white supremacist”?
“Next thing you know, they didn’t want Mike and I on camera as much,” Hill, referring to her SportsCenter co-host Michael Smith, recalled during a 2022 appearance on Kenny Mayne’s podcast. She left the network in January 2018.
On Monday, ESPN gave up lucrative airtime — 30-second ad spots usually go for more than $1 million — so it could give Trump a platform.
“With Donald Trump’s Inauguration occurring on the day of the CFP National Championship, it makes sense to include a message from the President,” ESPN said in a statement to USA TODAY Sports, “a practice that occurs regularly during major sporting events – including earlier this month from President Biden before the Sugar Bowl.”
Biden’s remarks followed the terrorist attack in New Orleans that caused the Sugar Bowl to be delayed by a day, and they were both brief and non-political. That is not remotely the same as Trump’s self-serving spiel and everybody, ESPN included, knows it.
One of the more disappointing things that’s occurred since Trump was re-elected is the subservience shown by people who ought to know better. Disney, ESPN’s parent company, led the way, agreeing to pay Trump $16 million to settle a defamation suit it stood a good chance of winning. Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos and Tim Cook also have been eager to bend the knee.
What they don’t seem to realize is that Trump is not the all-powerful Oz. His 1.5-point margin of victory was one of the narrowest ever, and more people voted for one of his opponents or didn’t vote at all than voted for him. About half the country says it disapproves of him. He’s term-limited, too, meaning his grip on American politics is on (relatively) borrowed time.
Yet ESPN ceded its airwaves, and its credibility, the first chance it got. Stick to sports? You first.
Follow USA TODAY Sports columnist Nancy Armour on social media @nrarmour.