Southpaw #14: Conversations With Friends
What did 2020 teach us about the politics of sports, and what's in store for 2021?
Well dear readers, it is the final Sunday of the year, which, for Content Creators like us, means that its time to write some year-end posts. Though we’ve had the idea for a newsletter like this one since the halcyon days of Ian wondering what the hell the Bowdoin football team was doing online, the first issue of Southpaw came out relatively recently, on September 27. So, we figured it was only right to take a step back and look at some of what we missed, along with some of what we’ve covered. It’s been a norm-breaking year in the world of sports, and there are enough directions to take this blog that we figured we would change up the format a little bit. What follows is a conversation between the two of us, had via the Substack CMS, about our thoughts on 2020.
One final reminder: if you’re interested in supporting the work we’ve done this year, you can do so here. If it doesn’t make sense for you to donate at the moment, but you’re interested in engaging with the work, you can always send us emails (caldermchugh@gmail.com and ian.ward.97@gmail.com) with comments or complaints. We love hearing from readers.
Have a happy and healthy new year.
-Calder & Ian
Where we are and what’s to come
Calder McHugh: I’d like to begin with some navel gazing, if that’s alright. We started this project largely because we believed (as we still do) that the people on the right screaming the loudest about “sticking to sports” are doing so because they’re winning. American sports have never been disconnected from politics—they’re just currently dominated by conservatives who disguise their hostility to left wing ideas as apoliticism. We’ve focused on a few moments and figures this year (notably the NBA/WNBA strike and the Atlanta Dream’s push to oust Sen. Kelly Loeffler) as signs that this balance of power is possibly changing. But I’m curious to hear your thoughts on whether these events signal a shift, or whether they haven’t made much of a dent in larger structural hurdles to change, like the fact that the richest people in America still basically control the leagues. It’s pretty exciting to people like us that Celtics Guard Jaylen Brown quotes Angela Davis. One question I think lots of sportswriters have struggled with this year, though, is how much power do Brown and his fellow players have?
Ian Ward: When I think about athletes’ power in the current political moment, I can’t but think back to what Dave Zirin (the sports editor of The Nation) said when we interviewed him in October—namely, that athletes are the “great amplifiers” of political movements, but they’re not the “foot soldiers” of those movements, i.e. the people taking to the streets to put their bodies behind their ideas. I’m encouraged, for example, when I see polls suggesting that many more Americans support athletes kneeling during the anthem than did a few years ago. But what’s behind that change? Did athletes really do the hard work of convincing fans that these protests are legitimate expressions of political grievances against police brutality? I don’t think so. I do think, though, that the radicalism of the Black Lives Matter movement has succeeded in shifting a certain segment of public opinion in favor of public protests, and the public opinion polls about athletic protests reflect that change. But I think Zirin’s right to suggest that it would be a mistake to credit athletes with prompting this shift. Maybe it’s too early to know.
Your question brings to mind two topics, both of which have recurred throughout our posts so far. The first is the scope of athletes’ political power: can political change actually originate in professional sports, or can athletes only “amplify” (to use Zirin’s phrase) political change that has been germinating elsewhere? Relatedly, there is a whole host of issues that result from athletes’ status as both workers and celebrities. When we as commentators praise the “athlete activist,” are we really helping to amplify voices that usually aren’t heard, or are we just falling prey to a culture of celebrity worship that exults rich people and takes their political opinions as gospel? I don’t have good answers to either of these questions, but I think we’re going to continue to ask them.
CM: The question of celebrity worship is particularly interesting when you consider the concept of the “activist athlete.” A lot of people worship athletes for their on-field performance and their obvious physical prowess. It’s way easier to notice an incredible catch than it is to appreciate the difficulty of a performance in a movie, for example, especially if the performance is understated. I want to take the Hollywood vs. athletes comparison further, because it seems to me that there’s been something of a backlash against actor worship this year. I’m thinking of the response to that weird ‘Imagine’ video that Gal Gadot and other actors put together in March. The pandemic has made clear that these people live in their own world and are certainly not the “relatable celebrities” that they play on television.
Sports leagues have separated themselves from the rest of the population, too (as we’ve also written about), but I think that 2020 has been a year where we’ve actually humanized athletes, in good ways and bad. There’s been everything from Justin Turner angrily flouting COVID protocols during the World Series celebration to NBA players discussing the emotional toll of a bubble. I’m wondering, do you think there is something unique about athlete-worship, given that it’s based so much more on feats of physical strength than personality? And if so, what kind of implications does this have for how these quasi-celebrities can actually drive cultural change? I agree with Zirin to a point, but I also think that we can’t discount the possibility of social movements forming in the world of sports, rather than simply refracting them, even if we haven’t seen much of that yet.
IW: I think the bar has been set incredibly low for athletes’ political contributions, which is itself a testament to the success of the right-wing “stick-to-sports” messaging. Maybe what sets entertainers and athletes apart is that we expect a certain level of political engagement from celebrity entertainers because we expect their cultural product (movies, novels, art, etc.) to at least broadly address politics, whereas we’ve come to accept that the cultural production of athletes—which is still entertainment!—won’t address those same issues.
In this respect, I think the sports media actually creates (or at least bolsters) the thornier impediments to athletes’ political power. Because the bar is set so low for athletes’ political engagement, the mere fact of an athlete doing something political is enough to make headlines. The right-wing media takes advantage of the low bar to drag any athlete who speaks out on politics, but in response, the progressive media has adopted a sort of defensive position from which they reflexively defend any left-of-center athlete regardless of what they have to say. How many reporters actually listen to the substance of athletes’ political opinions, let alone consider the quality of their political analysis? I think we’ve gotten to the point where, because enough actors take on political issues, we can look at an entertainer’s political action and say, “O.K., this is really dumb,” or, “Actually, you’re wrong about that.” But I don’t think we’ve gotten there with athletes. The center-left media is still so amazed whenever athletes do something simple (like endorse a political candidate) that reporters stop short of actually engaging athletes’ politics. (I guess the one exception to this pattern was the media’s reaction to LeBron’s comments about China, which were so patently misguided that skewering him wasn’t really a risk.)
I’m sure you and I have been guilty of this posture plenty of times, but it’s something I’d like to change. If the media took athletes as political actors seriously, maybe that would, in addition to “amplifying” their voices, also actually expand their political power. Maybe I’m too optimistic about this, but what would it look like for there to be a real back-and-forth between professional athletes and the left-wing media on progressive political issues?
CM: In a certain way, this moves us back around to the start of the circle—sports media is a mess. People like to rag on sportswriters, and often it’s justified, but when we hone in on the politics of sports, we’re asking sportswriters to make a larger leap than, say, movie critics covering a political Oscars acceptance speech. Large sports media organizations like ESPN, that attempt to sidestep political (or maybe more accurately progressive) issues, have realized in the past few years that task is impossible. They have had to cover Colin Kaepernick to some extent. They’ve had to cover the BLM movement and the NBA strike. But instead of building up a team of writers who are incisive and think about the history and broader symbolism of Kaepernick’s political actions (I know of at least two up-and-coming sports writers who might be interested in that gig), they trot out guys who are used to spouting platitudes about overcoming adversity on the field and ask them to do an entirely different job. It’s no wonder that when politics are involved, we continue to get platitudes that have even less meaning than when announcers are talking about why a running back’s hardscrabble upbringing helped him gain an extra yard.
When an actor throws some politics into an Oscars acceptance speech, it’s less of a leap for a film critic to discuss that, because they discuss politics in their columns every week. It’s a little harder to find cultural and political issues at sporting events, but they are always there. I don’t want to give ourselves too much credit, but I do think the model that we’re working with—sports are political and we can act like it while continuing to enjoy the spectacle—would be a good one for larger sports-first media organizations to train their employees in. This doesn’t mean that sports media would adopt an entirely progressive point of view. But if we acknowledge that militarism is all over professional sports, for example, then we can have arguments about whether that’s good rather than blithely ignoring it.
Shifting gears, maybe one final exercise. What are your predictions for what 2021 will bring in the world we cover? Let’s both set some down here, so we can look back in a year at how hilariously wrong we were. In the spirit of the season I’ll let you go first.
IW: Very charitable of you. As loathe as I am to say so, I’m predicting a pretty quiet year on the sports-and-politics front. The chaos of the pandemic has somehow solidified sports’ status as the all-American escapist fantasy, and I think fans will just want to get back to the ballpark and the stadium when the pandemic winds down. I also think a lot of headlines from the sports culture war will thin out after Trump leaves the White House, thus depriving the sports media of its favorite bogeyman. Plus there will (allegedly) be the Olympics, which might feature some subversive moments, but which otherwise will pump out the usual slate of feel-good stories and triumphal headlines.
Call me a pessimist, but I think the energy from this past year’s activism is already dissipating. The status quo is reasserting itself. To your point about the sports media, one encouraging outcome from 2020, I think, has been the slow diversification of the sports media. There are more women and people of color covering sports than there were at the beginning of the year, and that’s a trend I think we’d all like to see continue. But beyond that, 2020 has provided a blueprint of sorts for athletes who want to use their power to improve the material conditions of their sports and the country—the NBA wild-cat strike, of course, but also the lawsuit from the USWNT against U.S. Soccer, the federal collective action suit by former minor league baseball players, and the Atlanta Dream’s campaigning in the Georgia Senate race. But we’ll have to see whether athletes adopt that blueprint and run with it or just fall back into the daily grind. I think that’s the big question facing pro sports in 2021.
CM: It’s going to be a year of fallout. I believe I am left with the role of the optimist, and although it’s not a natural one for me, I’m happy to play it (to a degree) in this case. Owners are already crying poor, insisting that the pandemic has put them in a financial bind that necessitates less spending and more downsizing. They will likely take this to new, depraved heights in 2021. But like you mentioned in your last paragraph, there are levers that athletes pulled in 2020 that could continue to work for them. It’s possible they get less media coverage because they won’t have the Trump administration to set themselves up against, but many of the examples you gave didn’t reach widespread media saturation either.
One place we’ll keep our eyes on—Major League Baseball’s collective bargaining agreement is set to expire on December 1 of 2021. The union and the commissioner/owners already engaged in a public, ugly fight over the restart of the 2020 season. I don’t know if they’ll be able to keep labor peace, but I think that the players’ union will win some real gains in the next cycle.
Another prediction—there will be at least one big, public protest from an American athlete at the Olympics. While Joe Biden will likely prove to have a steadier hand than his predecessor, I doubt very sincerely that we’re putting this era of political discourse back in a box. We might move back into a status quo, like you suggested, but I think this one will be different, and less stable, than an Obama-era status quo. There’s room for change. We’ll see who can best take advantage.
RODNEY’S ROUNDUP
Do you want to read about . . .
. . . Cooperstown’s weak attempts at historicizing baseball’s racism? “The Hall of Fame Tries to Contextualize Baseball’s Racist Past,” by Tyler Kepner in The New York Times (December 21, 2020).
. . . Jay Caspian Kang on Marxism, LeBron, and the impulse to turn athletes into political symbols? “The Hater With A Heart of Gold,” by Haley Mlotek in Ssense (December 23, 2020).
. . . the U.S. Olympic Committee’s surprising 180 on political protests? “The USOPC Defends Olympic Athletes’ Right To Protest,” by Dave Zirin in The Nation (December 23, 2020).
. . . the next generation of baseball’s female stars? “What Kim Ng’s hire means to girls who play baseball,” by Jesse Dougherty in The Washington Post (December 24, 2020).