San Francisco 49ers defensive end Nick Bosa after a game against the Dallas Cowboys, on Oct. 27, in Santa Clara, Calif.Scot Tucker/The Associated Press
Like the Democrats, North American sports leagues should by now understand that they are not good at politics.
They like the attention, but they can’t figure out how to do it without upsetting most of their customers. The obvious solution – do nothing.
Someone tries to draw you onto either side of the divide? Ignore them. They’re employees of teams and, therefore, the team’s headache. Anything the league says is turning one man’s freakout into a capital-p position.
Sports is people hitting things for money – pucks, baskets, each other. It doesn’t require a position. Like a plumber or your waiter for the evening, you don’t need to know what they believe in, in order to appreciate their service.
But Donald Trump is back and that’s all anyone wants to talk about, so sports cannot help itself. It must be a part of the conversation.
As the senior member of the fraternity, the NFL got the ball rolling over the weekend.
Ahead of the election, San Francisco 49er Nick Bosa – arguably the best pound-for-pound talent in the game – crashed a postgame interview wearing a MAGA ball cap. He stood there for a beat, pointing both index fingers at it, then withdrew.
That all made news.
Afterward, Bosa was asked if he thought he would be fined for the stunt. He did – “It was well worth it.”
That made news, too.
So far, so whatever. A guy has a thought he would like to express. This expression fires the American entertainment complex’s coal furnace for a few minutes.
What you don’t want to do is turn the guy into a martyr. And what you absolutely don’t want to do is encourage others either to back him or rebut him.
So the NFL fined Bosa. It didn’t announce it had fined him, which gives the whole thing a Star Chamber feel. It let the news leak instead.
Bosa reportedly owes the man US$11,255. His sin? Contravening the NFL’s dress code. I remember that one from high school. It was a way to punish general malcontents who hadn’t broken any particular rule.
Bosa earns US$2-million a game. So this stunt cost him about one-third of one snap’s worth of labour. That’s the time it takes him to get into a three-point stance.
Every time Bosa’s asked about the incident, he’s got this naughty smirk plastered on his face. He’s loving this. A week ago, he was a football player. Now he’s a culture warrior. In exchange for 10 grand, the NFL just staked Bosa to his side hustle.
Once it was no longer okay to not say who you voted for, star players were bound to become agitators. Nowadays, people want to know what team their idols are really on.
The majority of outspoken pros play for the left. They’re not idiots. They know who buys their shoes and green lights their passion projects. I’m fairly sure most of them vote the other way – the rich have always hated taxation more than they’ve loved their principles – but for a moment there, they all spoke in one voice.
Leagues aren’t stupid either. If most of your employees, who are functionally your bosses, say one thing, you try within reason to go along with it. As long as no one’s talking boycott, it’s easy to repost hashtags.
That worked during the first Trump administration, when the demonstrations all ran in one direction. It still worked during Joe Biden’s time in office.
It’s not going to work again. This time, the resistance will be resisted. The former uniformity of purpose – ‘Remember, we are here to get rich’ – is not going to hold the players together. With both sides emboldened, it could be open war.
The winds of change can already be felt from the place whence they first sprung. Three or four years ago, someone who matters in a slightly-to-the-left-of-Mao city like San Francisco would have tried cancelling Bosa. The team would have been forced to distance itself from him. Maybe the mayor would have scolded him. Something.
Not this time. The team hasn’t said a mumbling word. No local who matters has either. San Francisco’s got a brand new mayor – a guy who just ran on a tough-on-drugs-and-crime platform.
If San Francisco is ceding the high ground, then it’s on.
The NFL is still living in the previous world – the one in which politics could be repurposed as entertainment. Because it was the country’s last trusted institution, it was willing to arbitrate disputes.
Now it risks becoming the dirtiest thing you could possibly be in the United States at the moment – elite.
The best way to avoid that is to avoid it. Bosa wears a hat? Not our problem. Talk to him. We’re just here to make sure the games go off on time.
Someone takes a knee? Same answer. Someone wants us to sign on to their protest? No thanks. Endorse their perspective? Sorry. Can’t talk now.
Just stay out of it.
This isn’t just a short-term benefit. If identity politics are done, then all that anger has to find a new movement. The one you can see coming dimly into view – the one no political party wants to get behind – is class war.
Everyone who has ever been quoted on the internet, or done the quoting, is on the wrong side of that battle.
What if everyone decides overnight that they’re no longer okay with someone being paid $50-million to throw a ball while millions of their countrymen and women can’t make rent?
Trump-era division will be fun and games compared to how that would play out in the entertainment business.
Nick Bosa doesn’t have a hat and a fun quip to cover that one. The NFL doesn’t have a fine that will keep that sort of mob from its door.
As half of the United States just discovered – if you want to play games with politics, then eventually politics is going to play back.