- Joined
- May 8, 2002
- Posts
- 1,258,044
- Reaction score
- 59
You must be registered for see images attach
Credit: What's Wright with Nick Wright Podcast
The summer has seen many instances of sports and politics colliding, perhaps none more potent than the news cycles unleashed by Aaron Rodgers and Sophie Cunningham this month.
Cunningham has brought the conversation around trans athlete participation to a fever pitch across sports and news media, while Rodgers again rehashed disagreements over vaccination and the COVID-19 pandemic in an appearance on ESPN.
Yet as Nick Wright noted Friday on his What’s Wright podcast, the main voices trumpeting these viewpoints are the same characters who for years turned “stick to sports” into a mantra meant to silence political conversation around sports.
Wright, who acknowledged he is “openly and proudly” a “progressive liberal” and votes that way, argued that while the “stick to sports” crowd won its fight, the conversation around Rodgers and Cunningham shows that they “didn’t actually mean it.”
“The ‘stick to sports’ folks won, and they won so resoundingly they got more than they actually, initially were asking for,” he said.
“I do think there was a period of time where the vast majority of either political [or] politically adjacent commentary you heard on sports TV was progressive or liberal viewpoints. That if people were not ‘sticking to sports,’ it was saying a lot of stuff that I personally agree with. We have now swung in the other direction, to where I think folks who see the world the way I do have been cowed a bit. We are not quite as vocal. We pick our spots more, if at all. And folks who see the world the opposite are more emboldened than ever before.”
Wright pointed to Caitlin Clark in particular as evidence, noting how Clark’s insistence on not being dragged into political discourse has led some right-leaning commentators to finally begin to change their tune on her.
“The ‘stick to sports’ folks didn’t actually mean it. And now that Caitlin Clark is begging people to let her stick to sports, they’re pissed,” he said. “Because what they actually meant was, if you disagree with me, stick to sports, but if you agree with me, you have an obligation to speak on it. And that has been a very fascinating thing to see play out in real time.”
Rodgers, a frequenttarget of Wright’s, has become one of the most politically outspoken athletes in modern times. In addition to his frequent rants about the pandemic — when he was harshly criticized for misleading fans and reporters about his vaccination status — Rodgers has treaded into hot water around Jeffrey Epstein, big pharma, U.S. military aid, and his own candidacy for a vice presidential run. Wright believes the permission Rodgers has to speak openly about these issues proves that voices on the political right were more interested in an athlete agreeing with them than actually silencing political speech in sports.
“Whatever the ‘wild, liberal athlete’ version of Aaron Rodgers is, would just never have the latitude of open-mic night during ESPN’s afternoon block,” Wright said.
Beyond Rodgers and Cunningham, the First Things First host listed WFAN morning host Boomer Esiason and the UFC as clear indications of how sports talk is once again becoming quite political.
Notably, the conversation in this more conservative era of political sports talk is being driven more by commentators in national news media rather than sports hosts. Wright said these people “never gave two sh*ts” about Cunningham until recently, and could cut bait with Clark as well.
The post Nick Wright: ‘Stick to sports’ crowd won, but ‘didn’t actually mean it’ appeared first on Awful Announcing.
Continue reading...
