American sports leagues standby as fascism creeps towards its fans
The NFL and its brethren do nothing to protect us from the Trump administration
On Saturday, January 24, federal agents killed Alex Pretti, an intensive care nurse for the Department of Veterans Affairs. The following Tuesday, commissioners from five major sports leagues were scheduled to appear alongside President Donald Trump at the White House for an announcement.
The announcement was not cancelled on Saturday night, after the killing shocked the nation. It was not cancelled on Sunday, when even Republicans expressed their dismay. It was not cancelled on Monday, when the fallout consumed the administration. The event was only cancelled on Tuesday morning. The official reason: adverse weather conditions. There wasn’t a word from the leagues about the Trump administration’s agenda of injustice and wanton violence.
After Renée Good was killed, the Minnesota Timberwolves held a moment of silence before their next game. The team did the same for Pretti. San Antonio Spurs superstar Victor Wembanyama expressed his outrage and fear. Golden State Warriors head coach Steve Kerr, as he usually does, offered measured, thoughtful, and heartfelt comments about the political climate. “It is a confusing time to be alive and to be American,” Kerr said, “What I would appeal to everyone is to remember what our Constitution stands for and what our values are.”
This is all well and good, but in 2020, following the murders of George Floyd and Jacob Blake, players for the Milwaukee Bucks refused to take the court for a playoff game. The unprecedented wildcat strike spread throughout the league and threw significant weight behind the movements for social justice and police reform. I wondered why that energy was absent last week. The best the NBA could muster was a one-day postponement of a Timberwolves-Warriors game. The best the NBA’s players union could muster was a statement that expressed support for protestors.
But is it the players’ fault that Alex Rodriguez, a co-owner of the Timberwolves, made fun of the situation in Minneapolis? “There’s a lot of traffic,” Rodriguez quipped, when recently asked if he had a message for the Trump administration.
Is it the players’ fault that they are playing in an arena—the Target Center—named for a corporation that allowed federal agents to enter one of its stores in Minnesota so they could detain two of its employees? Target, of course, infamously rolled back its equity initiatives and stopped carrying Pride merchandise.
When it comes to this political issue, it’s not fair to lump labor into the criticism of sports leagues. As I argued last month, professional athletes have been at the vanguard of social justice and labor rights. They should be models for how the anti-MAGA movement can build power and wield collective action.
Team owners, however, are who hire the commissioners to administer the leagues and carry out their interests. Those owners “have donated at least $132.1m in federal elections since 2020, with nearly 95% of those contributions going to Republican campaigns, candidates and Super PACs,” as the Guardian reported in November 2024. To put a finer point on it, the leagues, through their team owners, wanted Trump and his enablers in office. They are getting what they paid for.
Sports are coming for your healthcare
Congress is poised to pass President Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act. Republicans are so sycophantic, and so afraid of Trump’s wrath, that they ignored basic grammar and naming conventions to deem something a “Bill Act.”
Roger Goodell, of all the commissioners, should know better. The longtime leader of the NFL is the son of Charles Goodell, a congressman and senator who served in the 1960s and ‘70s. The elder Goodell voted for the Civil Rights Acts of 1960, ‘64, and ‘68. He voted for the Voting Rights Act. He was an outspoken critic of the Vietnam War and was appointed by President Gerald Ford to the board that reviewed clemency applications from those that resisted and avoided conscription. Charles Goodell used the federal purse to support local public works projects. Charles Goodell was a Republican.
At the Super Bowl last year, Roger Goodell reaffirmed the NFL’s commitment to DEI initiatives. The league’s Inspire Change campaign is its most visible—slogans such as “Inspire Change,” “End Racism,” “Choose Love,” or “Stop Hate,” are displayed on sidelines, end zones, and paraphernalia. It’s not nothing, but I wonder what Goodell thought when, at the Target Center, a fan was recently told to remove a t-shirt that read “ICE OUT.” The arena is operated by Legends Global, a company controlled by the owners of the New York Yankees and Dallas Cowboys, the latter being one of Goodell’s most powerful bosses.
I’m sure Goodell maintains the NFL’s DEI programs in good faith, and Goodell’s politics probably align with his father’s. It is a certainty, though, that his primary purpose is to make NFL team owners as much money as possible. Morals and values must not impede that mission, and a major part of that mission right now is being on Trump’s good side.
The president had threatened to meddle with the Washington Commanders’ move back to D.C. The Chicago Bears are trying to find a site and funding for a new stadium. The NFL is backing flag football’s Olympic debut in the 2028 Games in Los Angeles, and the NFL needs only to look to this year’s World Cup to see how Trump can derail and detract from major sports events.
So the NFL said nothing about Pretti. Neither did the NBA or MLB or MLS or NHL. The commissioners of those leagues didn’t cancel their meeting at the White House because federal agents, on a completely unnecessary and possibly illegal mission, killed two law-abiding American citizens. The commissioners cancelled because it had snowed Monday night. We found out on Thursday through press releases what they were going to announce.
Three days after Pretti was killed—three days after NBA commissioner Adam Silver decided to postpone the Timberwolves-Warriors game because of that killing—Silver and his colleagues were going to stand next to the man who ordered federal agents to Minnesota and announce that their teams will wear patches commemorating the United States’ 250th birthday.
Nothing worse than complacent sports teams that offer no solidarity with their fans against authoritarianism yet I am the fool that will continue to watch and support my team!!!! The irony is not lost on me
Thank you for exposing the corruption that is today’s NFL. The brutality of football is our national religion. Let nothing get in the way of the Super Bowl, our annual worship service to cutthroat capitalism.