Growing up, my father and I didn't always see eye to eye on much of anything. I loved him dearly, and I appreciated him supporting me through Boy Scouts and all, but the one thing we really could share away from scouting was sports.
Dad was a die-hard football fan. He preferred college football, like many here in the Deep South, but he'd watch it all, and I'd watch it with him.
Then there were the Olympics.
As a family, we'd tune into the opening ceremonies, then watch whatever events were being shown, eager to see Team USA bring home the gold.
Back then, sports were sports. Yeah, some athletes were political, and those political beliefs spilled into their actions as athletes, but it wasn't often, and they were largely criticized for it, thus pressuring them to keep it off the field.
Those days are long gone, I'm afraid.
In the last week or so, we've had Bad Bunny's abomination of a Super Bowl halftime show, and numerous Team USA athletes telling the press they have mixed feelings about representing their nation. In other words, politics has infested everything, including sports, and it's damn hard to actually watch anymore.
I know that those of us who work in politics, either directly or by writing about it, aren't the majority of Americans. We have to delve into the mud as part of our jobs, but millions of others just want to live their lives, vote in the elections as they come, and otherwise keep politics on the periphery of their lives.
For them, and for folks like me, sports used to be a refuge. It was a place where we didn't get hammered with "a very special episode" of the show we normally like, or where a message had to be driven home in the book we decided to read. Sports weren't about any of that.
Now, it is.
From Colin Kaepernick kneeling because he thinks being a black multimillionaire is the same thing as being put up on a platform at a slave auction, to athletes who somehow don't seem to find any pride in the nation they represent on the biggest stage most of those sports will ever have.
No one pays attention to downhill skiing, curling, or the biathlon outside of the Winter Olympics. The best athletes in these sports are never acclaimed unless they compete for the gold every four years, and this is their chance to make a name for themselves on a stage where unknowns become legends.
But now, with the constant need to virtue signal, either from the NFL or from the athletes of any of a thousand other sports, sports are no longer about fun. They're no longer a means to engage with the audience, to show off your best, and to hear the adoration of the masses for your victory.
Now, it's about signalling that you think the right way. It's about deciding that the bubble you exist in is the truth, and that you're in some position to lecture the American people over why they should be ashamed to be American.
Well, I won't be ashamed of my nation, the greatest the world has ever known.
I can damn well be ashamed of the people we sent to the biggest stage in sports at the moment, though.
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