If President Trump pulls off a shock victory in the 2020 election, athletes in the NFL and other leagues may just stop playing.
A few weeks ago, I was talking to a relatively high-level sports executive about the election, which is to say we were discussing something terrible Donald Trump had said or done. We agreed that Trump was likely to lose. “But he could always still win — even Nate Silver says that,” I remarked. The executive then said something that stunned me, though the more and more I think about it, the more sense it makes. “If Trump wins, or if he refuses to concede, I’m telling you right now: There won’t be any sports for a month,” he said. “Maybe more. These kids just won’t stand for it.” The thing is, though, they didn’t really end up with much. Bucks players got the Wisconsin state legislature to convene, but zero Republican senators showed up, so the whole thing was a bit of a bust. (And by then the team was back on the court, anyway.) Some players secured commitments from team owners to use their arenas as early voting sites, but while that’s been a success in some places (such as Atlanta, where Hawks coach Lloyd Pierce has been personally ushering voters through the line), the plan has been thwarted in other areas by local Republican officials — in Miami’s case, the mayor. And the NFL, the league whose players started the whole trend toward activism with Colin Kaepernick’s protest, has been nearly politics-free since the season began, much to the frustration of many players. Settling for less in the near term is a reasonable strategy — as long as Joe Biden wins. But what happens if Trump overcomes his long odds and does somehow prevail? I think you will see the largest and most expensive athlete protest in the history of sports.
