The “stick to sports” crowd is already reciting its mantra to the newest crop of NFL players.
Senator Tommy Tuberville (R-Al.), a former college football coach, tells TMZ.com that the players drafted over the next three days should “talk about what you know about” and avoid talking about politics.
“Nobody’s looking for an outspoken person,” Tuberville said. “We’re too divided as it is.”
The former football coach is right. Indeed, it’s important for football coaches to continue to coach football, and to not try to learn about things like the three branches of government.
“Everybody wants to make an opinion, and that’s fine,” Tuberville said. “But, I think, especially for young people to get involved in something that maybe they might not understand as much, I think they need to let people that, whatever they do for a living, justify it.”
I’ve read that last sentences three times, and I don’t understand it. But I definitely understand the irony of the last comment attributed to Tuberville in the TMZ.com article.
“I’d just like to see our country be more settled down in terms of people getting into politics or in sports and vice versa,” said the former football coach.
Tuberville is free to express his opinion. And others are free to express the opinion that he’d have no problem with the opinions of athletes if they meshed with his personal political beliefs. For those who shout “stick to sports,” it’s only a problem when the non-sticking to sports involves positions with which the stick-to-sporters disagree.
And that’s the inherent hypocrisy of those who want politics out of sports. Ultimately, they only want the politics they don’t like out of sports.