There are definitely people who want the league to be hyper-political and that problem starts at the top with Roger Goodell.
The NFL Commissioner has dived into the ESG trend head first and has spoken of policy changes to either coax or force teams to hire based on skin color and not talent or merit.
As was reported earlier this month by Forbes, the NFL will begin playing "Lift Every Voice and Sing," better known as the "Black National Anthem" before every game alongside the actual National Anthem.
So, case closed. The NFL is woke.
But here's where that begins to fall apart.
I'm not entirely sure if that's being upheld by every team. The Cowboys didn't seem to do it last Sunday and I haven't seen reports of any other team doing this besides the Chiefs. I have seen reports that they sang it at the beginning of the U.S. Open.
It's my honest opinion that members of the NFL's institution definitely would like the entirety of the operation to be one big message delivery system but there's definitely some internal disagreement here. There seems to be some pushback and refusals happening, just not very publicly. Every now and again you see the cracks form and refusals to participate happening.
Pittsburgh Steelers defensive lineman Stephon Tuitt refused to kneel during the National Anthem in 2020. Dallas Cowboys QB Dak Prescott also refused to kneel during the anthem.
Hell, even the league told players they had to stand when it got too dicey for them to continue the kneeling performances. This points to the fact that this was the NFL trying to find a balance between pleasing two different political ideologies.
According to FiveThirtyEight, the NFL has the least political fanbase in the nation compared to other sports leagues:
Among the sports leagues we considered, the NFL had the most search traffic and the least partisan fan base. There is basically no correlation3 between how Democratic or Republican an area is and how often its residents made NFL-related searches. By comparison, NASCAR has a very Republican fan base, which may explain why its team officials have been outspoken against the NFL protests. The NBA, meanwhile, has a largely left-leaning following, and the responses by its players and coaches have been especially critical of Trump.4
There's no denying that the league itself is leaning to the left, but within the league, the players, staff, and especially the fans run the gambit in terms of political persuasions. This forces the league to try to practice a balancing act that doesn't anger either side too much but does just enough to please them.
This doesn't stop them from trying to go over the line from time to time to see what they can get away with; thus we get the black national anthem making appearances before games.
Here's the bottom line. The NFL is more than the league itself. Yes, there are definitely woke aspects to it, but to say that the entirety of America's greatest sport is a left-leaning parade of ideologically leftist people is off the mark. It contains devout Christians, atheists, Republicans, Democrats, white people, black people, and every type of person in between. It is, without doubt, a place of true diversity, not the diversity the left thinks is diversity.
Everyone who attends the games or tunes in to watch does so because of the spirit of the sport and the love they have for teams, players, and the culture surrounding them. These things run deep and these fandoms are the kind that political parties could only wish they had.
Source - RedState/X - Image - Reuters