“This is an all-out assault on the American national pastime… [T]he players are saying … ‘We’re not protesting the flag. We’re linking arms for unity.’ Unity against what? … ‘Well, we’re linking arms for diversity.’ … Run the numbers on that. Seventy-five percent of the players in the nfl are African American… The grievance is an opportunity to bash America by forces on the left … in the drive-by media and every other institution in this country.” — me, eib, 9/29/17

“When this whole ‘protest the anthem’ thing began, I told you that left-wing activist groups were behind it, that they were running the players on this. It was how you get the players to take action that is actually harming the nfl when the players think that they are acting in solidarity … in protesting the cops.” — me, “Soros Behind nfl Protests,” eib, 10/6/17

I’ve seen this idiocy coming for a long time. I’m talking about the left’s complete infiltration of professional American sports. Almost two decades ago, liberals discovered the industry’s soft underbelly, nfl brass (cough, Roger Goodell). Ever since, they have been on a nonstop mission to radicalize a mainstay of the American way of life, the shared enjoyment of top-level competitive athleticism found in team sports.

It started subtly, but I knew the endgame. So I warned you when the nfl planted thousands of trees to supposedly offset planetary damage caused by Super Bowl carbon emissions. I warned you about the chickification of football, with nfl apparel — and who knows, maybe even players’ jock straps — basically dipped in buckets of pink paint to raise Breast Cancer Awareness. These leftward moves by the nfl failed to catch on in other sports. There were no windmill-powered Zamboni machines in the nhl. No nba stadium turned off the air conditioning to save the earth. And the seventh-inning stretch in World Series games never featured a Pansexual Pride event.

But in 2020, the dam burst, and the Black Lives Matter movement poured in. Now the nfl, the nba, the mlb, and even the nhl have, for all intents and purposes, become social justice leagues — battling to outdo each other to win the Wokeness Cup:

“nfl Season Kicks Off with Players’ Protesting Racism.” — The New York Times, 9/10/20

“End zones will have ‘It Takes All of Us’ on one end line, ‘End Racism’ on the other. Coaches and game officials will be able to wear patches on their cap with the name of a black victim … Each week the nfl will select one victim’s name and tell the story of that person in and around the games.” — nbc Sports Pro Football Talk, 8/30/20

“[White people] need to be coached up, and they need to be educated… Black people can’t scream anymore, they can’t march anymore, they can’t bare their souls anymore to what they’ve lived with for hundreds of years because white guys came over from Europe and started a new country … and followed economics — rich white guys making money — and they put together a system of slavery, and we’ve never left it, really.” — Pete Carroll, Seattle Seahawks coach, whose team includes black athletes like quarterback Russell Wilson, making $31 million a year, press conference, 8/29/20

“DC Sports Teams Strike to Protest Latest Police Brutality Incident: from boycotting games to utilizing practice time for racial discussions, teams around the District are finding ways to make a stand.” — wusa9.com, 8/27/20

“The nba went on to postpone all … of its playoff games [after the Jacob Blake shooting] … and other leagues followed suit: the wnba, Major League Baseball, and Major League Soccer all called off games… Since the nba restarted its season, the words ‘Black Lives Matter’ have been prominently displayed on its court…” — cnn, 8/27/20

“nhl Postpones Four Playoff Games … After Players Push to Suspend Play.” — usa Today, 8/27/20

“Social Justice Messages Each nba Player Is Wearing on His Jersey.” — TheUndefeated.com, 7/31/20

“Major League Baseball, teams and players, are … using this Opening Day to place Black Lives Matters center stage. ‘blm,’ accompanied by the mlb’s logo, [was] stamped onto the pitcher’s mound of the World Series-defending Washington Nationals…” — cnn, 7/24/20

“The nfl … will commit a quarter of a billion dollars … to combat systemic racism …” — nfl website, 6/11/20

Folks, at one time there was no bigger football fan than moi, El Rushbo. I had the jerseys, I bought the sports stuff, I was full-bore into it. And I’ll never forget, when the players started kneeling and the media started celebrating and encouraging it, I didn’t get mad. No, the air came out of me. Here was another institution they are taking away from me, from us. It’s another institution they are corrupting and politicizing. And this institution, professional sports, lives and dies on patriotism.

Pregame ceremonies involved the flag and flyovers and the National Anthem. But these symbols and traditions are repugnant to leftists and the modern-day Democrat Party. So all such patriotic displays had to be wiped out and replaced. Along came Colin Kaepernick, the perfect vehicle to get it done. Players started kneeling and complaining what a rotgut place America is. Which is when I said, “I’m sorry, I no longer can be a fan of this.”

For me, as for everybody else, sports was an escape. It was a way to get away from the stresses and concerns of regular life. One year when I was working for the Kansas City Royals, they brought in a Harvard socialist to make a presentation to our marketing meeting. He said something that stuck with me — because it is so right on the money, in terms of people’s fandom, loyalty, and eager allegiance to a team. He said, “Sports is the one thing in which you can invest total passion without consequence.” He went further: “Your team may disappoint you, but they’ll never kick you out. They may not win all the time, but they will never tell you to go to hell.”

Well, that’s all gone now. You cannot invest total passion in a sports team without consequence. If you invest your loyalty, there are all kinds of ways they can tell you to go to hell. And they’re doing it. They’re throwing your flag back in your face. They’re throwing your country back in your face. They’re standing for “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” the so-called “black national anthem,” but kneeling for “The Star-Spangled Banner.” They are letting you know that they don’t like America much — even though most of the people attending professional sports events love the country. All the childlike enthusiasm I once had for sports is gone. And once you lose it, you don’t get it back. It’s never the same.

Sports, and especially professional sports, had a lock on their fans. But they have destroyed the connection that a majority of those fans had with their teams. They’ve ruined it with politicized social justice protesting. I didn’t even know who my team, the Steelers, were opening against this year. I didn’t care.

And there are millions like me. All this wokeness is already starting to lead to brokeness. The nhl’s Dallas Stars president Brad Alberts admitted to The Dallas Morning News that their blm focus led to a loss of season-ticket customers. As reported by Breitbart, the social justice symbolism in the opening games for the nba and mlb led to a TV ratings crash — in several cases to under a million viewers.

On abc, the ratings were down 45 percent compared to the 2012 season, according to RealGM.com. “nfl ratings plunge amid Black Lives Matter messaging,” reported The Washington Times on 9/11/20. “Early Nielsen figures show 16.1 percent drop for inaugural game from 2019.” On 9/9/20, Yahoo sports columnist Charles Robinson reported “lagging demand” and “lukewarm [ticket] sales” for the 2019 Super Bowl champs, the Kansas City Chiefs, calling it an “eyebrow-raiser.” One broker was blunt: “It’s not going well.”

Clearly, a majority of the American people have no interest in seeing blm logos and mottos all over the pitcher’s mound, the ballpark signage, the stadium end zones, or the arena Jumbotrons. Fans don’t want to tune in and be lectured to about “racial injustice” or watch a bunch of millionaire players kneeling during the National Anthem. They just don’t want to see it.

No shock then, that according to the latest Gallup poll (released September 8), sports has suddenly plummeted in American esteem. “The biggest slide … has been for the sports industry, with its positive score falling 15 points — from 45 percent to 30 percent. The sports industry now has a negative image, on balance, among Americans as a whole, with … 40 percent [viewing it] negatively… This contrasts with the … net positive image it enjoyed in 2019, when 45 percent viewed it positively and 25 percent negatively.”

But nfl management doesn’t care. “Ratings always go up and down, for a variety of reasons,” Roger Goodell told cnbc on 9/2/20. “We’re supporting our players… We look at this as an opportunity to grow our audience with different segments of the population to make sure that we’re reaching more people on more platforms.” Translation: they’re more than happy to kiss their traditional fan base goodbye, because they intend to replace us with “different segments of the population.”

Good luck with that.

The Twitter hive-mind runs American sports now. So many in the industry leadership foolishly believe that Black Lives Matter is a civil rights organization — instead of the radical Marxist agitprop group bent on destroying America that it is. The sports wizards of smart assume that embracing blm is a cheap marketing angle to show they’re “down with the shtruggle,” to attract Millennials. But it’s a monster that will devour them. Already blm protesters with megaphones and placards are blocking nbateam busses, demanding: “LeBron, stand with us.” Anyone who thinks that’s as aggressive as they’re going to get hasn’t been paying attention. If they could loot and pillage every sports venue in this country, they’d do it in a heartbeat.

blm has absolutely nothing to do with racial justice. It is out to ruin, destroy, and end sports — because it is out to tear down the American way of life. The upper tier of the sports world’s executive suites might not realize that, but the fans do. The only question is how far and how fast the paying sports audience shrinks. Do not doubt me.

Photo ©2020 Getty Images/Chase Agnello-Dean/Contributor