For this sports fan, the tributes to conservative activist Charlie Kirk have been notably disorienting.
Even as a far-too-invested sports fan, I know not to expect professional athletes and franchises to embody my own values. They are, at best, a projection of national ideals, and loving the games has meant learning how to compartmentalize a dissonance that comes from cheering for the game while questioning the institutions around it.
The New York Yankees appeared to be the first professional team to hold a moment of silence for Charlie Kirk on September 10, followed by a similar commemoration a day later during a Green Bay Packers Thursday Night Football game, and several teams across professional leagues since.
Kirk was neither an elected official nor known for bringing people together. He built a career on stoking division, targeting the trans community, immigrants, and racial justice activists with disdain and misinformation. He was a political pundit whose record stood in opposition to the very principles of dignity and inclusion that sports often claim to champion.
While there is certainly no question that political violence should be condemned, the selective way American sporting institutions mourn and honor victims tells us who is seen as worthy. This week’s honors for Kirk force a reckoning for many sports fans who seek to understand the values espoused by the leagues they support and whether those values include the fight for justice and human dignity. As recently as the mid-2010s, athletes who protested police violence and inequality were swiftly condemned by owners, league commissioners, and leading voices in the media.
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In 2016 and 2017, NFL owners, executives, and even Commissioner Roger Goodell condemned Colin Kaepernick’s anthem protests, a response to police brutality, as disrespectful to the flag or un-American. In 2018, Goodell praised player activism, writing that “the efforts by many of our players sparked awareness and action around issues of social justice that must be addressed.”
Yet in the same breath, the league imposed a new rule requiring all personnel to stand for the flag and the Anthem, relegating anyone who chose otherwise to the locker room. Goodell went on to say it was “unfortunate that on-field protests created a false perception… that thousands of NFL players were unpatriotic.” In practice, the policy revealed that the NFL was more concerned with controlling how and where players could speak than with confronting injustice, with its acknowledgement of player protests reduced to rhetoric, provided their dissent remained off the field and out of sight.
WNBA players have built a legacy of activism, with players refusing to separate their platform from the fight for justice. From wearing Black Lives Matter and Say Her Name shirts honoring Breonna Taylor in 2020 to Pay Us What You Owe Us shirts demanding fair compensation. The call for higher wages was met with excessive scrutiny, even mockery, from sports fans and commentators.
In February 2025, veteran player Natasha Cloud clearly defined this moment in history, stating, “it’s time to break down a system that has only been about white men,” emphasizing that recent political attacks on DEI efforts made speaking out more necessary than ever. Years prior, Cloud explained her decision to sit out the 2020 WNBA season, describing her frustration being an activist in the setting of professional sports and signifying an ongoing fight for justice, dignity, and a league that recognizes the inherent value of its players and diverse fan base.
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While leagues often tread carefully around these debates, the divide becomes even clearer in the realm of sports media. Since Kirk was assassinated on September 10, multiple sports journalists have lost jobs or platforms for political commentary. Gerald Bourguet, the lead Phoenix Suns reporter for ALLCITY’s PHNX division, was fired after posting that refusing to mourn Kirk was not the same as celebrating violence, urging readers to compare the sympathy for Kirk with silence around school shootings and ongoing deportations. The Carolina Panthers dismissed communications staffer Charlie Rock for Instagram posts referencing Kirk’s own comments about the cost of gun deaths in defense of the Second Amendment.
These recent firings follow earlier controversies over political speech in sports media. In January 2024, ESPN ended Aaron Rodgers’ weekly appearances on The Pat McAfee Show after Rodgers made baseless insinuations about Jimmy Kimmel and Jeffrey Epstein associates, citing a need to avoid further controversy.
When Emmy-award winning sport journalist Jemele Hill criticized Rodgers and ESPN for irresponsibility in platforming such rhetoric, she faced sharp backlash from critics accusing her of politicizing sports. Hill herself has long addressed the broader asymmetry as a Black woman working in sports media, including through accounts in her memoir Uphill.
Meanwhile, controversial right-leaning figures are distanced from platforms but often shielded from the personal costs their critics bear, while commentators speaking out against injustice or systemic inequities frequently face disproportionate, and deeply personal, punishment.
The idea that sports can be “politicized” by the actions of one commentator, journalist, athlete, or team does not withstand scrutiny. History makes this clear: from Tommie Smith and John Carlos raising their black-gloved fists at the 1968 Olympics to protest racial injustice, to Craig Hodges wearing a dashiki to the White House in 1992 and handing President George H.W. Bush a letter demanding social and economic justice for Black and minority communities.
More broadly, professional sports in the United States have always been deeply politicized through rituals of American nationalism – the anthem, military flyovers, and flag-draped ceremonies precede nearly every game. Even though some fans (or maybe I’m just speaking for myself) often find this display a bit excessive, we have come to accept this as a part of the spectacle, regardless of where we fall on the political spectrum.
However, displays of national pride are never neutral; they carry a vision of who belongs and what kind of country is being celebrated. Moments of silence for the assassination of Kirk raise valid questions about whose politics are deemed worthy of commemoration, what version of America leagues choose to showcase, and who holds the power to define the values of the sports we love.
This week’s ceremonies exposed a double standard that undermines the credibility of these institutions. Sports have never been free of politics; they have only policed which politics are allowed on the field.
When athletes demand racial justice or accountability, they are silenced or cast out, while tributes are extended to figures who thrived on division. If leagues want to live up to their own rhetoric about unity and inclusion, then player activism must be recognized as every bit as central to the game as the anthem itself.
