How The Sporting Industry Deals With Activism

In the wake of such a political culture, activism has continuously became more and more prominent in our world today. I really would like to emphasize on the word prominent. When I say this, I do not mean static issues nor do I mean necessarily large, major issues in our world. What I really mean, is the amount of people participating in and actively making intentional actions in order to bring about social and political change, as well as the abundance of smaller issues has made its mark during this spark of social media. With the advent of the internet, people have the ability to show the world how they are connected to organizations or positive and negative efforts much larger than before. Their faces, names, and even how many people are collectively participating in such activist efforts, has been directly related to the advent of social media mediums like Twitter, Facebook and blogging websites. Sports activism deals with very extreme issues, considering the mass appeal that the industry has on its attention getters. So many people view sports, have a particular sport they pay the most attention too, have favorite teams and idolize certain players. These attention getters participate in obvious activist efforts and advocate for certain political change, but where I see the strongest impact towards activism, is seen within the athletes themselves. In the last few years, we’ve seen sports activism at every locus on the ideological continuum. On the right, short lived football star Tim Tebow, starred in an antiabortion Super Bowl ad. In the transpartisan middle, Boston Bruins goaltender Tim Thomas refused to attend the White House’s Stanley Cup ceremony because he said he “believes the Federal government has grown out of control.” And on the left, Major League Baseball teams have led public campaigns against anti-gay bullying. And, of course, there is LeBron James who organized Miami Heat players into a hoodie-themed photo in solidarity with those demanding an investigation into the shooting of Trayvon Martin. James’ move best highlights the veering undercurrents. As the Bleacher Report’s Ryne Hodkowski noted, “corporate athletes who don’t say anything political are in fear of losing a big-time contract."  No matter the issue, sports is now involved. Fans now expect their sports deities to embrace that new normal, and as the big time star Lebron James shows, those deities are increasingly responding to the call.