Sports fans prefer you steer away from politics, at least when the politics deviates from their own. Media companies, like the one that pays my salary, are often wary of it too. NBC is great about it — they give me a lot of leeway in this regard — but they’ll also crush me like a bug if I ever really step into it and say or do something that reflects poorly on the company. They’ll be right to crush me too. I represent them in a very public way. It’s a fine line to walk, of course, but I’ve been walking it for close to a decade now. I may offer some sharp commentary from time to time, but I don’t throw bombs or make messes.
Today over at The Ringer, Bryan Curtis writes about how, in Trump’s America, sportswriters are increasingly doing what I do and refuse to “stick to sports.” Indeed, he declares the end of “The Stick to Sports Era.”
I’m not sure about that, but I do very much like his into to the topic, in which he describes the people who have always waded into politics, even before this brave new era:
These days, when a Republican politician does something obnoxious or destructive, we expect them to be met by an advance guard of sportswriters like Craig Calcaterra, Dave Zirin, David Roth, and somebody from Deadspin. You know, the enforcer types.
I’ve been called a lot of things in my life, but never an “enforcer type.”
In other news, if you have yet to look at the page I have dedicated to my adorable kitty cats, it can be found here.
