Shut up and dribble: the political lean of pro sports in America

It’s been eight years since Laura Ingram told LeBron James to “shut up and dribble,” and many fans argue to this day that politics and sports should be kept separate. That one entity exists to divide us, and the other exists to unite.

The reality is that sports and politics are deeply intertwined. They were when the late, great Muhammad Ali said, “I Ain’t Got No Quarrel With The VietCong…No VietCong Ever Called Me Nigger,” and chose imprisonment over enlistment, they are when the NFL awards fines to its players for the heinous crime of speaking out against an ongoing genocide, and they are when sitting President Donald Trump attends football games rather than working.

The reality is that most people don’t want to hear from athletes unless they agree with what that athlete has to say, as was evidenced last season when San Francisco 49ers star Nick Bosa broke NFL rules to interrupt a postgame interview and showcase his “Make America Great Again” hat in support of Trump.

But most athletes are not outspoken like the Alis and Bosas of the world. Fans usually fall back on stereotypes when discussing players; offensive linemen are conservative, NBA players are liberal.

But beyond painting “End Racism” in the endzone or pressing “Black Lives Matter” on the back of jerseys, where do the players really stand? Votehub recently conducted a study of athlete partisanship by league.

Per Votehub, the study was conducted by using publicly available voter file data from 24 states and Washington, DC. Players are matched to voter records via public biographical information.

The WNBA is by far the most Democratic-leaning of the five involved in the study. It’s not a surprising revelation, considering how many out players the league has, and factoring in that Democratic nominee Kamala Harris won around 60% of the vote among young women, and performed even higher with Black women (who constitute a majority of the league).

The NBA (or MNBA, as some WNBA fans call it) isn’t far behind. Again, not the most shocking of results. The NBA’s athletes are predominantly black, and young black men have historically voted Democrat.

On the other end of the spectrum are the NHL and MLB. The MLB’s demographics run counter to the NBA’s, in that only 6% of professional baseball players are black, and while a large chunk are Hispanic/Latino, they are foreign residents, and as such don’t vote. It’s worth noting that change is, albeit slowly, coming to the league, as shown by every team other than the Texas Rangers holding an annual Pride Night celebration.

The NHL was found to be extremely conservative as well. Far from a shock, considering how. Pride jerseys had to be replaced with pride tape due to player complaints, which were themselves banned before being reinstated, and black players in the league are even rarer than in the MLB. The NHL has found itself at an interesting spot culturally, as arguably the most popular show (and book) at the moment is Heated Rivalry, a series about a gay relationship between two professional hockey players.

The most politically diverse sport in the U.S., fittingly, and may be the only league where the athletes may swing from election to election. The NFL has also undergone a massive demographic shift over the past several decades, going from three-fourths white in 1960 to three-fourths Black by 2020. The NFL has had everything from Nick Bosa to players kneeling during the national anthem.

All in all, what’s most novel and interesting may be that the independent share, at 41 percent, is higher than the national average of 27 percent. This could be due to athletes hiding thier political affiliations due to their awareness of themselves as public figures, but like the late, great Kobe Bryant said in 2017, when elaborating on why he’d decline an invitation to the White House to meet Trump, “It’s a whole matter of respect and standing up on what you believe in.”