Shortly after President Trump announced that he had nominated Brett Kavanaugh to fill the Supreme Court seat vacated by Anthony Kennedy, the court hopeful received praise – from an NFL team.
Arizona Cardinals Team President Michael Bidwill applauded and endorsed Kavanaugh to fill the seat in a letter on Monday; the team’s Twitter account posted about it, as did the team’s website. The two men attended high school together at Georgetown Prep, hence the high levels of praise from Bidwill.
“We represent a broad spectrum of achievements, vocations, political beliefs, family histories and personal lifestyles,” Bidwill wrote. “We unite in our common belief that Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh is a good man, a brilliant jurist, and is eminently qualified to serve as an Associate Justice on the U.S. Supreme Court.”
Another one of their notable classmates, New York Yankees General Manager Brian Cashman, also signed off on the letter, endorsing the pick.
Endorsing a Supreme Court nominee on behalf of a sports organization is a strange thing for team leadership to be doing.
In general, it’s safe to say that sports and politics should not be mixed – regardless of the political parties. There are two things teams need to do: make money and win games. If they want to give back to the community to give themselves good PR and in turn, earn more revenue, that’s fine. However, endorsing politicians does not appear to be the way to do it, and the response the Cardinals received on twitter should reaffirm that stance.
WHOA BUDDY IS THIS POLITICS IN *MY* NFL
— Collin Sext Messages (@Ryan_Mourton) July 10, 2018
Ummm, what is an NFL account doing tweeting about the SCOTUS pick? pic.twitter.com/U2o7FhaRAe
— Gold Standard Ship (@AwesomeBamon) July 10, 2018
Stick to getting DUIs, @AZCardinals.
— Todd Muncy (@themunson) July 10, 2018
Sports fans occupy both sides of the political aisle, so attempting to pander to one side or another isn’t the brightest move. Forget that President Trump got less than half of the popular vote in Arizona (49 percent) in 2016, so there is bound to be plenty of opposition to his nominee there; it’s not exactly a “good” move anywhere.
It was not the first time a pro sports team has endorsed a candidate this year; back in May, Nashville Predators Team President Sean Henry endorsed the city’s Democratic mayoral candidate, David Briley, in a video alongside their mascot, Gnash.
Thanks to our friends @Gnash00 and @PREDSident and everyone over at the @PredsNHL for supporting Mayor Briley in the upcoming election! We invite all of #Smashville to join #TeamBriley on May 24. Polls are open now so make sure you get out and vote! pic.twitter.com/xv66yN727m
— Briley for Mayor (@brileyformayor) May 16, 2018
In either case, the move sets a bad precedent and may give players the idea that they too should play the role of political pundit. However, if the past two years of the NFL are any indication, that doesn’t work out well.
Since players have politicized the game by kneeling for the national anthem, their TV ratings have dropped by about 17 percent (8 percent decline in 2016 and an additional 9.7 percent decline in 2017). Politics have at least something to do with that, according to a JD Power survey released last July. It revealed that national anthem protests were the top reason why fans were tuning out (26 percent). This means that of their ratings decline, at least 4 percentage points (conservatively speaking) are directly because of politics in the league.
People watch the NFL, NHL, NBA, and MLB because they want to see elite talent of a particular sport compete hard and win games. That’s what teams need to be focused on, not who they believe is a good politician and who is not. Team executives need to set the example of how business will be conducted in the organization. That said, they should stop using their teams to endorse politicians.
Tom Joyce (@TomJoyceSports) is a freelancer writer who has been published with USA Today, the Boston Globe, Newsday, ESPN, the Detroit Free Press, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, The Federalist, and a number of other media outlets.
