The Michael Knowles Show - The Progressive ATTACKS on Sports ｜ Jason Whitlock

00:00:00.000 I'm Michael Knowles, and this is The Michael Knowles Show.

00:00:08.740 Everything has become so political. Our running shoes, political. Our chicken sandwiches,

00:00:13.700 political. Our sitcoms, political. Every single thing. And people, they want one little break,

00:00:20.520 just one. Maybe you'd watch some football. Oh, the Olympics, wouldn't that be nice? And no,

00:00:26.780 they take that away from us, too. The NFL tells us that it's now transgender, lesbian, and gay. 0.73

00:00:33.640 At the Olympics, you've got the athletes, at least at the trials, turning away, disrespecting the flag.

00:00:40.400 They just won't give it to us. And since I am not exactly the world's expert on sports,

00:00:45.580 thankfully, we have a great expert on sports. Jason Whitlock, former ESPN writer, former Fox Sports

00:00:52.140 contributor. Now a man, you've seen him everywhere, and now he is with The Blaze. Jason is going to

00:00:59.060 explain to me, is it all over for sports? Have the wokesters just taken it forever, and we've just

00:01:06.020 got to move on? Or is there some hope? I don't think there's any hope, Michael,

00:01:09.320 to be honest with you. And I'm someone who has never voted. I've always tried to avoid any type

00:01:16.340 of political identity. And I grew up an athlete. I've always been a passionate sports fan. I went

00:01:25.280 to college on a football scholarship. Sports was my little oasis away from all the political division

00:01:32.820 and the political hypocrisy that I love to try to kind of avoid. And now it's front and center in the

00:01:39.760 sports world. And quite frankly, I blame China. I really do. I think that Nike is so hyper-concerned

00:01:51.200 and focused on improving its relationship with China. And Nike is the most powerful force in

00:02:00.180 American sports. More powerful than the NFL, more powerful than Major League Baseball, more powerful

00:02:06.800 than the NBA. And so I think through Nike's relationship and trying to improve its relationship

00:02:13.340 with China, they've made American sports very political and a place to express anti-American 0.99

00:02:21.280 sentiment. The CEO of Nike infamously, I wouldn't say famously, infamously just came out and said

00:02:27.500 that Nike is a brand of China and for China, which I think would be a surprise to a lot of Nike

00:02:35.100 customers around the world and certainly to a lot of American sports teams that have partnerships

00:02:39.500 with Nike. So when did this begin and what does it mean for the relationship of Americans to their

00:02:46.500 own sports teams? John Donahoe, the CEO of Nike, said that a couple of weeks ago and in that same

00:02:53.360 conversation with Wall Street analysts, he talked about how this has been Nike's plan and strategy

00:03:02.360 for 40 years. Nike founder Phil Knight hatched the plan of taking Nike International, started working on

00:03:11.320 its relationship with China. China has 1.4 billion potential consumers. America has 330 million.

00:03:21.640 And so Nike went from a great American success story where they toppled all the other shoe brands

00:03:30.980 here in America. And then they set their sights on global domination. And that meant going to China 0.93

00:03:38.340 and conquering that marketplace and those 1.4 billion potential consumers. And so this has been 40 years

00:03:48.140 in the making. And I try to explain to people, Michael, that the NBA, the National Basketball Association,

00:03:55.440 its purpose is to market tennis shoes, gym shoes, Nike apparel. The NBA is an $8 billion a year business.

00:04:07.800 Nike is a $40 to $50 billion a year business. Nike runs the NBA. The NBA is the marketing arm of Nike.

00:04:17.860 And so both Nike and the NBA have pursued the international market and the global market far

00:04:27.100 more than they have a domestic audience. That's the biggest difference or had been the biggest

00:04:34.220 difference between the NBA and the NFL. But now you even see the NFL caught up in trying to please the

00:04:41.280 woke crowd and hopping on board with Nike and the anti-American sentiment. They're spreading through

00:04:47.800 Colin Kaepernick and LeBron James.

00:04:51.000 This parallels a major political conversation that's going on right now, which is that for the past 20 or

00:04:57.080 30 years or so, Republicans have shilled for corporations that hate their guts and that want

00:05:02.260 to sort of undo the traditional American way of life. And what some Republicans have said is, well,

00:05:08.060 look, it's a free company, it's a private company. And if they want to turn their massive power on

00:05:14.400 constantly denigrating America, why that's just the free market, at least we've got GDP ticking up a

00:05:19.900 little bit. It seems to me historically, sports, games have always had a patriotic aspect to them.

00:05:28.580 The games are always about the community, the state, the country, the people. And now that's being

00:05:35.520 divorced, how long can that last? Or are people just going to tune out?

00:05:40.420 I'm not sure if it matters whether people tune out. We have flooded our economy with so much money,

00:05:50.740 there are no consequences for failure. Your audience, your TV ratings don't matter.

00:05:57.400 We're paying for agenda and narrative. And so as long as the NBA, the NFL stay on message,

00:06:07.480 the television networks, ESPN, Fox, CBS, they're going to cut enormous checks. And it doesn't matter

00:06:16.340 that their market share strengths here in America. Our global corporations are paying for narrative,

00:06:24.520 arc, arc, and agenda. And the agenda with a lot of these corporations to me, Michael, is

00:06:30.800 they prefer the Chinese Communist Party's way of doing business over the way we do in America. Elites 1.00

00:06:42.720 prefer communism over democracy and capitalism. That's what I think people are going to have to

00:06:50.840 come to grips with, is that the working class, the common man, has been completely sold out.

00:06:59.380 And the elites are going to put, are trying to impose a system that's more like China's.

00:07:06.360 They can do business that way. It doesn't hurt the elites. They're still going to make their money.

00:07:11.480 They're going to be treated well in a communist society that really, if we think we favor elites,

00:07:19.460 wait till people get a real taste of communism and how they favor elites and really oppress the

00:07:27.460 working class. You know, I think it was Charles Munger, Warren Buffett's business partner, but it

00:07:31.940 was, it was one of those types, if it wasn't him, one of these masters of the universe who said that

00:07:36.600 he didn't exactly want China's political system, but he did want their economic system, that it was

00:07:42.080 kind of easy to do business with them. And it might be nice to do business that way over here.

00:07:46.820 You have seen this very pro-China move, not just in sports, but Hollywood also infamously has sold

00:07:53.220 its soul to China. You saw this in the Top Gun remake. All of a sudden, references to Taiwan

00:07:58.620 started to disappear. All of a sudden, anything that might upset the Chinese Communist Party

00:08:03.320 starts to disappear because he who pays the piper calls the tune. Well, I get it. If I were the CEO of

00:08:10.440 Nike and I had no sense of loyalty to my country, then I probably would pursue that strategy too.

00:08:15.680 If I were the head of a Hollywood studio and again, had no loyalty to my own country,

00:08:19.580 I'd probably pursue that strategy too. Is there any way for we, for us as Americans to stop them

00:08:26.880 from doing this? Or are we just going to sell out our sports and our culture to the highest bidder?

00:08:31.980 I do think we're going to have to have an economic response. And, and, and again, I'm not even sure

00:08:39.740 if that will matter to Nike or some of these other global corporations, but if we could empower some

00:08:49.740 corporations that were hyper-focused, and this will sound comical when I, when I say it, but

00:08:56.940 about a month ago, when I really started thinking about this, I, I went on the MyPillow website

00:09:04.620 and bought a bunch of Mike Lindell, MyPillow stuff just to support a business that manufactures its

00:09:13.280 products here in America and has a passion and a patriotism for America. We're going to have to start

00:09:20.820 doing that. We're going to have to start, and, and, and I hate to say it, but it's just like, I just bought

00:09:26.320 a new car, a new Mercedes, and I kind of regret it. I should have bought, I should have bought an

00:09:32.980 American-made car, but we're going to have to start really disciplining ourselves and making wiser

00:09:39.400 economic choices and invest in companies that actually believe in American freedom. There, there's,

00:09:47.120 I don't think, there's a lot of the American public that doesn't fully understand what we're sacrificing

00:09:54.360 by allowing foreign interests to manipulate our corporations and our culture. We're going to end 0.77

00:10:03.840 up sacrificing the freedoms that made this country great. And for those of us that are black, the 0.87

00:10:11.500 freedoms that allowed us to be a part of American freedom. If we were in, if our country keeps moving

00:10:21.140 this direction of China, the political dissent that made black Americans free will no longer be

00:10:30.780 available to us. We have to, and that's why what the Daily Wire is doing, what the Blaze is doing,

00:10:39.700 we're trying to educate people about what's really going on and what the ramifications are.

00:10:45.160 And, and because corporate media, so beholden to the big global corporations, they can't tell these

00:10:52.940 kinds of truths. I totally agree with that. And all I will say on that point, Jason, is if you do feel

00:10:59.800 so bad and the guilt gets to you so much, I am willing to take the Mercedes off your hand. You can't,

00:11:05.440 it's fine. I will. I appreciate it. Yes. Anytime. Now what I, what I, what I do want to know is

00:11:11.760 beyond the corporate level, this actually makes a lot of sense. And I hadn't really thought of it

00:11:16.820 this way that Nike and a handful of other players, but really Nike is, is controlling so much of this

00:11:22.180 conversation and narrative. What, what do the players really believe? Are they just dopes? Are

00:11:28.760 they, are they just kind of been brainwashed? Are they cynically going along with this or some of

00:11:33.240 them self-censoring? I'm reminded of that gal Gwen something or other, the hammer thrower from the

00:11:38.560 Olympic trials a few weeks ago. Gwen Berry. Gwen Berry. Yes. And she, she said that she finds

00:11:44.180 the national anthem offensive. She thinks it's a setup that she's got to respect the star spangled

00:11:48.940 banner. She wants to represent the United States on the Olympic team, but she doesn't want to stand up 1.00

00:11:54.760 and put her hand over her heart and respect the flag. She seems to really believe it. I think her

00:11:59.820 explanation was nuts, but it seemed sincere at least. So what is it? Are the athletes, are they secret,

00:12:06.200 you know, patriots and they're just going along for the sake of the woke corporations or have they

00:12:11.060 really bought into this stuff? I used to be an athlete. I went to school on a division one football

00:12:18.640 scholarship. I have respect for athletes, but when most of your life and free time are dedicated to

00:12:28.700 developing your physical attributes, I don't then turn to them and go, oh, these are some of the

00:12:34.740 greatest intellectual minds in America. I don't expect them to understand. I do expect them to

00:12:41.180 be caught up in the culture that's being promoted. And so many of them are addicted to social media

00:12:47.740 and Twitter and their phones and their brains have been hacked. Like all of us, they're not alone.

00:12:55.880 All of us have this phone addiction, social media app addiction. They're young and they want to be

00:13:03.720 popular. They want to be with the in crowd. They want to make money. And so Gwen Berry, I get it. She

00:13:12.160 just wants to make some money and be relevant. She throws the hammer. No one's watching that event

00:13:17.500 and she's not going to win it. How can she be popular? How can she be relevant? Oh, that's right.

00:13:23.680 The national anthem bugs me. I don't respect the flag. They got pictures of her waving the flag and

00:13:29.160 being patriotic. It's all, it's a gimmick. It's people, young people love attention. And so there's

00:13:35.940 some of that when it comes to the professional athletes at the NBA, NFL level, look, and particularly in

00:13:42.300 the NBA, they have, they get paid so much money. LeBron James makes far more money from Nike than

00:13:47.920 he does the NBA. And that's true of a lot of the basketball players. They make more money from

00:13:52.860 their shoe companies than the NBA. And so they're just doing what's in their financial best interest

00:14:00.360 as explained to them by their handlers and the shoe companies and whatnot. And so just follow the

00:14:07.140 money as it relates to a lot of the athletes, Colin Kaepernick, he figured out there's more money in

00:14:13.280 being a martyr and a symbol than actually playing football at the level he was playing. And so I just,

00:14:22.040 my expectations for athletes are they're going to train hard, be in shape, entertain us. They're not

00:14:29.100 political leaders. They're not thought leaders. If I were as talented as LeBron James,

00:14:36.000 I'd probably speak English as brutally as he does. Uh, and I would probably think a lot of the dumb 1.00

00:14:42.820 stuff that he thinks, uh, because if I were that, I'd be so awash in money and women, I wouldn't have 0.90

00:14:49.560 time to read a book. Yeah. I think that's, that's pretty fair. I think that's probably true for a lot

00:14:55.720 of us. And, and LeBron, I mean, he's kind of at the forefront of this. He said that a black man in

00:15:00.140 America can't walk outside the door without being chased down by racist whites. And I think, 0.98

00:15:05.640 you know, LeBron, you're looking pretty good. You're looking healthy. You seem to have a pretty

00:15:10.360 stable life here. I even, because I know so little about professional sports, I just don't really

00:15:15.820 follow a ton. I follow baseball to some degree, although the MLB drove me so crazy the last two

00:15:20.940 years I tried to tune it out. But when I heard about the Kaepernick story, when it first came up,

00:15:25.280 I thought, oh gosh, I guess this guy must be one of the great quarterbacks of our age. You know,

00:15:30.900 he must be one of the real top athletes and, but he's giving it up for it. No, he's not. He's this

00:15:36.340 kind of middle of the pack guy who figured out how to make a buck and I guess more power to him

00:15:40.720 because he's doing better than most of the other people who were still throwing a football.

00:15:43.820 Not only middle of the pack, but just a bad attitude, not an attitude that's going to help

00:15:49.400 your team win games. And be a, again, when you're playing quarterback in the NFL,

00:15:54.880 the on-field performance matters the most, but there are other things. Leadership, being the face

00:16:02.700 of the franchise, it's almost like you're the mayor of a city. And Colin Kaepernick didn't have

00:16:07.940 any of those things. He had no interest in any of those things. He liked to build up his biceps and

00:16:13.620 his abs and take pictures shirtless and put on Beats headphones and make money doing that.

00:16:19.780 And it sounds like I'm just beating him up. I'm telling you, if I had his kind of talent at

00:16:26.320 the age he was, 28, 29, 30 years old, I'd be doing and thinking the same thing.

00:16:33.500 You know, unfortunately, I'm an overweight 50-year-old and so I have to read books and

00:16:38.680 newspapers and I have to acquire information to make money. So I think a little differently than

00:16:45.400 Kaepernick. I think that's a curse. It is. Believe it or not,

00:16:48.720 I never got the call from the New York Giants. I was waiting by my phone for many years.

00:16:53.340 Now, you know, you've really helped me think through this because I was looking, I said,

00:16:58.480 what is it about the woke ideology maybe in the colleges when they were playing college ball?

00:17:02.880 No, I mean, there is a real system of sticks and carrots here and real economic incentives

00:17:09.160 to be doing this kind of thing. Is there any hope to change that economic incentive structure

00:17:17.100 that seems to be turning, this last institution that we had, you know, the conservatives basically

00:17:23.160 had sports and the military. Both have gone woke in the last six months and sports was a little bit

00:17:29.040 earlier than that. So that's kind of depressing. You know, is there any way to reorder the incentives,

00:17:34.280 be it at the level of the NCAA, be it at the level of the professional leagues,

00:17:39.360 or are we basically just going to see them chasing dollars all the way to Beijing for the near future?

00:17:46.300 Look, America hasn't always been driven by or influenced by sports and passion for sports.

00:17:58.900 You know, professional sports came along 130, 40 years ago for the most part, I think.

00:18:05.280 And so I think what is going to happen if we have a chance is that those of us,

00:18:14.900 and I don't know your religious beliefs, I'll just speak about mine, those of us with passionate

00:18:23.520 religious beliefs, followers of Jesus Christ, we may have to abandon our love of sports.

00:18:30.400 And we may have to, at some point, stand up and remake America where we de-emphasize sports.

00:18:41.440 And throwing all this money and adulation at guys who are ungrateful and unappreciative

00:18:47.860 is a huge mistake. They have way too much influence over our culture.

00:18:52.720 And so, you know, there are, we're in a legitimate, serious, critical culture war.

00:19:02.320 And so there are things, all of this stuff in the culture, from the music industry to Hollywood,

00:19:07.220 the sports, they're all going to have to be remade again.

00:19:12.060 Or we'll just continue on our path of destruction and be the modern day Sodom and Gomorrah.

00:19:19.140 And we know how that ends.

00:19:22.360 I love this take because what you're saying, and I know this is shocking to so many people today,

00:19:28.800 is you can't have everything.

00:19:32.160 You know, the NFL just said, football is gay, lesbian, football is everything.

00:19:36.760 And I said, well, it's not everything. It's not baseball. It's not basketball.

00:19:40.060 It's not the color orange. It's not the number seven.

00:19:42.900 It is a thing within limits because everything has limits here.

00:19:47.940 And for Christians, we need to remember the blood of the martyrs is the seat of the church.

00:19:54.560 Christians have been called upon in history to do far more difficult things than turn off the NFL.

00:20:01.300 You know, people might love their sports, but there are more important things in this world.

00:20:06.420 I also have a bit of an advantage because I never particularly cared for the NFL.

00:20:10.120 But you're right. I mean, when these companies are spitting in the face of your values,

00:20:15.620 doing so much to undermine your culture, at a certain point, no matter how much you like watching the game,

00:20:21.000 you might just have to turn it off.

00:20:22.800 And that's part of what I've, as a sports journalist, long time, and sports being a big part of my brand,

00:20:30.420 the deal I've made with myself is I'm going to cover sports honestly.

00:20:35.360 I'm not going to god up, celebrate people who don't espouse any of the values that I believe in.

00:20:48.040 And so people are, oh, man, you're hypercritical of LeBron James and some of these other woke athletes.

00:20:56.580 Yeah, I'm like, yeah, I am.

00:20:57.940 They're not protecting, defending, promoting the values that I believe in.

00:21:04.720 They're promoting a secular, godless, Marxist worldview.

00:21:09.520 They may not know it, but I'm going to point it out to them and point it out to their fans.

00:21:14.780 And I'm going to do that for the rest of my career until we get it and understand it here in America.

00:21:20.820 This is dangerous.

00:21:21.960 This whole reimagining, remaking, retelling of history that the African-American journey in America is something that damns America 1.00

00:21:33.780 rather than enlightens people that are like, wow, look at what can be accomplished in America.

00:21:42.300 You can start at the very bottom as slaves.

00:21:45.740 And America and our Judeo-Christian values allow you to change the system in a way that will grant you your freedom and standing here in this country.

00:21:57.060 The African-American journey is a great American success, come-from-behind story.

00:22:04.040 We've allowed the New York Times and everybody else to say, well, the African-American journey proves that America is evil and irredeemably racist.

00:22:13.160 It's just not true.

00:22:14.100 I totally, totally agree with you, Jason.

00:22:17.020 I am so, so glad to hear this perspective.

00:22:20.920 Where else can people find your perspective now that you're at the Blaze?

00:22:25.300 Well, you only need to find me one place.

00:22:27.600 You can Fearless with Jason Whitlock, the podcast, wherever podcasts are shown and displayed.

00:22:34.620 We've got a YouTube page, youtube.com, backslash Fearless with Jason Whitlock.

00:22:39.740 Obviously, you can find us at Blaze TV.

00:22:42.160 There's an app.

00:22:43.760 But I'm writing and doing a podcast.

00:22:46.380 We just started on Tuesday today.

00:22:49.540 I'm not sure when this is airing.

00:22:52.200 But we just started today with the daily podcast and show.

00:22:55.480 I've been writing columns now for about three weeks.

00:22:58.300 You can get those at Blaze.com.

00:23:00.140 Eventually, there will be a Fearless vertical on Blaze where you can get my writing and some of the contributors.

00:23:06.900 But we're going to keep chopping wood.

00:23:08.880 Appreciate you having me on.

00:23:09.880 I love it, Jason.

00:23:10.880 Great to be with you.

00:23:11.800 Go check out Fearless.

00:23:13.700 Go follow Jason Whitlock.

00:23:15.540 Jason, thanks for coming on.

The Michael Knowles Show - August 04, 2021

The Progressive ATTACKS on Sports ｜ Jason Whitlock

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript