Legendary former NFL quarterback Brett Favre has called for an end to the marriage between sports and politics after the latter has ruined once-cherished American institutions and traditions.
Favre, a Super Bowl winner and arguably one of the best gunslingers to ever suit up for an NFL team, said on Tuesday that he’d had enough of all the division. He also made it clear he doesn’t think he’s alone.
Favre joined Andrew Klavan of The Daily Wire on YouTube in a segment that also featured conservative political commentator Eric Bolling, the Hall of Famer’s co-host on the “Bolling with Favre” podcast.
The former Green Bay Packer didn’t hold back on his thoughts, saying in one particularly identifiable statement: “I want to watch the game.”
“I think both sides, for the most part, want to see it just remain about the sport, not about politics,” Favre said. “At least that’s my interpretation.
“I know when I turn on a game, I want to watch the game. I want to watch the players play, and teams win and lose, come from behind. I want to watch all the, you know, the important parts of the game, not what’s going on outside the game. And I think the general fan feels the same way.”
Asked if he ever once experienced the presence of divisive racial politics when he was playing in the league from 1991 to 2010, Favre responded, “Absolutely not.”
“In fact, that was sort of our protected space, if you will, where we could kind of let our guard down,” he said. “We were in something together. We fought together. We won together. We lost together. And we truly were a family.”
“Something has to unite us,” the Hall of Famer said, lamenting the loss of the unifying presence of national sports.
“Now, it’s almost like a division. I can’t tell you how many people, including yourself, have said to me, ‘I don’t watch anymore, it’s not about the game anymore,’ and I tend to agree,” Favre told Klavan. “You know, again, it’s a shame. It’s too bad, you know.
“But, like you said, you know, there’s differences, always, there’s always been differences, there’s always been issues within the world, within the country, within our states. But again, something has to unify us, and I felt like the flag, standing patriotically — because blacks and whites and Hispanics have fought for this country and died for this country. And it’s too bad.”
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“Whatever happened to, you know, your ideas, your thoughts, your beliefs being yours and not wrong?” he said. “That seems a distant past.”
Politics and sports haven’t simply intersected, as you well know. Professional and even college sports, in a very short period of time, have gone from forms of entertainment where Americans could come together to venues where players have become individual political platforms.
Just a couple of years ago, two complete strangers could high-five at a restaurant over a touchdown while watching a football game being played a thousand miles away. Today, such common ground might be hard to come by — and that’s assuming that two people outside of the same household would even be together, at least without masks.
Last season, the NFL encouraged players to wear the names of people, many of them alleged violent criminals, who were killed during encounters with police officers. The shallow act perpetuated the false notion that the country and its criminal justice system are both inherently racist and irredeemable.
Within the last few weeks, fans of professional baseball were essentially informed that their hard-earned dollars spent on tickets and merchandise were going to help the Democratic Party oppose voter ID laws.
Loyal fans were repaid for their years of fandom by being labeled as racists if their political views didn’t align with those of Major League Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred.
That’s leaving out the NBA, which is more or less now a left-wing political organization where high-paid activists also happen to play basketball.
It’s all so very surreal and stunning how quickly the country lost sports. Not even professional golf and NASCAR have stayed out of it completely.
It’s more than tragic. It’s a catastrophe for people whose mutually shared passion for something, even if it were simply a three-hour game of basketball, united them in a way few other things were capable of doing.
The left’s politics spoiled all the fun, and an all-time great is calling it like it is.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.