NAACP asks Black athletes to boycott SEC, ACC powers in latest sports-as-politics pressure campaign

The NAACP is once again asking Black athletes to use sports as political leverage and put their own interests aside to advance the organization's radical left-wing agenda.

The NAACP said the campaign is aimed at flagship public athletic programs generating more than $100 million in annual revenue and continuing to recruit Black athletes while their state governments, in the group's view, "dismantle the political power of Black communities."

"The same power that built these programs can be redirected. And it will be," NAACP president and CEO Derrick Johnson said in the release.

The campaign's primary ask is for top football and basketball recruits to withhold commitments from targeted programs (such as the University of Alabama, LSU, the University of Georgia and Florida State) until those states "restore fair congressional maps and meaningful Black representation." The NAACP is also asking current college athletes to consider the transfer portal and use their name, image and likeness (NIL) platforms to elevate voting rights. Fans, alumni and donors are being asked to stop buying tickets, merchandise and licensed apparel from targeted programs and redirect that money to historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs).

So, yes, the pressure campaign is pretty obvious.

The NAACP wants high school and college athletes, many of them teenagers, to take on state legislatures by threatening the economic engine of college athletics.

Of course, this is not a new strategy.

In 2021, the NAACP urged professional free agents to avoid signing with teams in Texas over voting laws, abortion policy and COVID-19 policies. The organization said at the time it sent a letter to the NFLPA, WNBPA, NBPA, MLBPA and NHLPA asking athletes to reconsider moving their families to Texas.

The message then was not subtle.

Now, the same general playbook is being expanded.

This time, the message is not just "avoid Texas" or "reconsider Florida." It's a much broader call for Black athletes and fans to withhold support from public universities across much of the South.

The NAACP even gave the campaign a slogan: "No Representation. No Recruitment. No Revenue."

At least the branding is clear.

The rollout wasn't quite as clean.

That probably won't be the biggest problem for the campaign, though.

The bigger issue is that the NAACP is asking elite athletes to make college decisions based on state-level politics, not coaching staffs, playing time, development, NIL opportunity, facilities, education, relationships or NFL preparation.

Try telling a five-star football recruit from Georgia, Alabama, Texas or Louisiana that he should turn down an SEC powerhouse because of a congressional map and see how that goes. The previous campaigns that targeted Florida and Texas had no visible effect on recruiting or free agency in either college or professional sports.

"This generation of Black athletes understands something that those who came before them were never afforded the chance to say so plainly: your talent is yours, and so is your community's political power," Tylik McMillan, national director of the NAACP Youth and College Division, said in the release.

Once again, it's interesting to hear someone say "your talent is yours" but then immediately follow that with a statement that essentially says your talent is actually ours and we need to use it to help us further our agenda. The irony is almost too much at times.

The key is that the NAACP sees Black athletic talent as political power. An organization that claims to fight racism is asking an entire group, based on nothing but skin color, to join a political fight.

The organization is treating these athletes as political pawns instead of as young people with their own families, goals, futures and careers to think about. Some might choose schools because of politics. Most will choose schools because they believe those schools give them the best chance to play, develop, earn and eventually reach the next level.

The NAACP can call this empowerment in a flowery press release, but the message is still pretty clear: Black athletes should make sacrifices for the organization's preferred political leanings.