Gavin Newsom went on camera this week and said — with a straight face — "I used to love sports because it wasn't political." He then asked, apparently without irony, "Why has politics invaded everything?"
This is the governor of the state that lets biological males compete in women's athletics.
In 2016, Colin Kaepernick took a knee during the national anthem and turned every NFL Sunday into a referendum on policing. Democrats didn't object. They celebrated. Kaepernick got a Nike deal. He got called brave. When fans said they just wanted to watch football, they were told they were part of the problem and that they were racists.
Then 2020 happened. After George Floyd's death, the NBA painted "Black Lives Matter" on its courts. Players wore "I Can't Breathe" warmup shirts. NBA 2K — a video game — started distributing the shirts digitally so teenagers could virtue-signal in their living rooms. Every professional league in America became a messaging platform, and the message was always the same: agree with us or you're a bigot.
Newsom's own party drove every mile of that road. They pushed leagues to make political statements. They demanded athletes "use their platform." They threatened boycotts of states that passed laws they didn't like, pressuring the NBA and NCAA to pull events from entire cities. And through it all, California led the charge on the single most politically explosive issue in sports today — allowing transgender athletes born male to compete against women.
That's the defining sports-and-politics collision of the decade. Female athletes have lost scholarships, podium finishes, and competitive opportunities to biological males competing under policies that Newsom's state has championed. When parents and athletes pushed back, they were called bigots. When legislatures in other states passed protective laws, California politicians called it discrimination.
So when Newsom asks why politics invaded sports, the answer is: you. You and your colleagues spent a decade demanding that every institution — sports included — serve as a vehicle for progressive messaging. You got what you wanted. Every game became a statement. Every league became an advocacy organization. Every broadcast came with a sermon.
Now he's tired of it.
The thing about injecting politics into sports is that it doesn't stay injected on one side. Once you establish that athletic competitions are appropriate venues for political expression, everyone gets to play. The same mechanism that put BLM on basketball courts put American flags on pickup trucks in stadium parking lots. You don't get to politicize an institution and then complain when the politics stop going your way.
Newsom's California signed the laws. His party ran the campaigns. His allies pressured the leagues.
"I used to love sports because it wasn't political" is a fine sentence. It just sounds different coming from the man who helped make it political.