Columnist: Sports fans need to defund pro athletes

FPI / September 17, 2020

After the police involved shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wisconsin, Tennessee Titans quarterback Ryan Tannehill denounced America as “founded on racist ideas.”

The social justice warriors at the NBA chose to boycott their own playoff games.

"The millionaire NBA athletes’ protest only lasted one game," A.J. Rice, CEO of Publius Public Relations, noted in a Sept. 15 op-ed for The Washington Times.

"They didn’t resume play because all is suddenly right with the world," Rice added. "They resumed play once they learned the boycott would hit their bank accounts. They found out that the league would lose nearly a billion dollars in TV money. The players’ pay could be cut. Money being the main thing these spoiled athletes care about, not the nation that pays them eye-watering sums to play a kids’ game, they changed their tune and got right back onto the court."

Many pro athletes have jumped on the "defund police" bandwagon.

Rice said American professional sports fans should consider a new bandwagon: "defund athletes."

"We pay their salaries in tickets, concessions and team memorabilia. We pay for their stadiums in taxpayer subsidies and confiscations at car rentals and hotel rooms," Rice wrote. "These leagues and their athletes would lose their money if we just stop watching them. And now that pro athletes and teams are pledging to use their wealth to push more and more fraudulent social justice warriorism, it’s too much."

Rice continued: "They want to defund the police? Police serve an important function in our society. Pro athletes don’t. We should defund them. All of them. No more taxpayer subsidies for any stadiums. No more massive TV contracts. No more fake journalists telling Americans how terrible we are. No more. As someone who loves the Philadelphia 76ers all this pains me to say.

"We made them. We can break them. And we should."

Free Press International