“Get Woke, Go Broke”: sport media’s monetization of white male grievance in the age of Trump

Abstract

ABSTRACT Following the emergence of the Black Lives Matter movement, a new wave of progressive athlete activism emerged. While a section of sport media members supported these athletes and their causes, a subset of anti-progressive pundits and critics emerged resisting the new wave of politically active Black athletes. I argue that sport media pundits like Clay Travis at Fox Sports represent sport media monetizing white male backlash to “woke” Black athletes. By promoting these voices, these outlets committed to amplifying white male grievance politics and emboldened anti-Black racism in sport media, all while increasing polarization and partisanship, paralleling conservative political news pundits during the Trump era. This essay critically and closely reads and contextualizes the increasingly rightward rhetoric of Travis, explaining how he connects Trumpian rhetoric to sports punditry more broadly and allows major sport media an opportunity to advance overtly conservative, racist, and sexist dialogues.