This week (early November), ESPN is publishing a series of stories examining “how professional sports owners in America contribute to political campaigns, why they spend millions” on politics and what it means as athletes embrace political activism.

ESPN described the five stories it will publish this way:

• Three different reasons owners donate to politicians.

• Dark money and why owners hide their political spending.

• Why the NFL has its own PAC.

• How political perception differs from reality in each league.

• How athletes are working to create their own political change.

As of this morning, the first three stories have been published. I’ve read two of them — dark money and NFL PAC. I found the stories bland, needlessly lengthy, predictable and biased.

The mainstream sports media, like the rest of the mainstream media, is quite adept at creating the appearance of addressing the elephant in the room without ever getting a whiff of the elephant’s stench.

Black Lives Matter is the elephant in the room. Colin Kaepernick and LeBron James are BLM’s calves, the name for baby elephants. Perhaps the final two stories — political perception and how athletes are creating their own political change — will address BLM. 

But it seems impossible to me to publish a series of stories on sports and politics without a head-on analysis of the impact of BLM on the world of sports. 

The 2,600-word dark money story that explores how and why pro sports owners hide their political donations never uses the word “black” or “lives” once. It does use the word “matters” a single time very late in the story when it says “to be kept in the loop on matters of import to the donor.”

Can you think of a stronger reason for a Trump-supporting team owner to hide his political contributions than Black Lives Matter? The NBA painted Black Lives Matter across its courts. It’s biggest star, LeBron James, is obsessed with BLM. Virtually every coach and player took a knee during the national anthem in deference to BLM. 

Donations to Republican political candidates are framed by the mainstream media and Twitter-addicted athletes as direct deposits to the Ku Klux Klan. LeBron James is running a Democratic voter registration drive. He’s wearing “Vote or Die” T-shirts with the clear implication that a vote for Trump is a death sentence. 

Fear of being labeled racist is a strong motivating factor in team owners hiding their political contributions. The dark money story made a single, passing reference to the role of race. It was contained in an email Mark Cuban wrote to the ESPN reporter:

“I do find value in investing to get results for issues that are important to me. There are many charities and causes I give to. Sometimes I let them use my name. Most times I do not. There are many things in this life bigger than the NBA. Some things bigger than business. So I can see why other owners, like myself, would make choices that may not be popular today, hoping to achieve a desired goal, such as ending or at least reducing racism.”

That was it. There was no follow up. No clarification. No additional detail offered to make Cuban’s point clear. The reader is left to draw his own conclusion. The obvious inference is the NBA took the unpopular position of swallowing BLM ideology whole as a means to end or limit racism.

Anyone who opposes BLM is racist. We all know that. Twitter and LeBron James have beaten that into our heads. The fact that BLM’s ideology is Marxist and hostile toward religious faith, the nuclear family and other Western-prescribed cultural norms are all irrelevant. 

I’m off on a tangent. My point is nothing has reshaped the political landscape of sports more than BLM and Donald Trump. 

The mainstream sports media loves discussing Trump. He is referenced extensively in the first two paragraphs of the dark money story. An anonymous source retells a conversation he claims to have overheard of a Trump-supporting team owner. 

Apparently, ESPN has been unable to find an anonymous source who has overheard a team owner discussing Black Lives Matter. In this era of American journalism, the real story is most often the story the media refuses to tell.

I had the same reaction when I read ESPN’s story on how and why Commissioner Roger Goodell and the NFL started a political lobbying PAC, the Gridiron PAC, in 2007.

The story says the league started its PAC when lawmakers began asking serious questions about player safety, retirement benefits and the NFL’s nonprofit status and antitrust exemption. I don’t doubt the narrative. 

I just happen to believe in 2020, ESPN ignored the elephant in Goodell’s office. It’s not the Gridiron PAC. It’s Joe Lockhart. 

In 2016, Goodell hired Lockhart as the NFL’s executive vice president of communications. Lockhart is a longtime Democratic political strategist. He was Bill Clinton’s press secretary. He worked for Jimmy Carter, Walter Mondale, Michael Dukakis, John Kerry and Karl Marx. (I’m joking about Marx, although I’m sure Lockhart would’ve loved to work for Marx.)

In his role as communications director, Lockhart was the architect of the NFL’s initial appeasement response to Colin Kaepernick’s national anthem protest. The New York Times praised Lockhart’s soft touch with Kap. Cowboys owner Jerry Jones did not. 

In 2017, Jones was so frustrated with the league’s handling of the national anthem that tried to stop ownership from renewing Goodell’s contract. I wrote a column for the Wall Street Journal in 2017, analyzing the Jones-Goodell riff and Lockhart’s role in it.

Two months after my WSJ piece, the NFL booted Lockhart from his post. The move was ostensibly done to satisfy Jerry Jones, who was smart enough to realize Lockhart’s woke political agenda conflicted with the NFL’s Pete Rozelle-implemented patriotic brand play.

Lockhart’s appeasement of Kaepernick opened the door for Black Lives Matter and a league dedicated to honoring the heroism of resisting criminal suspects. The NFL has yet to recover from Lockhart’s brief reign of power. 

It’s unlikely you’ll read one word about Lockhart in ESPN’s series on sports and politics. The truth is buried in the stories the mainstream media won’t tell you. The lies and misinformation are shoved down our throats. Just ask Hunter Biden.

(c) 2020, Outkick.com.