Outkick the Coverage founder Clay Travis was apparently told he’s too conservative to discuss his political views while on television.
The outspoken sports pundit published a piece Monday, and claims that he was told to stop talking politics as a condition of getting his own show on Fox Sports 1.
He wrote in part:
I asked him why I couldn’t talk about politics and sports when I saw other people on FS1 and ESPN regularly talking about politics and sports. He told me that was different because they were talking about politics from a liberal perspective and that was okay, but advertisers didn’t like when you talked about sports and politics from a conservative perspective. As a Southern white conservative, I didn’t have the same freedom to mix sports and politics as a liberal would.
(Brief interlude here, I’m not opposed to talking about politics in sports. I’m opposed to talking about politics and sports and only doing it from one perspective, a liberal one. If someone wants to argue Colin Kaepernick is a hero, that’s fine, but someone else should also be able to argue he’s a fraud. Right now that doesn’t happen in most sports media. We’re confronted with an artificial debate question — how heroic is Colin Kaepernick? — that artificially stifles the marketplace of ideas, creating the exact opposite of a robust debate. By the way, the fact that I, a two-time Obama voter who has never voted Republican, worked for the Al Gore presidential campaign and is pro-choice and anti the death penalty, am considered “too conservative” is perfect evidence of how far left wing sports media has gone).
I’ve followed Travis’ work for awhile now, and I regularly tune into his radio show and social media broadcasts. He is incredibly open about his political views. He doesn’t hide the fact he considers himself a libertarian, the fact he has worked in Democrat politics, his disdain for Hillary Clinton, his thoughts on Donald Trump, or the fact he voted for Obama. He’s consistently an open book with his audience on the subject of politics.
It’s not hard to believe his claim, especially given the fact that ESPN spews liberal talking points around the clock. Even “Undisputed” on FS1 with Shannon Sharpe and Skip Bayless is getting my liberal by the day. The trend of sports broadcasting is going heavy to the left. In fact, it’s going so far to the left that a man who is a self-described libertarian and Obama supporter is considered too conservative for sports television.
Maybe people won’t learn their lesson until ESPN collapses beyond the point of return.