I fucking love all the talk about "keep politics out of sport." Like any other aspect of life, sport is always intertwined with politics.
I mean holy shit it is insane how the NFL wraps itself in conservative politics to attract conservative viewers. It regularly draws on nationalistic and militaristic images. It regularly invokes traditional values (i.e. women must be supportive but remain on the side lines looking pretty, men must tough, we must thank God for absolutely everything, we must obey authority, and so on). The real problem here is that their echo chamber has been infiltrated by someone who is pointing something out that they don't want to hear.
Hell, the USA boycotted the 1980 Olympics in Moscow because we didn't like the fact that the Soviets invaded Afghanistan. We used a sporting event as an opportunity for political speech. Also, fans are silly enough to interpret international contests as representations of their country's political and economic system. "Oh, well America wins the most medals at the Olympics because our political/economic system is the best."
Not to mention events of the more distant past where whites needed their great white hope to beat up the black boxer. I mean how ever will society function if we can't block black athletes from proving our dumbass racial stereotypes wrong.