The numbers and facts around the decline in youth participating in sports are eye-opening. 62 percent of children, ages 6 to 12 do not play sports regularly and the average age at which children quit sports is just 12 years old. Some of the biggest names through the world of sports are part of this campaign including NBA player Stephen Curry, WNBA player A’Ja Wilson, and NFL player Lamar Jackson among the ambassadors to encourage and promote youth sports participation.

It is the low 38 percent youth sports participation rate that is one of the reasons for this initiative. Sports ambassadors and ESPN anchors and personalities participated in a different ads and promos, which ran across ESPN platforms, that addressed critical youth sports issues. One of the biggest issues for getting kids to play sports is affordability. Over 900,000 youth received support to participate in athletics through grants and the YMCA was among the avenues for those youth to participate. This is the second year of the Take Back Sports initiative and there were good results.

There has also been some volatility in youth sports leagues with the behavior of adults. It is not uncommon to see local news clips that highlight the parents of some young athletes who are harassing each other or verbally abusing referees or officials for youth sports leagues.  Youth coaches also feel the anger from parents sometimes as well. A recent national survey named “the challenge of managing parents ranks among the top reasons coaches have considered leaving or decided to quit”. Unruly parents in youth sports deters from the enjoyment for all kids who are participating in that particular sport.

The impact of youth sports is multilayered from a health, wellness, stress relief, and teamwork aspect. There are many lessons to be learned from kids and teenagers who play and enjoy sports. According to ESPN Vice President of Corporate Citizenship Kevin Martinez, “Sports have the power to shape confidence, character and community at an early age, but with only 38% of kids playing sports on a regular basis, ESPN recognizes the critical need to build systems that make those opportunities accessible to more young athletes.” It’s not about finding the next great young athlete but the importance of youth sports be part of the childhood experience to become more of a team player and working together as an adult towards everyone’s success.

Staff Writer; Mark Hines

1. Dolan Accepted Without Asking the Players

Dolan accepted the invitation before even asking the players if they would attend. In an interview with New York Magazine, Jalen Brunson explained that he and the other players hadn’t even discussed the possibility of visiting the White House before Dolan announced that the team would be going. “We haven’t discussed it,” Brunson said. “But as a team, we’ll discuss it, and we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.” That was not agreement from the players. This is a player being as diplomatic as possible in expressing his team’s position on visiting the White House.

2. This Is a Personal Favor, Not a Presidential Honor

Dolan and Trump have been friends for thirty years. In fact, in Game 3 of the NBA Finals, Dolan personally extended an invitation for Trump to attend the game and then even sat with him in the owner’s box. As political strategist Antjuan Seawright told ESPN, “I think the only reason the Knicks received the invite is because of the relationship with the owner and Donald Trump.’’ This is just a friend doing a favor for a friend and the players will be nothing more than props in Dolan’s attempt to repay a favor to Trump.

3. Trump Was Booed Inside Madison Square Garden

New York spoke on June 8th and it was clear. When the jumbotron at MSG showed an image of Trump at Game 3 of the NBA Finals, the crowd at the home of the Knicks erupted in loud, sustained, and intense booing. The fans who supported this club through 53 years of disappointment made their opinions on Trump’s attendance very clear. Why would the team honor that attendance with a party?

4. The “Trump Curse” Is Real in Knicks Lore Now

Game 3 was the only game in which the Knicks lost in the entire NBA Finals series. It was also the only game in which Donald Trump appeared to root for them. Following the loss, Knicks fans went to MSG to burn sage and try to clear the space of any negative energy left behind by Trump’s visit. That may sound superstitious, but the sentiment is totally real: Trump’s presence at the game felt like a bad omen, not an honor. Visiting him now would be a strange way for the team to celebrate.

5. Josh Hart Has Already Made His Position Clear

On the other hand, another player for the Knicks, Josh Hart, let his voice be heard during the 2020 presidential election. When referring to Donald Trump, Hart stated that Trump is a “dumbass” and wrote this on his social media account not once but twice. For this reason, if the Knicks were to be invited to the White House, Hart would have to be left out of the occasion. This in turn could lead to a huge media circus, with Hart as the center of attention, which would be very awkward for the team.

6. Every NBA Champion During Trump’s First Term Said No

Not a single NBA championship team during Trump’s first term in office traveled to the White House for a celebratory visit. The Golden State Warriors publicly declined two separate invites for the White House visit. With the highly politicized atmosphere of Trump’s White House and the already very divided politics, the players played it safe. The politics would be too much for most of the players, and as we have all come to realize, they are not naive to the political implications that come with a White House visit for a sports team. The Knicks would not just be ending the streak for NBA championship teams, but would add an even greater layer of complexity as fans and media compare the situations to the two previous declines by the Golden State Warriors.

7. New York City’s Mayor Wasn’t Subtle About It Either

Mayor Zohran Mamdani, a democratic socialist who led the Keys to the City ceremony, represents the political opposite of Donald Trump. The city that hosted this championship parade, packing the Canyon of Heroes for the parade of Jalen Brunson and the rest of the team, voted overwhelmingly against Trump in the last elections. So for the team to celebrate with Mamdani and the rest of New Yorkers in the days following their championship, and then turn around and celebrate with Trump at the White House, would send a contradictory message to the city that made this possible.

8. The Celebration Already Happened — And It Was Perfect

Millions turned out for the ticker-tape parade through the Canyon of Heroes after the Knicks won their first NBA championship in 53 years. Jalen Brunson held the Larry O’Brien Trophy on a float while the city lost its collective mind. They got to hold the championship trophy, and then they got to hold the keys to the city. That celebration was enough. There is nothing that a visit to the White House could add to that, and nothing that the fans would want added to it.

9. The Timing Looks Like a Political Statement

Visiting the White House is a tradition for teams right after winning a championship. But that does not mean it is mandatory. When a team decides not to visit the White House after winning a championship, it is news for a day, and then it is forgotten for good. But when a team does visit the White House after winning a championship and the visit turns into a political flashpoint, the team and its players are then harassed for years by the visit and the way that it is perceived. Given the current national politics, when the Knicks visit the White House, it will not be perceived as a neutral sports tradition but rather as an endorsement. That is not how the Knicks’ legacy should be defined. The Knicks’ legacy should be defined by the players and by the fans, not by the friendship of one owner and the President of the United States.

10. The Players Earned This Championship. The Choice Should Be Theirs.

Jalen Brunson played through injury and pressure to put the team in position to win its first title in over half a century. His teammates grinded through a 13 game winning streak. The players earned this championship. They deserve to decide how it is celebrated and by who. The locker room has yet to discuss whether or not the team should celebrate at the White House but James Dolan has already signed them up for the event before the team has even discussed it. That was a mistake and the players should have the final say.

Whose Celebration Is This, Really? 

The Knicks won a championship for all of New York — the fans, the city, and the kids who grew up all across the city waiting for a moment like this. The way they celebrate matters greatly. This is not a celebration of a championship that will be enhanced by a White House visit driven by the owner’s personal relationship with the President. It will be a complicated event and the players should determine for themselves whether or not they wish to cross that bridge.

Associate Editor; Stanley G. Buford

Feel free to connect with this brother via Twitter; Stanley G. and also facebook; http://www.facebook.com/sgbuford.

Also his email addy is; StanleyG@ThyBlackMan.com.

Which is why watching the rest of this country finally wake up feels a little surreal. The sport isn’t coming here anymore. It already arrived, and the World Cup just made it impossible to ignore. The whole thing is unfolding right here as I write this, spread across the United States, Mexico, and Canada, the first World Cup shared by three host nations. Sixteen cities are carrying the tournament, including eleven in the United States, with stadiums filling up with people who painted their faces and learned chants in languages they don’t speak. And credit where it’s owed, the host nation has shown out. Fan zones packed shoulder to shoulder, strangers from forty different countries swapping jerseys outside the gates, volunteers walking lost visitors to the right train without breaking a sweat. We don’t always nail the big stuff, but we know how to throw a party, and the planet is finding that out in real time.

My neighbor, a man who spent twenty years swearing the beautiful game was boring, texted me at midnight after Türkiye dropped three on the United States. “Bro I’m hooked.” Three to two, last second drama, and suddenly he gets it. That is the part nobody warns you about. You don’t choose this thing. It chooses you, usually when you weren’t even looking.

Folks overseas have known forever. Walk through any neighborhood in São Paulo, Lagos, Naples, or Manchester and you’ll find children using two backpacks as a goal, dreaming the exact same dream. For them this was never a question. The planet stops for a month every four years, schools empty out, grown men weep in the street. America was the last big holdout, the cousin at the cookout who swore he didn’t like the music until the right song finally dropped.

And here’s the bit that still cracks me up. The entire world calls it football. Makes perfect sense, seeing as you play it with your feet. Then we came along, looked at a sport where a fella cradles a ball shaped like an egg in his arms and sprints, and decided that was football. The audacity. We took the one word that already had a job and handed it to a contest built on throwing and tackling. Beautiful country, terrible naming committee.

Respect has to be paid where it’s owed, though, and the names alone tell you why the rest of the globe never doubted. Pelé turned this into art before color television could keep up. Maradona carried an entire nation on one fierce, brilliant left foot. The Brazilian Ronaldo, the original, moved like a man who knew gravity was optional. Zidane had violence and grace living in the same body. Ronaldinho grinned so wide you forgot he was embarrassing grown professionals on national TV.

The current crop is no joke either. Messi spends his weekends in Miami now, suiting up in MLS of all places, which still feels like a typo whenever I say it out loud. The little maestro chose to live among us, and casual viewers are only beginning to grasp what they ignored for so long. Cristiano Ronaldo built himself into a machine through nothing but stubborn will, still banging them in deep into his forties like the calendar owes him money. Kylian Mbappé, a forward for La Liga club Real Madrid and the France national team, runs like a sports car with a conscience. Vinícius makes defenders look stuck in wet concrete. Haaland, a striker for Premier League club Manchester City and the Norway national team, scores the way the rest of us breathe. Lamine Yamal, a right winger for Barcelona and Spain, is barely old enough to vote and already bending matches to his will. Jude Bellingham, a midfielder for Real Madrid and England, struts around like he owns whatever pitch he stands on, and most nights he does.

We’ve grown our own too, which the doubters love to forget. Clint Dempsey competed with a chip on his shoulder the size of Texas. Landon Donovan gave us that goal against Algeria, the one that had office workers losing their minds on a Wednesday afternoon. Tim Howard once made sixteen saves in a single match and briefly turned into a folk hero. Now Christian Pulisic carries the badge, a kid from Pennsylvania holding his own among Europe’s finest, proof this place can produce more than skeptics.

What changed? The young changed it. A whole generation came up with the Premier League on Saturday mornings, La Liga and Serie A a click away by lunch, the Bundesliga and Ligue 1 humming in the background, with video games that taught them who plays where, with phone clips of impossible finishes looping past midnight. Major League Soccer grew up right in their backyard while the old heads weren’t paying attention. They never needed convincing. They walked in already fluent. Grandparents griped, parents shrugged, and the youngest among us quietly built a culture while everybody else argued about whether a draw was somehow un-American.

I think about my old high school squad sometimes. We were a mix of everybody, kids whose families came from Mexico, Ghana, El Salvador, and a few like me whose roots ran straight through the American South. On that field none of it mattered. You either passed the ball or you didn’t. This sport has always done that, flattened the differences, handed a common language to people who couldn’t otherwise order lunch together. That’s the secret the rest of the globe figured out generations back, and it’s the lesson landing in living rooms here right now whether folks asked for it or not.

The skeptics will hold out a while longer. Some of them always will, and that’s fine. But the tide already turned. You can feel it in the bars going dead silent before a penalty, in the office betting pools, in the way my once-stubborn neighbor now sends me tactical theories at two in the morning like he personally invented the back three. Conversion looks like that. Loud, sudden, slightly embarrassing.

So welcome, late as usual, but you made it. Pour into the seats, butcher the chants, fall hard for some defender on the other side of the planet you’ll be defending in arguments by August. The rest of us, the ones who loved this through every lean year, we’ll save you a spot. Just do me one small favor while you’re here.

Try, at least once, calling it football. The whole world is waiting on you.

Staff Writer; J.G. Lacour

Covering the NBA, NFL, college basketball, college football, and Major League Baseball from a Black man’s perspective. He loves the full world of sports, but the NFL remains his favorite.

Need to contact this bro, feel free to use this email address; JGLacour@ThyBlackMan.com.

First, we have the foreigners visiting the U.S. to cheer on their teams in this year’s World Cup soccer championship. As I wrote last week, it’s been heartwarming to see how much these people love America, and how surprised they’ve been to find that Americans are warm, welcoming, generous and kind people.

Another aspect of America that has astonished our guests is the number, size and variety of our businesses: restaurants of every type, small boutiques, “big box” supermarkets and corner grocers, food trucks, outdoor equipment and hunting stores (with their ubiquitous guns and ammo), mom-and-pop shops, little kids’ lemonade stands, delicatessens — you name it. Social media is filled with posts and videos in which visitors express their amazement at the quality of the food (and portion size!), “free” appetizers and soda refills, and the uncountable options and choices among America’s products and services.

That, my friends, is a consequence of America’s culture of entrepreneurship — a fact that some of the foreigners here have recognized and remarked upon with envy. One Canadian described us as “the most opportunity-dense country ever.”

He’s right.

So I was disappointed (though not surprised) when Pope Leo XIV posted on X a few days ago that food, water and health care shouldn’t be “commodities” that are subject to “market considerations.” In his follow-up post, he “appealed to governments” to “increase the resources dedicated to combating hunger and its root causes.”

Seriously? Governments are the chief “root causes” of hunger.

The key to adequate food production is not government but small business. Sorry, Holy Father, but food, water and health care are “commodities,” because their provision, for the most part, depends upon the work of other human beings. I would love to hear the pope praise and promote the market, individual initiative and entrepreneurial capitalism as the tickets to human flourishing that they are, instead of treating them as tawdry institutions to be tolerated at best, while government is hailed as the answer to every human problem.

Entrepreneurship meets human needs far better than governments ever have or ever will. This is true even in the world’s poorest nations. There, like everywhere else, people can start little businesses. But officials, regulations, laws, paperwork, permits, fees and taxes — all of which benefit the rich and promote corruption and fraud — stymie the growth of those businesses. When poor people are permitted to grow their businesses, they don’t stay poor.

That only happens when government gets out of the way.

As an American, Pope Leo should know better. But he apparently has a lot of company, even here in the States. In this week’s Democrat primaries in New York City, not one but three socialist candidates won their races.

Aber Kawas, a Muslim Palestinian activist and member of Democratic Socialists of America who has stated that the U.S. deserved 9/11 because of “white supremacy” and “Islamophobia,” won her primary for a New York state Senate race. Self-professed communist Darializa Chevalier defeated incumbent Adriano Espaillat to win the primary for the congressional seat in New York’s 13th district. Chevalier is a convert to Islam and a founder of Columbia University (why am I not surprised?) Apartheid Divest, which calls for an “international intifada” and the “eradication of western civilization,” the abolition of the police and immediate citizenship for all illegal aliens. And socialist Brad Lander defeated incumbent Dan Goldman for New York’s 10th district congressional seat. Lander, too, wants to abolish immigration enforcement, as well as pack the U.S. Supreme Court and pass $2 trillion in student loan debt onto the American taxpayers.

The DSA claims it’s only targeting “millionaires and billionaires” (and the world’s only trillionaire — at least on paper). If you believe that, your head is firmly wedged in your nethermost orifice. Time to read some real history — not the propaganda Western Leftists can get away with only because private enterprise insulates them and the societies they infect from the worst consequences of their ideologies.

Here’s the truth: Socialists and communists neither know how to make anything nor how to build an organization that provides goods or services people are willing to pay for. (Nope, a campaign isn’t the same thing.)

What they do instead is traffic in grievances for their personal aggrandizement.

They exploit ignorance and foster resentment, telling their followers that the only reason they have less is because others have more, and that it’s been stolen or gotten through greed and exploitation. In that vein, they love to focus on major multinational corporations and their extremely wealthy owners and CEOs, even though the backbone of American business is family-owned and small — the vast majority (80%-plus) of companies with employees have fewer than 20.

They preach that wealth is a zero sum game and a limited pie, and refuse to acknowledge that enterprise creates wealth that didn’t exist before, even though the evidence is everywhere. (Did we have the automotive industry 150 years ago? The personal computer industry 100 years ago? The smartphone industry 50 years ago?)

Socialists promise what they can never deliver: an unlimited supply of high-quality goods and services that are cheap or free. And they drive up costs for producers with restrictive regulations and taxes while demanding that prices cannot rise to keep up with those increasing costs.

The result is that businesses are forced to leave or close. Not the big corporations — at least, not at first — but the small ones that house, feed, employ and create the middle class. Then they raise taxes and costs even higher to make up the difference.

Sometimes they take over the businesses. Or even entire industries. That’s the beginning of a precipitous decline.

They don’t understand production, inventory management or balance sheets. With no competition, there’s no need for quality or customer service. So the production declines, the quality declines, the management declines and the rationing starts.

Complainers are smeared as greedy individualists or capitalist throwbacks who don’t want everyone to be “equal” and don’t understand that sacrifices have to be made for “progress.”

No one should be fooled by the presence of the erudite “intellectuals” leading these movements at the beginning. Those self-loathing, upper-class graduates of the best schools don’t last long, because unhappy masses can’t be kept in line (bread or otherwise) by pious platitudes.

No, that takes force. And that’s when the thugs take over.

This is what’s meant when pundits say, “You can vote yourself into socialism or communism, but you have to shoot your way out.”

The America that our World Cup visitors are marveling at was built by freedom-loving entrepreneurs operating within the reasonable structures of a limited government — people of every background who were willing to sacrifice much to build their American dream. We are all the beneficiaries of their hard work.

But what took 250 years to build can be destroyed by socialists within a very short time.

Written by Laura Hollis

Official website; http://law.nd.edu/directory/laura-hollis/

This is what the 2026 FIFA World Cup looks like on the ground across America, and it has been something to watch. Not just the matches, though those have delivered plenty, but the way ordinary Americans in city after city have met the world at the door and genuinely meant it. Nobody planned any of this. There was no campaign, no committee, no branded hashtag telling people to be kind to visitors. It just happened, because that is what a lot of Americans do when someone shows up needing help or a meal or a ride or just a reason to feel like they landed somewhere good.

In Chattanooga, Tennessee, locals and fans have waited for hours around Spain’s team hotel and public team events just to wave at Spain’s national team. In Greensboro, North Carolina, Norwegian fans rolled into town and found the local scene ready to welcome them, with Americans who had never given soccer much thought suddenly showing up in Viking colors ready to cheer. In Spokane, Washington, young fans got to see Mohamed Salah this month, one of the most famous footballers on the planet, simply because Egypt picked the city as its training base and people went down to see what was happening. In Dallas, Croatia got a downtown fan parade and a flag so big it needed several people just to keep it off the ground. These are not the cities that usually get written about in international dispatches. They showed up anyway.

Out on the roads between the big host cities, something even less expected has been happening. International visitors who rented cars and drove across rural Texas or through the Deep South between matches came back with stories they couldn’t stop telling. There have been stories of restaurant owners helping foreign fans get where they needed to go because their rides fell through, small-town spots welcoming British tourists with free food simply because they had come so far, and Alabama firefighters giving visiting supporters a full station tour and sending them away with free merchandise. None of this was organized. None of it was sponsored. People just did it.

The reaction from international visitors has been, in a word, stunned. Not in a bad way. Fans from Germany and Brazil have been posting videos of themselves inside Buc-ee’s like they stumbled into something sacred, which, if you’re from Texas, you understand completely. Free refills get their own reaction videos. So do the ice machines. So does the fact that someone behind a counter smiled at them without being required to. Marina De Buchi, a British entrepreneur living in California, told ABC News it keeps catching visitors off guard even when they think they’ve prepared themselves for it. “A lot of people say Americans are fake,” she said. “I just don’t think that’s true. I think Americans are just really nice and friendly.” She has lived here long enough to know the difference. She also said that for Americans themselves, hearing it has clearly meant something. “They hear a lot of bad at the moment. I’m glad to be seeing the rose-tinted-glasses side of it.”

That part is true and worth sitting with for a second. America has had a rough few years of looking at itself, and most of what it has seen has not been flattering. The World Cup has pointed the mirror a different direction, and what is coming back is a country that still knows how to open a door. Six players on the US Men’s National Team roster were born outside the United States, and the team reflects a larger immigrant and diasporic American story. Many of the people working the stadiums and driving the fans around and pouring the drinks came from somewhere else too, or are the children of people who did. That is not a footnote. That is the reason all of this works as well as it does.

Content creator Shawn Moran in Boston said his entire social media feed transformed overnight from its usual noise into something he barely recognized. “Seeing nothing but pure joy and happiness for a whole week has been the greatest thing,” he said. Hard to disagree. Boston Globe reporter Emily Sweeney put it the way most people in that city are feeling it right now: “With all the crazy things going on in the world, it’s really nice to just see people from all different places getting along.”

Visiting fans will forget the final scores long before they forget the person who drove them to a match, or bought them a drink, or put a traffic cone on a statue’s head and laughed about it with them. A World Cup lasts a few weeks. The memory of how a country made you feel lasts considerably longer.

America is not perfect. Anyone paying attention already knows that, and this summer has had its complicated chapters too. But the version of this country that has shown up at this World Cup, in its firehouses and dive bars and roadside travel centers, has been generous and curious and genuinely glad the world decided to come. That matters. And right now, the world is noticing.

Staff Writer; L.L. McKenna

Politics explained through the lens of justice and equity. Offering perspective that informs, challenges, and empowers.

One can contact this brother at; LLMcKenna@ThyBlackMan.com.

Politically, I consider him a liberal, though he would argue the point, but I digress.

He wanted to know my thoughts about ESPN sports commentator, Stephen A. Smith.

Smith and I travel in the same circles, but he has yet to have the pleasure of meeting me.  I find this amazing since we have actually been at several events at the same time.

But as usual, all things in due season.

My thoughts on Smith are based on my personal observations, conversations with industry insiders and those who have personal relationships with him.

My primary and most important thought on Smith is that he is greatly OVEREXPOSED!  Last time I checked, he was not Jamaican, but yet he has a million jobs.

He has shows on ESPN, YouTube, XM Sirius.  He is constantly being interviewed in one media format or another.

For those who do not know, I make a living by helping high profile people navigate all things media.

Smith’s trajectory is unsustainable and unnecessary.

I am not one to count other people’s money, but if media accounts are accurate, he recently signed a deal with ESPN that made him one of the highest paid individuals in sports media.  Included in his deal is the right to have his own production company and produce outside content that is not owned by ESPN.

This is not an uncommon arrangement with elite entertainers like him, but it is unnecessary.  At this point it is all about ego.  He is definitely not worried about paying his light bills every month.

I have had many clients go down this path and all have been destroyed by the ego associated with drinking from the cup of fortune and fame.

I tell every one of my clients, “Fortune and fame is like soap, the more you use it, the less you have.”

My advice to Smith is to focus on being even better on ESPN and not dilute his talents by being spread too thin.

A few outside projects every now and then is OK, but I see and hear him way too much.  When was the last time you heard the name Lizzo?  She is exhibit A in overexposure and then puuuffffff!

And this idiotic talk about him running for president?  Boy, please!!!

I understand why he is promoting and encouraging this type of speculation, but it will prove to be counter-productive to his brand.

One of the most insidious down sides of social media is that in order to continue to get subscribers, likes, and followers, you must constantly feed the beast!

How do you feed the beast?  Controversy!

You have to constantly engage in petty online fights with high profile people who you have never met or create show topics involving the underbelly of race, homosexuality, or sex.  The bigger you get, the more extreme your behavior must be.

Podcasters Joe Rogan and Jordan Peterson are two exceptions to this rule.  They are so genuine and substantive in their content that there is no need for them to play the fool for clicks and likes.  They feed the beast with their substance and it works for them.

If Smith were totally focused on his role with ESPN there would be no need for him to get into public pissing matches with people like former ESPN colleague, Jason Whitlock.

I have never nor will I ever understand how adults can get into a public feud with people that have absolutely no contact with their lives.  All parties come out looking like fools.

But this childish behavior feeds the beast.

Again, I do understand why Smith is encouraging this talk about running for president.  In political circles he is mocked and ridiculed because he is not a well-read person and it shows.

Smith reminds me of people like Jasmine Crockett, LeBron James, Steve Kerr to name a few.  Just because you have a platform to speak from does not mean you need to comment on everything.

Sometimes silence is the loudest statement one can make.

I have heard Smith pontificate on political issues that made me cringe.

Solomon once told me in Proverbs 4:7, “Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom: and with all thy getting get understanding.”

It is not enough for someone like Smith to quote statistics, though sometimes they come in handy.  He needs to be able to demonstrate that he has the understanding to go along with the statistics.

He who knows how will always have a job.  He who knows why will always be his boss.

There is no question that Smith has the how down pat.  He is a very intelligent person, but he needs to do much better on the why part.

He has carved out a niche for himself in media and he should be proud of his accomplishments.  He has worked his butt off and deserves all the accolades and money he can get.

But he must not lose focus on what got him to this point in his career—sports.  Not politics, pop culture, or foreign affairs.

My friend I was having dinner with finally told me why he had a sudden interest in my views of Smith.  For various reasons he assumed that I had a personal relationship with Smith and he trusted me to deliver a discreet message to him.

The top executives at ESPN also think that Smith is doing too much but they are afraid to have this conversation with him because they are terrified of any possible racial implications that could end up in a lawsuit.

This is what America has come to when it comes to race relations.  A major company like ESPN and its white executives are too afraid to have a man-to-man conversation with one of their top employees because he is Black.

Stephen, we have many mutual friends and so I am quite sure this column will somehow get to you.

I do not know if you have surrounded yourself with people who tell you what you want to hear or those who tell you what you need to hear.  Far too often it is the former and not the latter.

My unsolicited advice to you is to get back to your first love—sports journalism.  This social media is going to further damage your brand.  I think you are better than that.

With your production company, I would love to see you do documentaries and in-depth feature reporting.  Social media could be used to compliment this long form of journalism.

This will also make you more valuable to ESPN.

Social media is like the tinkling cymbal or the sounding brass full of sound and fury signifying nothing.

I can easily see you being a billion-dollar enterprise if you get back to your roots and not try to be all things to all men.

Stay thirsty my friend.

Staff Writer; Raynard Jackson

This talented brother is a Pulitzer Award nominated columnist and founder and chairman of Black Americans for a Better Future (BAFBF), a federally registered 527 Super PAC established to get more Blacks involved in the Republican Party. BAFBF focuses on the Black entrepreneur. For more information about BAFBF, visit www.bafbf.org. You can follow Raynard on Twitter; RealRaynardJ; on Gettr: RaynardJackson.

Can also drop him an email at; RaynardJ@ThyBlackMan.com.

It would be hard to find a passage that better reflects this year’s World Cup soccer (OK, OK — “football”) championship, which the U.S. is hosting for the first time since 1994.

But not because the other nations participating in this year’s World Cup are our “enemies.” To the contrary, the reactions of the athletes and fans from other countries who have traveled to and through the U.S. to compete and to cheer on their favorite teams have been nothing short of astounding; in fact, they have taken social media by storm, and Americans by surprise.

Turns out, our guests love America and Americans, and they’re telling us why.

I’ll just mention a few instances.

FIFA has, of course, placed teams in cities where they have access to proper-sized practice fields. In many cases, that has meant college towns. Lawrence, Kansas, for example, home to the University of Kansas, is hosting the Algerian national team and has welcomed them with open arms. The Jayhawks’ marching band learned the Algerian national anthem to welcome the team to the field. Lawrence residents have regularly shown up at the stadium waving Algerian flags and cheering on the players, who reciprocated by inviting local children to practice with them and autographing soccer balls.

Aspects of American culture that have amazed and delighted World Cup fans visiting our country include “big box” stores like Costco, Buc-ee’s and Bass Pro Shops, free chips and salsa at Mexican restaurants, Waffle House, soda machines with dozens of flavor add-ins, free soda refills (and OMG, all the ice), the number of screens at our sports bars, Texas barbecue, Southern sweet tea, biscuits and gravy, the size of college and high school (American) football stadiums, Portillo’s in Chicago, hamburgers (everywhere) and the French Quarter in New Orleans. (They were understandably less thrilled with the heat and humidity in the South and the horrendous thunderstorms and tornados that are endemic to the American Midwest in the summer, but they’ve been troopers about it.)

Other World Cup highlights so far have included the Norway team’s incomparable Viking photo, Scotland fans (the “Tartan Army”) renting a boat in Boston Harbor for a “booze cruise” and drinking the bars in downtown Boston dry, fans from Japan cleaning up stadiums after a game, Dutch revelers singing “Sweet Caroline,” a Dallas pub handing out “World Cup passports” and giving stamps for every game guests watch there, and the Czech national team attending a rodeo in Fort Worth, Texas.

This World Cup is, quite frankly, the best thing to happen to international relations in decades.

Some of the foreign soccer fans visiting the States have posted so frequently that they’ve acquired an enormous fan base here. Tommo from England, Freddy from Germany and Shaun from Scotland have been surprised at the joy and generosity their heartfelt posts have inspired among Americans. But buried within some of these posts is a big reason: They — and others — have acknowledged that much of what they’d previously heard about America was negative. It’s only now that they’ve traveled here and seen things for themselves that they’re realizing what they were told isn’t true.

They aren’t the only ones. Watching, reading and listening to our foreign guests sing our praises has made many of us realize just how much of what we hear about ourselves is negative and false.

Where do we hear this from? The same places the Europeans do: the press, certain politicians and intellectuals harangue us 24/7/365 with their opinions that America is a country founded on “systemic racism” and only prosperous because of “white supremacy”; that Americans are greedy individualists who are racist, sexist and fill-in-the-blank-phobic; that we “hate brown people,” that we’re infected with “toxic masculinity,” and that our national pride is a tool of oppression.

Seeing the robust nationalism of the French, Germans, Italians, Swedes, Japanese, Norwegians, Greeks, Algerians, Scots and countless others while simultaneously being on the receiving end of so many kind and grateful observations from them about our country and our people has been a real eye-opener and a shot in the arm. To be blunt, it’s like having been in an abusive relationship for years with someone who hates you and realizing — finally — that you can get out.

That’s not hyperbole. American institutions dominated by the political Left — which include the media, entertainment industry and academia — have spent the past 50 years telling us how awful we are and that the rest of the world justifiably hates us.

Too many Americans believe that and behave accordingly, with incensed TikToks, constant protests, riots and shrill demands to “tear down” the American economic and political systems and replace them with collectivism that is “less selfish” and “more compassionate.” The rest may not swallow the self-loathing propaganda but have nevertheless felt beaten down, marginalized, silenced and frustrated.

And now: a break in the clouds; a ray of sunlight; a glimpse of the truth; an epiphany that is a shock to the system in the best possible way. Americans are being told by the very people we were assured despised us that our country is beautiful and diverse; that our parks are family-friendly and our athletic facilities are second to none; that our traditions (and yes, we have them) are meaningful and distinctive; that our food is delicious and our restaurants and bars are bountiful; that our superstores are marvels of supply and organization with bathrooms so clean you could eat off the floor; that the workers in our service industries take real pride in excellent service.

And that we as a people are generous, kind, funny, inclusive, helpful, positive, warm and welcoming.

The professional malcontents who’ve built their lucrative careers making us hate ourselves are the selfish ones. Those deceitful frauds — not the citizens of other nations — are the “enemies” of Psalm 23 who are wailing and gnashing their teeth as the Lord shows us — through the eyes of our foreign visitors — that though we are imperfect, we are still good and decent and richly blessed.

It’s time to reject, once and for all, the hollow accusations of the Left, as well as the shackles that come with them. Our nation’s 250th birthday is next month; this World Cup is the best present ever.

Written by Laura Hollis

Official website; http://law.nd.edu/directory/laura-hollis/

A German named Freddy came to Atlanta and made his way up to North Georgia, went tubing on the Chattahoochee, drove through Chattanooga and on to Auburn, Ala. He has been tweeting it all home in stunned, joyful disbelief. Auburn’s eagle flies around the stadium. There was a military flyover — he had never seen one. At sunset over the stadium, he wrote that the European mind cannot comprehend the moment. He and his friends went to a Buc-ee’s at one in the morning, bought brisket sandwiches and Beaver Nuggets, and ate them sitting on a pile of bagged deer corn. He is having the time of his life.

A man from Spain stood at the rim of the Grand Canyon and wept. Another couple could not believe Memphis has a pyramid. Visitors stood slack-jawed at the ducks marching through the Peabody and at the width of the Mississippi, a river that makes the Thames look like a drainage ditch. A young woman drove across Indiana and could not get over the size of the houses — the houses of people we would call poor. And she is not wrong to be amazed: the poorest state in America, Miss., now posts a median income that outpaces much of Western Europe.

Think about the asymmetry. We fly to Spain to see cathedrals and to Rome to stand among ruins two thousand years older than our republic. We assume the old world holds the wonders. Here are the people of the old world, crossing an ocean and crying at our canyon, marveling at Memphis, a city we just sent the National Guard to help. They look at what we walk past every day and cannot believe their luck at getting to see it.

Now look at us.

We are weeks from our 250th birthday, and we are spending the run-up like a country in a midlife crisis. We talk about a “national divorce” as if we could simply cut the cord and walk away — as if the heartland of California weren’t ruby red and the cities of the reddest states weren’t deep blue, as if we weren’t all hopelessly, beautifully intermarried. We have decided that political disagreement is grounds to call one another evil. We marinate online in our own outrage, believing the worst about our neighbors because a screen confirmed it, passing around lies because the lie flatters what we already wanted to think. We go looking for America at its worst, and the algorithm is happy to oblige.

The strangers at our door are finding America at its best. One group of fans reached their hotel in the rain with no way to the stadium and no public transit in sight. The receptionist put them in her own car and drove them to the game. That is not a marketing campaign. That is just an American being an American.

Two hundred and fifty years ago, 56 men signed their names to a document that pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor to forge this nation. Some went bankrupt. Some watched their property seized and their children buried. They staked everything so that we could inherit a country so abundant, so free, and so safe that we now have the luxury of despising one another over politics from the comfort of our phones.

Maybe the foreigners have it right. Maybe the eagle and the flyover and the canyon and the kindness of a stranger with car keys really are worth crossing an ocean to see. Maybe, watching them fall in love with the place we take for granted, we could fall in love with it again ourselves and decide to be a little more charitable to the neighbor God told us to love, even when we cannot stand how he votes.

Written by Erick Erickson 

Official website; https://x.com/EWErickson

There will be millions and millions of soccer fans watching World Cup matches and rooting their countries on and there is even a major betting component as well. According to gambling industry research firm Eilers & Krejcik, the U.S. betting on the FIFA World Cup 2026 tournament projects to land “between $2.3 billion and $4.3 billion, a wide variance dictated by whether the U.S. men’s national team exits early or makes a deep run”. Although gambling and money will play a major role in the interest in this World Cup, the usual nationalism and people rooting for countries will still play the biggest role. But to due the current geopolitics of today, it leads many to the belief that FIFA World Cup 2026 is an event overshadowed by controversy.

One of the most notable features of this FIFA World Cup it is the first FIFA World Cup to be hosted by three nations as it is hosted by Mexico, Canada, and the U.S. It is hosted by 11 different U.S. cities for this over month-long tournament. Due to the U.S. being a major hosting site, it makes it dicey for countries currently engaged with geopolitical conflict with the U.S. to have World Cup representation in the U.S. And Iran is one of those countries. Less than four months ago, FIFA was monitoring the developments in Iran due to the military action between the U.S. and Iran for the last several months.

It was just earlier this month that the players on Iran’s World Cup soccer team received visas that allowed them to enter and compete in the U.S. in this year’s World Cup. Somali referee Omar Artan wasn’t as fortunate as he was denied entry into the U.S. as the only World Cup referee from Somalia. Unfortunately, Artan’s treatment wasn’t the only time Africans linked to this event got unequitable treatment. U.S. authorities inspected Senegal’s national team players as shortly after they got off the plane in the U.S. and they were subjected to tight inspections and physical searches.

Even before this year’s FIFA World Cup began, there were calls by various people and groups to boycott this year’s event. The Anti-Fascist Football Coalition joined the call to boycott the tournament and argued that the World Cup should be boycotted due to U.S. human rights violations, repression against migrants, and security measures linked to World Cup preparations. At this year’s most popular soccer tournament in the world, expect to see plenty of soccer fans but also plenty of protesters throughout the entire tournament as well.

Staff Writer; Mark Hines

It was always about the marketing and promotion of the homosexual agenda.  It was a brilliant move at first glance; but as with all things liberal, the NBA (the men’s league) and liberals took it too far!

Most, if not all of the major sports leagues are controlled and run by radical liberals and David Stern was no exception.

Stern was born in New Jersey and spent all of his life between there and New York City, both being the bastions of liberalism.

Stern became commissioner of the NBA in 1984.  During this time the NBA TV ratings were plummeting,  the NBA had an image problem—it had become too “ghettoized,” and the league had several high-profile drug issues with prominent players.

In other words, the NBA was damaged goods in the eyes of the corporate community, i.e., advertisers and Stern’s immediate mandate was to rehabilitate the NBA’s image.

TV viewership was down, games were broadcast on tape delay, not live like it is today and corporate sponsors made it clear to Stern that they thought the league was “too Black.”

The final assessment by the new NBA commissioner was that they must find a way to make the NBA more appealing to females because their corporate underwriters were very keen on this demographic.

Before Stern could focus on the creation of the WNBA, he had to first clean up all the other issues negatively impacting the NBA.

And guess who was the point person for the creation of the WNBA?  None other than the current commissioner of the NBA, Adam Silver.

Welllll, isn’t that special?

Silver was the executive in charge under Stern for the WNBA’s creation from concept to launch.  Like Stern, Silver comes from an ultra-liberal background.

They both saw the NBA and the WNBA as the perfect vehicles to promote their socialist agenda of “equality,” for “marginalized communities,” especially females!

Of all the professional sports leagues, the NBA is by far the most radically liberal.

During his last few years of being commissioner, David Stern had been putting immense pressure on the WNBA to become profitable or he would shutter the league.

It should come as no surprise that the NBA’s most recent collective bargaining agreement (CBA) from 2023 forced advertisers to include the WNBA or there would be no deal.

While the NBA CBA did not explicitly force WNBA advertisers to include the WNBA, the CBA’s economic and branding effects have strengthened the WNBA’s position as a valuable co-branded partner, making it more common for advertisers to include it in campaigns that span both leagues.

The WNBA recently signed their new CBA deal based on the coercion the NBA used to help them artificially inflate their TV rights and advertising deals with various NBA sponsors.

In its nearly thirty years of existence, the WNBA has never made a profit.  But liberals have a history of tolerating financial loses as the cost of promoting their radical agenda, in this case the homosexual movement.

This radical agenda is why parents en masse refuse to take their children to a WNBA game or watch it on TV.  Most parents refuse to expose their children to this radical agenda.

When Stern became commissioner, he was surrounded by closeted homosexual executives who became emboldened to come out of the closet under Sterns’ leadership.  Under Silver coming out of the closet was put on steroids.

Recent polling data shows that the aggressive promotion of the radical homosexual agenda in sports in particular and society in general is becoming less accepted by the public.

Corporate support for homosexual activities is drying up because this radical agenda is negatively impacting their profits.  How did things work out for Target and Anheuser Busch?

Consistent with liberals being willing to lose money to promote a cause that is antithetical to America it should not be a surprise that the one person who is a God send to the WNBA is being roundly rejected by league officials and its players.

I am speaking about none other than WNBA sensation Caitlin Clark.  Because she is a heterosexual white girl from a two-parent home, has no tattoos and has a boyfriend she has basically been ostracized within the league.

The league and her team, the Indiana Fever refuse to include her in league or team marketing materials even though she is by far the most popular female athlete in the world, not just the U.S.

Clark represents everything that is good about America, but since she is heterosexual, white, and not liberal she is being rejected.

If the WNBA was about basketball and its expansion, Clark would be the face of the league.  But since the league is about pushing a radical political agenda, homosexuality, they are willing to continue to lose money for the foreseeable future.

Even after nearly thirty years of existence, having never earned a profit, and pushing away their fanbase because of their promotion of homosexuality; there continues to be no business case for the WNBA’s continued existence.

Staff Writer; Raynard Jackson

This talented brother is a Pulitzer Award nominated columnist and founder and chairman of Black Americans for a Better Future (BAFBF), a federally registered 527 Super PAC established to get more Blacks involved in the Republican Party. BAFBF focuses on the Black entrepreneur. For more information about BAFBF, visit www.bafbf.org. You can follow Raynard on Twitter; RealRaynardJ; on Gettr: RaynardJackson.

Can also drop him an email at; RaynardJ@ThyBlackMan.com.