Can We Still be Romantic About Sports?

Seriously, can we have anything nice?

By Megan Armstrong

Claiming the Kansas City Chiefs in the era of Andy Reid, Patrick Mahomes, and Travis Kelce became fashionable over the past eight years. Is it a football franchise or a pop culture touchstone? The defining dynasty of the decade or the backdrop to a storybook romance of the ages? Hard to tell. But I grew up a Chiefs fan when making the playoffs only to lose in the first round was the best you could hope for. Still, I loved the team implicitly. Their wins and losses were mine. I saw the world through red-and-gold-colored glasses — and then I grew up.

I remember waiting in the snow for hours as a second- or third-grader to get Dante Hall’s autograph, only to be next in line at the exact moment he was shuffled off to another engagement. I remember Priest Holmes, seemingly invincible, suffering severe neck and spine trauma. I remember feeling a knot in my stomach when allegations that Larry Johnson assaulted women surfaced. I’ll never forget the morning Jovan Belcher murdered his girlfriend and killed himself in the Arrowhead Stadium parking lot. This was all before I fully grasped the problematic origins of my favorite football team’s name.

(KeithBishop/iStock)

This isn’t a Chiefs oral history, despite appearances. All of this is to say that I am not naive to the fact that abuse, corruption, depravity, discrimination, and all sorts of scandals have been present in sports since the dawn of sports. Cognitive dissonance has always been a prerequisite for sports fandom, and sports have always been a societal microcosm. The best of us, the worst of us, and the ambiguous in-between. That presence is not new, and it’s not altogether bad; blind idolatry isn’t better, but its prevalence is escalating rapidly.

Though I can vividly remember the formative collisions between my conscience and my fandom, I can’t keep track of all the troubling occurrences from the past month alone. Some of that is the product of an overwhelming, unrelenting news cycle, sure, but it teeters on corruption becoming normalized. And we cannot allow any of this be normalized.

• Steve Tisch, whose family owns a 45% stake in the New York Giants, was exposed in the Epstein files. The NFL released a lukewarm statement, and Tisch remains an owner. An active NFL owner socializing with an infamous pedophile, convicted sex offender, and human trafficker being a mere bullet point here sort of says it all.

• Bradley William Davis reported on “four NBA teams — the Atlanta Hawks, Sacramento Kings, Charlotte Hornets, and Minnesota Timberwolves — with minority ownership directly linked to profiting from the federal government’s ICE-run mega jail shopping spree.”

• The Los Angeles Dodgers reportedly plan to celebrate their World Series championship with President Donald Trump at the White House, with manager Dave Roberts saying, in part, “I am going to continue to try to do what tradition says and not try to make political statements, because I am not a politician.” This came after Latin Dodger fans spoke out about feeling conflicted over cheering for a team that didn’t have much to say about the immigration raids in Los Angeles.
  

• WNBA players are a beacon of integrity and political or social activism, but there might not be a 2026 season because of ongoing contract negotiations with the league, which is balking at paying these women what they’re worth. The main sticking points are revenue sharing and housing support.

• Super Bowl LX was the exclamation point on an inspiring turnaround by Seattle Seahawks quarterback Sam Darnold, but it was drowned out by the racist outcry over Bad Bunny’s halftime performance. And the game was littered with incessant commercials promoting sports gambling and AI.

This entire piece could be about sports betting eroding the purity of sports. Capitalism strikes again and, in fact, has never struck harder. Former NBA referee Tim Donaghy’s 2007 betting scandal seems quaint by comparison. If athletes weren’t viewed as commodities first and humans second before, they certainly are now. Ben Golliver even floated that “angry gambling companies” and “angry gamblers” may have pressured NBA commissioner Adam Silver to punish teams for overt tanking.

One of the more peculiar developments happened earlier this month. Milwaukee Bucks perennial All-Star Giannis Antetokounmpo casually announced he joined predictive market Kalshi as a shareholder, which is a conflict of interest. Silver waved it off during his annual NBA All-Star Weekend press conference, stating that Antetokounmpo’s involvement with Kalshi as “a minuscule investment, much smaller than 1 percent, so that does not violate the rules that have been collectively bargained.” As independent sports journalist Joon Lee pointed out, “Kalshi is worth $11 billion. Giannis is allowed to own up to 1% under NBA rules. 1% of Kalshi is worth $110 million. 0.5% of Kalshi is worth $55 million.”

So, though Antetokounmpo isn’t breaking any rules, it doesn’t sit well, especially because no NBA player generates more free agency or trade talk than Antetokounmpo. Just ask Kalshi.

On the Jan. 28 episode of FS1’s First Things First, Danny Parkins said, “The basketball romantic in me hopes that Milwaukee and Giannis figure it out.”

And it raises the question: Can we still be romantic about sports right now?

I want to believe the answer is yes. But the answer can’t be yes without caveats. Sports escapism, to me, has never felt more arduous. I still believe live sports are the pinnacle of theater, but the average American fan has been all but priced out of supporting their teams, either by Fanatics’ monopoly or Ticketmaster’s monopoly. If we want to preserve the best parts about our sports, especially our community through sports, we also have to carry the increasingly heavy burden of discernment. Being romantic about sports shouldn’t be synonymous with passive delusion.

Accountability is quickly becoming an antique in this country, so fans have to hold themselves even more accountable for who or what is worth their support.

Pablo Torre, host of Pablo Torre Finds Out and co-host of The Contrarian’s Offsides with Pablo Torre, put it best. When asked by a user on X (formerly and forever known as Twitter), “Do you even like sports?” Torre replied, “Yeah. It’s why I’m trying to hold politicians and billionaires to account when they use sports to launder their images, and even worse. Not least because they’re poisoning sports in the process. Do you?”

That is the ultimate question.

Politicians and billionaires have overrun society with calculated chaos and brazen depravity. Silver, the NBA commissioner, is happy to participate. He announced at his All-Star Weekend presser that he’s willing to let the AI and tech billionaires execute “probably the most significant change, certainly in my lifetime, in how sports are presented.” He said he expects AI to “hyper-personalize” NBA telecasts. As The Athletic’s Adam Crafton said, “The impact of hyper-personalizing the sports viewing experience may be to shatter its true potency: being one of the few things left in society which can be a shared and collective experience.”

Ugly people doing ugly things are destroying everything that enriches us — everything that unites us, sports included — diluting or outright deleting our humanity. Their misery tarnishes our joy if we let it.

Do we care enough to fight back?

If that answer is yes, then the prospect of being a sports romantic becomes more appealing, if not necessary, to stay connected to our humanity.

When I was a kid, before I knew people were capable of evil and that the world could be unjust, I marveled at sports. Knowing what I know now, I’m still emotionally invested. The Chiefs’ recent run — three championships in five Super Bowl trips in six years – gave me so much. When I watch any game, Chiefs or otherwise, I reconnect with why I loved sports in the first place.

But I don’t want the red-and-gold-colored glasses back. Sports are filled with complicated people, which is why they’re so captivating. I want to see sports in totality, appreciating the beauty and calling out depraved off-field behavior.

I care enough not to let the worst of the worst ruin the good.

Megan Armstrong is a freelance journalist, podcast producer, and perpetual content consumer. Her work has appeared in Billboard, Boardroom, Esquire, GQ, GRAMMY.com, NYLON, Teen Vogue, The Kansas City Star, The Hollywood Reporter, UPROXX, and elsewhere.

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