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Only a fool would try to extrapolate what happened on election night and tell you what’s next. While I am a fool, I will refrain from doing so.
Instead, I’ll ponder a question. Will the ripple effects from Tuesday’s Blue Tsunami make their way to the sports media world? I ask because we’re only two years removed from seeing how shifting political headwinds can affect the industry and its content.
This political outcome didn’t happen overnight. We can debate the specific reasons, but the person at the center of this seismic change is Donald Trump, and America’s desire to pull away or move past him has been months in the making.
I think about that when I look around at the state of the sports media world and how some of the things he affected or influenced are already fraying at the edges.
The Vibe Shift That Wasn’t
Remember the Trump Vibe Shift? That sense that, as David Wallace-Wells put it, “the country would be moving MAGA-ward — both in politics and beyond it.”
We saw it in the ways sports leagues changed their policies and even their histories to appease a new cultural worldview. We saw it with the mainstream acceptance of Barstool Sports and Pat McAfee’s world domination. LIV Golf’s presumed domination thanks to Saudi backing and Trump approval. The ascension of prediction markets and gambling’s complete infiltration of sports media. Some have argued we’ve seen it in the choices companies like ESPN make about which talent gets featured and which gets let go.
Whether because of his TACO tendencies or the cold, hard realities of the American legal system, we’ve since learned there was no real reason for any company, network, or league to fall in line with any of that. In fact, as his popularity waned and he became radioactive, the only logical answer was to break cleanly with Trump and his broken vision of America. And slowly but surely, many of those shifts have started to reverse, with some already running their course.
On Wednesday, it was reported that LIV, once seemingly destined to rule the golf world, had lost its critical funding and was, in essence, dead. There was a certain kind of harmony to that news dropping the day after the election.
The Cracks Are Already Visible
We’ve spent a lot of time talking about Pat McAfee and College GameDay recently, trying to suss out that feeling that, despite its impossible-to-ignore success, something feels decidedly off about the show’s current version.
I don’t want to draw a direct line between McAfee and Trump (although they’re clearly two peas in a pod). However, while McAfee draws an audience and commands attention, there’s also no denying he’s overextended his welcome with everyone beyond his core audience. Sound familiar?
The Trump Vibe Shift might have been real, but it didn’t last long, and it took even less time for things to start swinging back. It’s a lesson one hopes that GameDay heeds. The show, like McAfee, has been acting like things are how they are right now and will be forever, so there’s little reason to worry about accountability. But one only needs to look at the state of American politics to see that nothing lasts and accountability comes for us all.
McAfee’s Utah cry-session and ESPN’s full-throated defense of him had all the earmarks of a Trump Vibe Shift-era scenario. Woe unto the rich and famous guy whose name was besmirched by a couple of students. But if America sent a message on Tuesday that it’s tired of that act, it stands to reason that it goes for McAfee, not just Trump. And the reaction to him since then has certainly demonstrated that.
Less a Shift Than a Reset
It’s worth noting that even though the Democrats just rebalanced much of the political power in America, Donald Trump is still the president. So it’s unlikely we’ll see a seismic shift as we did after the 2024 election. But you do get the sense that a reset of sorts is happening right now, not just in sports media but in many areas of our culture.
LIV is (effectively) dead. Fox has admitted defeat on the Dave Portnoy Experiment. Prediction markets still thrive, but regulation is coming. McAfee is the king of ESPN, but he’s worn out his welcome. The Republican-friendly Protect College Sports Act might be DOA now. And as Trump enters lame duck status, few entities will feel the need to kowtow to him for much longer.
The impact is more likely to show up in drips and drabs, but perhaps a year or two from now, we’ll look around at the sports media landscape and realize everything has changed. As we were reminded on Tuesday, sometimes things work one way today and another way tomorrow, and it’s impossible to know when that next shift might happen.
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