Another day, another debate about whether or not we should play college football this fall. On Thursday’s edition of First Take, Max Kellerman talked about the effect not playing the sport in the fall could have on November’s election. He did not mince words or hide his feelings about fans of one particular conference.
Kellerman referred to a comment his co-host Stephen A. Smith made recently that Donald Trump could be in trouble with a part of the country he has been able to rely on for unconditional support if there was not SEC football this fall. Kellerman disagreed, insinuating that the fanbase was too gullible to recognize that no football would be the result of mismanagement of the Covid-19 Pandemic at every level.
“They (SEC football fans) seem to be susceptible to very low quality information and easy to propagandize and almost immune to facts. Because, as Kellyanne Conway, Trump’s advisor, said, they have alternative facts,” Kellerman said. “If they stay in their propaganda silos — like the Fox News propaganda silo — it wouldn’t matter what happened because they’d say the handling of the pandemic has been great.”
It is interesting to wonder what effect no college football would have on the election in that part of the country. In the Deep South, college football is a cultural institution. It is worth asking what the political ramifications of taking that away might be.
Whether or not it is interesting content though, the presentation couldn’t have made Kellerman’s bosses happy. ESPN won a major bidding war for the SEC’s top media rights in December. No company wants one of its employees insulting the target audience for a product it just sunk $400 million into.
The top television package for SEC football is currently with CBS. It will stay on that network until the end of the 2023 season. Each week, every SEC football game not on CBS airs on an ESPN network, including the SEC Network, which is co-owned by the conference and ESPN.
Max Kellerman is ‘immune to saying anything intelligent’! He proves it everyday. Max should stick to the only sport that he ‘claims he knows’ – Boxing! A sport that is a shell of what it once was.