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It’s ok to use sports as an escape from politics

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January 27, 2026
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It's ok to use sports as an escape from politics

Hello and welcome to another edition of Free Agent! Break out those ice skates and get to work this week, people. There’s a lot to get done.

We’ll start today by talking a little bit about what’s going on in Minnesota with federal immigration agents, because it’s intersecting with the sports world (at least a little bit). Then we’ll move on to the NFL, followed by college football, and close with a quick Super Bowl survey. Click here and let me know who you’re rooting for.

There are certain times when those of us who constantly check the news for a living realize a story has broken through the containment of the too-online political bubble and is getting a strong reaction from the “normies” who have everyday jobs outside of politics. The killing of Alex Pretti in Minnesota on Saturday at the hands of federal law enforcement, two and a half weeks after the killing of Renee Good, was one of those moments. If the backlash were just coming from the usual anti-Trumpers, it’d be one thing—but I’ve seen people speak out about this after having hardly a peep to say about politics in the years that I’ve known them. Polls seem to confirm the vibe shift. Many on the right, even the very conservative editorial board at the New York Post, are calling for de-escalation because the anti-immigration tactics are “backfiring.”

But it’s not the only thing that matters in the world. Right or wrong, there are a lot of people in Seattle, New England, and the rest of the country who were more interested in what happened on two football fields on Sunday than in what happened to Pretti on Saturday. Based on public reaction, those people probably thought Pretti’s killing was wrong—but they also didn’t know him, and they haven’t invested years of emotional energy into supporting him like they have into their sports team. Caring about both things is more than possible.

Politics, thankfully, is not the only thing in the world, or even the most important thing. It’s OK to be unhappy about what the second Trump administration is doing. It’s also OK to find an outlet to escape the madness for a while, sports or otherwise.

Not having to care about politics is usually a privilege. It means we’re more focused on the things that matter to us—family, friends, work, hobbies—and that there’s no government threat to harm or take those things away. Politics is frequently toxic, rarely principled, and productive conversations are hard to come by. Sports are often a haven from politics, where we can watch and be entertained without worrying about the state of the world or what the government is going to do (though the increasingly common government interference in sports is why this newsletter exists).

There are people in Minnesota, Chicago, Maine, and elsewhere who don’t really have a choice but to care about politics right now—not just the people who are worried about deportation, but also the people who are just trying to drive their kids home from basketball practice without having their car tear-gassed. But there are also people who have their own problems to worry about.

So don’t feel bad about obsessing over sports right now, even if the people around you are obsessed with politics. You should care about what’s happening (and read all about it on Reason.com), but it’s also fine to unplug and focus on what matters most to you. If someone asks you something along the lines of “How does it feel to be American right now?”,  it’d be fair to answer with some righteous indignation about what the Trump administration is doing. But it would also be fair to answer with your own politics-free version of what American tennis player Amanda Anisimova said.

While a lot of football fans were thinking about Sam Darnold’s redemption arc with the Seattle Seahawks and the resurgence of the New England Patriots, I also had two other, way less successful franchises on my mind: the Tennessee Titans and the Cleveland Browns. Even though both are hapless organizations without much hope of turning things around anytime soon, politicians for some reason want to shovel taxpayer dollars in their direction anyway.

The Titans are catching flak for firing Super Bowl-bound coach Mike Vrabel after the 2023 season. Vrabel initially had four winning seasons and three playoff runs with the team before cooling off in his last two seasons and getting fired. Now the team has an early draft pick and still can’t get anything right.

But in 2027, the team will get a shiny new stadium, owned by the Nashville government, and partially paid for with $1.26 billion of taxpayer money (a record when the deal was announced).

Meanwhile in Ohio (a phrase that never bodes well), the Browns have one playoff win this millennium, are still saddled with Deshaun Watson’s contract that might be the worst in NFL history (taking up cap space through 2029), and they can’t figure out why no one wants to coach for them.

Yet Ohio politicians would like to spend $900 million in taxpayer dollars on building the Browns a new stadium—$300 million of that coming from the “city” of Brook Park (population 18,063), where the new stadium will be. Another $600 million will come from the state releasing Ohioans’ unclaimed funds for the project (which might be unconstitutional).

It is one thing (though still economically ignorant) for a politician to glom onto a successful team in hopes of getting some fame by association. But politicians spending tax dollars on teams whose fans spend half the season with paper bags over their heads is surprising to me. Politicians picking winners and losers is never a good idea—and picking the losers to get subsidies is even more embarrassing.

Keep an eye out for the next episode of The Reason Interview With Nick Gillespie, where Eric Boehm fills in for Nick and interviews economist J.C. Bradbury on the folly of stadium subsidies. It drops on Wednesday wherever you get your podcasts.

There was a lot of complaining this year about the scheduling of the College Football Playoff National Championship game (my bigger complaint is over how many words it takes to say that). Having the college football championship on a Monday night is bad for viewership, critics said, and hype for the game was getting swallowed up by the NFL.

Turns out none of that matters when you have an exciting game that goes down to the wire!

The game got absolutely insane ratings, peaking at 33.2 million viewers. Contrary to Richard Deitsch’s doomsayer prediction above, it was the second-most-watched championship of the College Football Playoff era.

What sports fans want (if their team isn’t winning) is drama with high stakes. In every sport, we often see people say “the league” is rooting for the teams from large media markets to make it far in the playoffs so that they’ll get big TV ratings and better media rights deals in the future. But for TV ratings, what matters more than which teams are in a game is how close that game is (and in a best-of-seven series, how decisive a game is). In a world where we can check scores on our phones, most people will look up the game before tuning in anyway.

But get ready for the same complaints next year: The championship game isn’t until January 25 (also a Monday).

Who are you rooting for in the Super Bowl? The redemption arc of Sam Darnold or the up-and-coming Drake Maye? The up-and-coming Mike Macdonald or the redemption arc of Mike Vrabel? The inevitability of Jaxon Smith-Njigba or the star power of someone on the Patriots that I haven’t mentioned yet?

I want to know who our readership is rooting for. Take this extremely short survey, let me know what you think, and we’ll discuss the results next week.

Sorry Rams fans, but what if? This basically ended up as a Seahawks’ rugby-style punt to their own team, Maybe the NFL should allow that instead of downed punts!

That’s all for this week. Enjoy watching the real game of the weekend, Maryland against Richmond in men’s lacrosse.



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