After the National Football League warned the State of Texas to stop debating a bathroom bill meant to protect vulnerable women and children from predators, the state’s Governor issued his own warning: the NFL should stick to football and leave politics to others.
Last week the NFL warned Texas that if it passed a bathroom law the league may boycott Texas for future Super Bowl games.
“If a proposal that is discriminatory or inconsistent with our values were to become law there, that would certainly be a factor considered when thinking about awarding future events,” league spokesman Brian McCarthy said according to the Associated Press.
But, this week the Lone Star State’s governor has his own warning.
“For some low-level NFL adviser to come out and say that they are going to micromanage and try to dictate to the state of Texas what types of policies we’re going to pass in our state, that’s unacceptable,” Governor Abbott told radio host Glenn Beck.
“We don’t care what the NFL thinks and certainly what their political policies are because they are not a political arm of the state of Texas or the United States of America. They need to learn their place in the United States, which is to govern football, not politics,” Abbott added.
The NFL apparently hopes to subvert the political process in Texas by extorting the state over the fear of losing billions in sports revenue, using the case of the fight over North Carolina’s bathroom law as an example. Last year the NCAA canceled all postseason tournaments there to punish North Carolina for its HB2 bathroom bill. The NBA also punished North Carolina by removing the All-Star Game from Charlotte. And in addition, the ACC also moved its championship game to Florida over the bathroom law. The punishing reactions of the various leagues may have cost the state up to $600 million in revenue, Forbes magazine wrote last year.
Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston or email the author at igcolonel@hotmail.com.
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