Ask anyone in the South, and they can confirm to you that college football is more or less a religion there.
In particular, the Southeastern Conference — better known by its acronym of SEC — has become one of the crowning jewels for Southern football fans.
The conference is known for producing swathes of NFL-caliber players, dynasties like Alabama, and consistent top-tier programs like Georgia.
While the proliferation of college athletic money has somewhat closed the gap between the SEC and its fellow power conferences, the conference is still viewed as the gold standard of college football (though some fans are quick to call the conference overrated, that’s a longer discussion for a different piece).
Given the left’s often-loud disdain for religion, perhaps it should come as little surprise that progressives are now going after the SEC.
And it’s all got to do with politics.
According to the Associated Press, the NAACP and the Congressional Black Caucus are calling on black athletes and fans to boycott Southern college athletic programs — including a bevy of SEC schools — that reside in states which have redistricted their electoral maps ahead of the highly anticipated November midterms.
Specifically, the NAACP is calling to boycott any and all college athletics in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, Texas, and South Carolina — a veritable who’s who of the SEC.
The progressive advocacy group is calling this campaign “Out of Bounds,” and are targeting the states that “have moved to limit, weaken, or erase Black voting representation.”
The groups are even going so far as to urge school alumni to stop donating to these programs.
Joining these two groups was House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, according to the New York Post.
And if you know anything about Jeffries, you know he had quite a bit to say — including the invocation of Jim Crow-era laws.
“This is an unprecedented moment, featuring an unprecedented attack on black political representation, and therefore it requires an unprecedented response,” Jeffries said during the Capitol Hill event.
He continued, “We are here standing in solidarity with NAACP in its call for athletes to boycott institutions within the SEC that belong to states that have unleashed these Jim Crow-like racially oppressive tactics, which is unacceptable, unconscionable and un-American.”
“And we believe that the silence of these institutions is complicity, and we will not stand for it.”
The wild comparisons didn’t end with Jim Crow, as Jeffries condemned these schools for not doing “the right thing.”
“And for us to get through this moment of backlash and usher in a new era of progress, as has been done by generations in the past, it’s going to require character, it’s going to require courage and it’s going to require conviction,” he said. “This is a Bill Russell moment. It’s a Muhammad Ali moment. And it’s a Jackie Robinson moment.”
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