Adam Pankratz: Roberts and McAfee are right — no one cares what sports personalities think about politics
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Neither McAfee nor Roberts wanted to answer the question this year however, with McAfee's initial reply being, 'I don't know if any of us are the experts or the ones that should be giving the answers on that.' Roberts followed with, 'I'm not a politician … but right now I really choose to just focus on the players and the game …'
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How times have changed since 2021, and probably for the better. It would be a positive step if the incident reminded us that not everything has to be about politics and, in general, we should not expect in-depth and expert social commentary from sports personalities on all that ails society.
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It is indeed a curious thing that we even look to a baseball manager or a sports reporter for their views on newly implemented state voting laws. Consider the reverse: asking a politician to explain the infield fly rule or what pitch to throw a batter in a 2-2 count with a man on second and two outs when the last pitch you threw was a cutter. It would be theatre of the most absurd kind. 'I don't know,' would a refreshing answer, although most politicians would likely take a blind stab at it for fear of being caught out for not knowing everything.
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For this reason, McAfee and Roberts deserve a certain kind of credit for their avoidance of the question. While it is easy to be cynical and say they simply toed the company line (they probably did, by the way), McAfee's assertion that 'I don't know if any of us are the experts …' is nonetheless a refreshingly honest admission that he and his fellow sports experts wouldn't have any idea what they were talking about if they began discussing Georgia's voting laws. Society would be better off if more people could boldly make that statement.
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In our world today, self-identifying as a non-expert is rare. Rarer still is saying you don't have a political opinion on any given issue. Much of this is likely due to our ability to access second-hand information online or via social media. If someone is not an expert, they can likely find enough information to form a strongly held opinion by quickly brushing up on a few facts for their five minutes in the spotlight, when their true grasp of an issue is actually rather tenuous. Kudos to McAfee and Roberts for not doing that.
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