The NAACP Boycott, College Sports, and Black Wealth

The fight over voting rights may find its most powerful leverage on the college football field.

There’s a lot happening in college sports with much of the activity coming from Washington these days – which usually is a red flag for me.

But the recent actions I’ve seen taken by the NAACP and the Congressional Black Caucus give me hope that legacy civil rights organizations and Black politicians are thinking outside the box as Southern CBC members are having their districts systematically dismantled by Southern governors and legislators.

In case you missed it, as Congress debates legislation the future of college athletics, the NAACP and the CBC have teamed up to oppose this legislation while also announcing two related campaigns: Out of Bounds and Project 42. Out of Bounds calls for athletes, fans, and alumni to boycott SEC schools in states like my own (South Carolina) seeking to eliminate CBC districts like South Carolina’s 6^th Congressional District. Project 42 similarly calls for athletes to consider other non-SEC schools.

So, first, I applaud the objective here. Legal tools are limited, and political tools can be helpful but when districts are drawn in the way that many legislatures are drawing them, there’s only so much voting alone can do. Hitting southerners where it hurts (college football) isn’t new (I tried this as a state legislature with then-high school phenom Marcus Lattimore when South Carolina still flew the Confederate flag on top of the State Capitol), but in the era of NIL deals and astronomical dollars going to college athletes, this is a brave step for the NAACP and the CBC.

It’s brave because the criticism that I saw from Black commentators was fierce and opposed to the boycotts. Concerns that the NAACP was asking Black families and athletes to turn down money was wrong (it’s not what the NAACP or the CBC was asking for), but it was a common criticism that I got in my DMs and that I saw on my algorithm. It’s also brave because there are lots of Black fans like me who both are lifelong supporters of our schools (University of South Carolina, in my case) and of these two organizations presenting a difficult choice for many of us.

While I can’t guarantee that I won’t watch the Gamecocks this fall, I do hope that these campaigns start to incorporate financial incentives in them: namely the identification of mission-aligned brands that can match the NIL deals that players are getting at SEC schools and poaching them in favor of schools like Michigan or UCLA or University of Washington or University of Virginia, or the University of Colorado who aren’t doing what states like South Carolina and Mississippi are doing.

That part is missing from Project 42, and I hope that the CBC and NAACP actually put some teeth into this so that it’s not another boycott that we soon forget. I can tell you that as a fan, if you start to threaten recruiting classes and leverage the transfer portal through more lucrative NIL packages, that’s the kind of campaign that will force people to listen.