“Don’t get your hopes up.”
This is what I was told when I asked who would know if ESPN would speaking on Nick Bosa’s ugly social media history. They told me the best I could hope for was that they mention it in the vaguest way possible and stick to the tweets that are the least controversial when they are not connected to everything else.
Ironically, in an ESPN story today that is exactly how it was described, let me know my source was spot on.
His approach to social media has also come under scrutiny. In a 2016 tweet, Bosa referred to former Niners quarterback Colin Kaepernick as a “clown” and subsequent tweets garnered attention for his conservative-leaning political views and support of President Donald Trump.
You can’t get any blander than that.
The more detailed answer I got on why this wasn’t a big issue was somewhat of a loophole that I wonder would be used if this was a black prospect. What I was told that “liking and following” accounts isn’t the same as posting them yourself or Retweeting them. Since the only tweets that Bosa wrote himself could be deemed as just personal opinions (such as Black Panther being the worst Marvel movie) they didn’t warrant speaking about on the broadcast.
That seems like a cop-out to me and when I asked someone else within the industry about it they were more direct.
“They didn’t want to upset Trump or MAGA, they were never going to attack a pro-Trump draft prospect. That is a recipe for a Trump tweet and PR disaster.”
Ever since the Jemele Hill incident with Trump, ESPN has been very learly of upsetting him and it is also the reason Will Cain has a job to make sure that MAGA base has their own mouthpiece at the network.
ESPN has no problem promoting Will Cain saying that we should get over racism that happened years ago but wouldn’t dare speak on a top NFL draft pick possibly being a white nationalist.
The hypocritical part of this is ESPN spoke in detail about the negative aspects of almost every draft pick because I supposed it is easier to talk about Ed Oliver having a situation over a jacket than Nick Bosa liking posts that want to provoke violence against minorities.
Even the 49ers didn’t care because as long as you can rush the passer that matters more than if you just happen to dislike Muslims.
In short, Bosa has the complexion for protection. My issue really isn’t with Bosa, if he wants to be a white supremacist that is his choice and if people (both black and white) want to overlook that is their choice as well. My issue will always be with the media not being fair in how they report on white and black athletes, so I will continue to point that out every single time it happens.
Bosa himself admitted some of the things he said was insensitive but didn’t think he needed to do anything special for the Bay to prove himself. With his teammates, he said he is just going to play hard.
Flip the page for him speaking about being MAGA and some of the horrible things he has liked in the past.