Paul Finebaum tested the waters, but ultimately decided he would not run for Alabama’s open Senate seat. Michele Tafoya has been kicking around the idea of running for Minnesota’s open Senate seat for nearly an entire year. And then there is Stephen A. Smith, who really doesn’t want to run for President in 2028, but aww, shucks, if we really need him to, he would consider it because he’s a patriot.
Why are so many stars in the sports media industry suddenly interested in running for office?
I think the answer is pretty simple. They saw Donald Trump do it. He had no experience and no real ideas. He was just good in front of a microphone.
Smith is at the very top of the sports broadcasting world. Finebaum has ascended to a similar level for college football fans. It’s not crazy to think they might be bored and looking for a more exciting challenge. Tafoya was the gold standard for sideline reporters before stepping away from NBC. She has been trying to make a name for herself in the political world for a while now.
Forget the guy who came down that golden escalator in 2015 to call Mexicans rapists. Look at the version of Trump we had on the campaign trail in 2024 or the one in the White House right now. He can’t string two coherent sentences together. If you made your living by talking, wouldn’t you look at that guy and think, “Oh my God, this is gonna be easy for me”?
The idea of politics is probably a romantic one to these people. They see a way to leverage their fame and following to change the world. As we saw with Finebaum, all it takes is a little bit of homework for all of that romance to fade away.
Plenty of entertainers have made the move into politics. It’s a practice that predates Donald Trump by decades. Hell, it predates Ronald Reagan by decades!
The 1940s were a hot time for actors to set their sights on Washington. Democrats Will Rogers Jr. and Helen Gahagan Douglas both won House seats representing California. This wasn’t a one-sided affair either. In 1947, John Davis Lodge, who starred in films with Shirley Temple and Marla Dietrich, won Connecticut’s 4th Congressional District as a Republican.
William Hale Thompson was the first athlete to do it. He leveraged the fame he earned playing football and water polo for the Chicago Athletic Association into a political career that included serving as the Windy City’s mayor for two terms, beginning in 1915.
Although this is not an original path, sports media personalities do face a challenge that other entertainers never did. They are famous for being themselves and giving their honest opinions. All of it is on record, and all of it can be used against you.
MAGA-types may scream for athletes to shut up and dribble or for celebrities to “stay in their lane,” but boy, are they happy to make exceptions for the ones that espouse the right beliefs.
Maybe that doesn’t matter so much to Smith or Tafoya. Tafoya left the sports world entirely in 2022. Smith has stayed present on ESPN while launching a political talk show on SiriusXM.
Now, let’s be fair. Smith’s political opinions seem manufactured to stay right down the middle, and if he tips too far to one side, he makes sure to tip the other way before too much time passes. Tafoya is much clearer about her conservative opinions, but those opinions are shared on a podcast no one listens to.
Finebaum is a different story. He should be on MAGA’s list of acceptable celebrities. He was willing to publicly grovel to Trump in that now infamous interview with Clay Travis. That didn’t matter. His opposition was planning to use clips from his show against him because he showed common sense and acknowledged nuance exists, especially when you look at political and societal topics through a sports lens.
Sports talk is a no-nonsense business. No one can get away with saying that the Raiders are the best team in the NFL. A host can say unpopular things and interpret performances and results in all kinds of ways, but the results are the results. Ask anyone who has ever gotten even a minor fact wrong on sports radio and sports television. Even the audience that likes you is happy to shout you down. Donald Trump and JD Vance could not survive in this world, but a sports talk star could theoretically thrive in theirs.
Given the state of American political discourse, it’s easy to think success is all about performance. Go back to 1960. The most important lesson of Kennedy vs. Nixon is that presentation matters most of all. Finebaum, Smith and Tafoya all know how to deliver their points and how to present themselves on camera. They should be naturals on the campaign trail.
Are they ready for the scrutiny, though? I don’t think so, but I’ll admit that I could be wrong. Maybe Finebaum had no problem having his words picked apart, but he decided it wasn’t worth the headache. Maybe Tafoya and Smith are ready to have all of their opinions put under a microscope, but for what?
I get why politics would be an appealing pivot for someone who can’t get any bigger in sports talk than they already are. But what is the reward? Your success on television can always result in a bigger paycheck. If you succeed on the campaign trail, you have to govern, and there’s no evidence that Tafoya or Smith really want to do that.
About Demetri Ravanos