Former ESPN host Dan Le Batard is consistent in the standard he applies to when athletes should and should not comment on issues outside of sports.
“Speak up for what I agree with or shut up and play ball” is his standard.
On Monday, Le Batard shamed Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes for not publicly opposing the Protect College Sports Act, legislation backed by President Donald Trump and his administration.
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“Patrick Mahomes, get your helmet out of your a–. Do some leading here,” an emotional Le Batard shouted on YouTube. “You’ve got a lot of power … do you want to participate in the adult games, or do you just want to play football?”
To answer that question, Mahomes just wants to play football.
He has said so.
Following the 2024 shooting at the Chiefs’ Super Bowl parade, Mahomes led not with activism but with actions. He donated money to an aid fund for victims and visited some of the wounded in the hospital.
He later explained in a Time Magazine profile that he does not believe it is his place to shift public opinion on complicated political issues like gun control.
“I continue to educate myself,” Mahomes said of the issue. “I don’t want to make a quick response to something that takes a lot of education to really learn and make a swaying comment based off that. But I know we have to find a solution of some way to make this stuff stop.”
Likewise, Mahomes declined to endorse a candidate in the 2024 presidential election.
“I don’t want to pressure anyone to vote for a certain president,” he told the outlet. “I want people to use their voice, whoever they believe in. I want them to do the research.”
Perhaps his restraint is partly why the Chiefs surpassed the Dallas Cowboys as the leading national draw in the NFL. Like Michael Jordan, Mahomes is polarizing because of his greatness, not because he has deliberately divided his audience along political lines.
Jordan and Mahomes are arguably the two biggest individual draws in the recent history of their respective sports. That is not a coincidence.
More importantly, Patrick Mahomes does not owe anyone an opinion on legislation. He doesn’t owe anyone an opinion on anything but his own actions.
The amusing part is that if Mahomes spoke out in support of the bill, Le Batard would almost certainly demand his silence. He’d then call on the media to hold Mahomes accountable. That’s how Le Batard responded when Jaxson Dart introduced President Trump on stage, Aaron Rodgers questioned the effectiveness of the COVID vaccines and various UFC fighters embraced Trump.
Do you notice a pattern?
Le Batard presents his personal political preferences as universal moral imperatives. He sees silence as cowardice when he wants an athlete to speak. He sees political expression as irresponsible when he wants an athlete to stay silent.
Dan Le Batard is a hypocrite.
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He recently made headlines by accusing ESPN of favoring White talent over Black talent. The evidence hardly supports that claim. Based on ESPN’s recent hiring trends, layoffs, promotions, and allocation of airtime, it would be difficult to argue that white talent receives preferential treatment.
Meanwhile, even a cursory glance at Le Batard’s own media company, Meadowlark Media, reveals that if white privilege still exists anywhere in sports media in 2026, it apparently has an office in Miami.
Elsewhere, Le Batard frequently touts his supposed zero tolerance for violence against women. Yet he landed the first interview with Kamala Harris’ husband, Doug Emhoff, after Emhoff was accused of assaulting an ex-girlfriend. Le Batard never asked him about the allegation. Not once. He instead asked Emhoff what “love feels like.”
Le Batard later called on other companies not to employ people accused of domestic violence. He then hired Howard Bryant, who was arrested after allegedly beating and choking his wife in an incident authorities said was witnessed by others.
OutKick has asked Le Batard directly about these contradictions on multiple occasions. Despite frequently discussing me on his show, he has yet to provide us with a response.
At this point, one must consider if there is something seriously wrong with Le Batard. I don’t say that jokingly. There are shades of Keith Olbermann in him.
Both men built their reputations in part on their unusually high intelligence amongst an industry lacking in intellectual depth. Both were sharp, original and capable of making arguments more sophisticated than those of many of their peers.
Something changed. Something bad happened to them.
Whether it is remorse over the past, the accumulated tragedies of life, years of manufactured hysteria, or an inability to process living in a country where roughly half the electorate continues to reject their worldview, Le Batard and Olbermann increasingly appear consumed by the people they despise.
The result is perpetual indignation. They sound anxious and bitter, and increasingly incapable of recognizing the hypocrisy embedded in their own commentary.
That helps explain Le Batard’s fury over the Protect College Sports Act.
Trump and his administration support the legislation. Therefore, opposing it becomes part of Le Batard’s moral framework. A neutral observer would hardly notice Mahomes’ decision not to participate in the debate. It’s not his battle. Le Batard sees it differently. To him, silence amounts to complicity.
That is how he arrives at the spectacle of accusing an NFL quarterback of dodging the “adult games” because he hasn’t publicly lobbied against a piece of federal legislation in the middle of the football season.
