Fantasy football players on ESPN have noticed something very interesting. Apparently, the “world’s leading sports broadcaster” has some rules about what you can and can’t name your fantasy football teams.
And one of the phrases on the banned list is “White Lives Matter.” However, if you want to call your team “Hamas Lives Matter,” that’s totally fine.
And of course, “Black Lives Matter.” In fact, “White Lives Matter” was a specifically banned phrase, as far as I could tell from some testing of what ESPN would and wouldn’t allow.
“Jewish Lives Matter” was approved and “Blue Lives Matter” was also accepted.
Interestingly, the word “Hamas” is not banned. However, ESPN bans the word “Nazi.”
Suppose the idea is that some fantasy football players on ESPN might be offended by the phrase “White Lives Matter.” What must a Jewish fantasy football player think when he sees a team named “Hamas Lives Matter”?
See, that’s the problem with going down the slippery slope of speech bans. ESPN also bans a lot of individual words, most of which you could probably guess.
They do not allow racist slurs or most of the words that George Carlin says you cannot say on television.
OutKick has reached out to ESPN for comment and asked if they could provide us with a list of words and phrases that are prohibited from being used by fantasy football players.
You did not respond to our request immediately.
ESPN prohibits certain words and phrases in the names of fantasy football teams. For example, this includes “White Lives Matter,” but not “Hamas Lives Matter.”
(Getty Images)
Yahoo Fantasy Football – arguably the second largest website for fantasy football leagues – has no banned team names. If you want to give your team a racist name, you are free to do so.
Now, people may judge you a certain way if you do that, but you won’t be BANNED.
Frankly, I’d rather live in the world of Yahoo than the world of ESPN (although in this particular case, Yahoo produces some truly outrageous, left-wing craziness).
Allow people to say whatever they want and name their fantasy football teams whatever they want.
If it offends people, so be it. Don’t hang out with people whose fantasy football team names offend you.
It’s not that difficult.
