Americas most prominent professional sports leagues used their social media megaphones to mark Fridays federal Juneteenth holiday, highlighting in several cases a starkly different approach from how those same organizations treated the beginning of Pride Month.
According to Fox News, the NFL, the nations most lucrative and watched professional league, amplified Juneteenth by reposting numerous teams tributes to the day across its platforms. The leagues corporate accounts on X and Instagram, which reach roughly 36 million and 32 million followers respectively, had conspicuously declined to acknowledge the June 1 launch of Pride Month and have remained silent on it since.
That contrast extended to the club level, where 31 of the NFLs 32 franchises publicly recognized Juneteenth in some fashion. When Pride Month began, however, multiple teams opted not to participate in the now-routine corporate ritual of rainbow branding and LGBTQ messaging.
The NFL teams that did not celebrate the start of Pride Month included the New York Jets, Pittsburgh Steelers, Cleveland Browns, Cincinnati Bengals, Tennessee Titans, Kansas City Chiefs, Las Vegas Raiders, Dallas Cowboys and New Orleans Saints. Most of those organizations also refrained from Pride Month celebrations last year, suggesting a deliberate and consistent posture rather than an oversight.
The lone NFL team that did not acknowledge Juneteenth on Friday was the Detroit Lions. This is a curious outlier, given that the Lions are not typically known for resisting progressive social causes and have previously aligned themselves with fashionable activism.
Indeed, the club changed its logo during Pride Month by painting its lion in rainbow colors as a tip of the proverbial cap to the LGBTQ community. Yet the same organization did nothing on a day many Black Americans regard as central to their history and culture, a silence that raises questions about which causes are prioritized and why.
The Lions were not the only notable omission. The NHLs league-wide social media accounts were also silent about Juneteenth on Friday, making the NHL the only major professional sports league that did not recognize the holiday, even as the NBA and MLB joined the NFL in doing so.
This absence is particularly striking because the NHL did make a point of signaling its support for Pride Month at the start of June. The leagues willingness to speak loudly on one cultural issue while saying nothing on another underscores the selective nature of corporate virtue signaling.
Major League Baseball offered its own example of this selective engagement. The Texas Rangers remain the only MLB franchise that does not host a Pride Night or Pride Day at its ballpark, yet the Rangers did publicly celebrate Juneteenth on Friday.
Why any of this matters goes beyond mere social media graphics. In a country increasingly divided by social justice causes and their opposing viewpoints, fans are paying closer attention to where their teams stand, often reacting with either satisfaction or frustration depending on whether those stances align with their own beliefs.
The era when major sports organizations could credibly claim to stick to sports is long gone. These leagues now routinely and enthusiastically embrace certain causes, commemorative months and holidays, thereby endorsing particular cultural and political narratives.
Just as telling, however, are the issues they choose to ignore. Silence in this environment functions as a statement of its own, whether intended or not, and fans are savvy enough to notice the double standards.
Juneteenth itself marks a pivotal moment in American history. It commemorates the day in 1865 when Union Army Major General Gordon Granger arrived in Texas and announced to enslaved people that they were free under the Emancipation Proclamation that President Abraham Lincoln (R-Ill.) signed as an executive order in 1863.
Historically, Grangers announcement was legally premature, because Lincolns Proclamation did not free slaves in all states. It was Congress that ultimately abolished slavery nationwide by passing the 13th Amendment in January 1865, formally ending bondage in the United States.
That decisive vote by the 38th Congress included 86 Republican votes in favor of the amendment and zero against. It included 15 Democratic votes in favor of the 13th Amendment and 50 against, a partisan breakdown that modern progressives often prefer to overlook when invoking Americas racial history.
The 13th Amendment was ratified by the states in December 1865, and enslaved people were then free per the Constitution, not merely by executive order. More than a century and a half later, the country finally moved to give Juneteenth the national recognition many believed it deserved.
In 2020, President Donald Trump campaigned to institute Juneteenth as a holiday. He lost the election and Joe Biden signed legislation into law making it a national holiday in 2021, formalizing a commemoration rooted in Republican-led emancipation.
As leagues and teams continue to pick and choose which causes to elevate, their inconsistencies reveal more about contemporary politics than about history. Someone should tell the NHL and the Detroit Lions.
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