Out of Bounds? Try Stop the Steal.

The NAACP is onto something.

On May 19, 2026, NAACP President Derrick Johnson stood with members of the Congressional Black Caucus and launched *OUT OF BOUNDS*, a campaign urging “Black athletes, families, alumni, and fans to withhold athletic and financial support from public universities in southern states attacking Black voting rights.” This would include Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, Texas, and South Carolina — the SEC, essentially. The argument is legit: these states depend on Black athletic talent to fill their stadiums and money bags while their legislatures systematically dismantle minority voting power. “Black athletes should not be asked to generate wealth, prestige, and power for state institutions while those same states strip political power from Black communities,” Johnson said.

The argument hits the spot. The naming of the call-to-arms? Could be better.

What this actually is — a declaration that Black labor will no longer subsidize Black oppression — requires a phrase people can roll off their tongue as the blade drops. Portal Party? Foul Is Fair? Stop the Steal (cheap upcycling)? Words cut deep. Out of Bounds even carried a better slogan in its own press release: “No Representation. No Recruitment. No Revenue.”

The NAACP brought the megaphone, but the Declaration of Independence calls for the guillotine. And let’s be straight, this is a Marie Antoinette moment in America. The ill-ionaire class and their “me the people” enablers in government have chosen their teams. They’ve inflated their own NIL — Nefarious Insidious Leechy — value for pump and dump robbery. The right to alter or abolish a destructive government is literally in the founding documents. Just reading aloud.

This argument wears the costume of concern but it’s American exceptionalism underneath. No surprise there, folks. The dressed-down logic goes: these are just teenagers, they shouldn’t have to carry the weight of political struggle, let them play ball — and collect the check. It’s a sweet sentiment. It’s also insulting as hell.

David Hogg was 17 years old when a gunman walked into Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida and killed 17 of his classmates and teachers. He didn’t wait to be old enough. He didn’t wait for adults like Alex Jones and Candace Owens to sort it out. He co-founded March for Our Lives, testified before Congress, built a PAC, and got elected DNC Vice Chair at 24. Nobody said David Hogg was too young or that the burden was too hot.

Victor Wembanyama is 22 years old. Born in France, raised in a suburb of Paris, currently the most formidable basketball player on the planet. In January 2026, after ICE officers killed two American citizens in Minneapolis, Wembanyama sat in front of reporters and said: “I’m not going to sit here and give some politically correct answer. Every day I wake up and see the news, and I’m horrified. I think it’s crazy that some people might make it seem like the murder of civilians is acceptable.”

Too young? A French immigrant on a work visa, speaking a foreign language fluently, in a foreign country. More willing to say the thing plainly than most American-born players, of any age.

Compare that to Brendan Sorsby, also 22. The Texas Tech quarterback wagered nearly $90,000 on games, including his own team’s, across four years of college football. He used friends’ accounts to hide it. He kept gambling after checking into rehab. When the NCAA ruled him permanently ineligible, his school’s president wrote letters on his behalf, he hired the attorney who negotiated the House v. NCAA settlement, and filed an injunction in a Lubbock courthouse. The system mobilized for him inside a week. Does anyone believe these fine people are pulling strings out of genuine concern for Sorsby’s supposed addiction? Boosters have paid him millions in NIL money and simply want to pump and dump their investment before the scam gets out. High stakes with an unproven quarterback? The fans, and their fragile egos, will not stand for it. They might even take a knee.

So the question of concern outs itself. We register kids to vote as seniors, then want them to use that civic power blindly. What’s the difference between an 18-year-old recruit factoring voting rights into a college decision and a clueless 22-year-old betting on his own games? The system’s willingness to protect one and lecture the other.

Three weeks after launch, has it reverberated? Comedian D.L. Hughley spoke up front: “I don’t understand why a 4/5-star athlete would go to a school where the state is ushering in a new iteration of Jim Crow. If you can’t run in a state, don’t run in a state.” ESPN analyst and former NFL safety Ryan Clark backed the campaign publicly. LZ Granderson at the LA Times noted on CNN that asking only Black athletes to carry this is naive.

And it’s not just college recruiting. Professional athletes in the NFL, NBA, and WNBA have contracts expiring every single offseason. Free agency is leverage. A quarterback choosing between Houston and Seattle, a point guard weighing Miami against Chicago, a WNBA star deciding whether to re-sign in Atlanta or take her talents westward, these are choices with political weight attached. Nobody with a platform and a jersey number is making that argument out loud. Yet.

Florida illustrates the math for us. The state’s new congressional map, signed into law May 4, projects a 24–4 Republican-Democratic split. In a state where the popular vote registered 56–44 for Trump, are the coke-bottle optics not clear enough? Then again, Americans live in a sci-fi bubble where 71% of Republicans believe that climate change is exaggerated. Meanwhile, the state is literally sinking.

Right idea. Not the right school. And nobody should be waiting for Uncle Jimmy.

Text Oprah. Get on a Zoom with MacKenzie Scott. Hit up Steph Curry. A $100 million NAACP NIL collective seeded into Bowie State or Coppin State in Maryland won’t just win games. It redirects Black athletic labor back into Black institutions, in states that actually want those communities to vote, while sending “Roll Tide” and “Geaux Tigers” clawing at the walls. Can you hear it? “Bring back DEI! Bring back DEI!” Winning the College Football Playoff will more than pay it back. Nobody’s calling for charity. It’s investment leading to empowerment. Own the contards, because it’s still a master/slave mentality in the good ‘ol USA.

Back to our sages. We look to the corridors of high schools, because the oh-so-responsible adults have gone AWOL in the halls of Congress. Improving the vision of young Americans is a better bet than waiting for people with plugged ears and blinders to do it for them — making the changes you don’t want to see. An 18-year-old choosing between Alabama, Oregon, and Oklahoma deserves to know what those states think of his vote, and his mother’s vote, and his grandmother’s vote.

States of Sport built a scorecard for exactly this purpose, where athletes and recruits — and boosters, why not? — may check before they sign their rights away.

The transfer portal is closed until 2027, but think ahead. High school seniors are the leverage point right now, sitting in living rooms across America making the most consequential athletic decisions of their lives.

The real burden is disenfranchisement. State legislatures are redrawing the lines to silence them. This isn’t only out of bounds. It’s egregious targeting to the helmet. They must be ejected.

NIL or be killed.

Originally published at https://statesofsport.substack.com.