There is always somebody eager to drag politics deeper into sports and then act shocked when fans roll their eyes. This time it is the NAACP, which has launched an “Out of Bounds” campaign urging Black athletes, fans, and supporters to boycott public-university athletic programs in several Southern states over voting-rights and redistricting fights.

The campaign is aimed at schools in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas, and it is tied to the group’s objections to post–Supreme Court voting-rights and map-drawing developments in those states.

And yes, it is patently absurd.

Not because people cannot have political opinions. They can. Not because public policy arguments are off limits. They are not. It is absurd because this latest push tries to turn college sports into one more political sorting exercise when a huge chunk of America is begging the political class and every activist outfit in sight to leave sports alone for five minutes.

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Fans want football, not another lecture. Recruits want development, exposure, facilities, NIL opportunities, winning programs, and a shot at the league. They do not need some national organization trying to turn their college decision into a referendum on congressional maps.

The NAACP’s argument, as laid out publicly by president Derrick Johnson, is that Black athletes should not be helping generate money and prestige for state institutions in places the organization says are undermining Black political power. The group is also encouraging fans and donors to redirect support toward HBCUs. That is their message. Fine. They are allowed to make it. But let’s stop pretending it sounds like something that is going to meaningfully reshape big-time recruiting in the South.

Because here is the reality the campaign seems determined to ignore: if a 3-star, 4-star, or 5-star athlete gets a full ride to play major college football at Alabama, Georgia, Texas, LSU, Florida, or another power-level program in one of these football-heavy states, the odds of that kid saying, “No thanks, I’ll head to a MAC school instead because the NAACP told me the South is off limits,” are, to put it kindly, not high.

That is not how this works. These kids and their families spend years grinding for those offers. They lift, train, camp, travel, rehab, study film, and fight for their shot. When that opportunity finally arrives, most of them are going to make the decision based on football, education, money, fit, and future, not on whether an activist campaign wants to make them a symbolic chess piece. That immediate-impact problem has been noted even in straight news coverage because the transfer calendar and recruiting cycle limit what this campaign can do right now.

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That is the part that makes this feel more performative than practical. Southern football powers are not built because somebody won a press conference in Washington. They are built because the South remains one of the deepest talent beds in the sport, because these schools pour money into facilities and coaching, and because recruits know exactly what those brands can do for their careers. Those facts do not disappear because a boycott slogan got a logo. The schools being targeted include some of the biggest revenue and visibility machines in college athletics, which is precisely why the NAACP picked them. But picking them and moving the needle are not the same thing.

There is also a broader problem with trying to fuse sports and politics like this. America has had ugly chapters in its history. So has most of the world. That does not mean every recruit is going to accept the premise that an entire region should be treated like a moral no-go zone for college athletics. That is too broad, too blunt, and too detached from the way actual players think about opportunity. Plenty of athletes are going to look at this and see what it is: another attempt to tell them that their football future should be filtered through somebody else’s political framework. A lot of them are going to reject that out of hand.

And frankly, many sports fans will too.

Because most people watching this unfold are not thinking about redistricting law while breaking down a quarterback battle in August. They are thinking about whether their team can block, tackle, cover, and win. Sports fans are tired of every institution in America trying to turn their entertainment into an ideological delivery system. Leave the boardroom politics in the boardroom. Leave the activism to activists. Let football be football. That does not mean public issues do not matter. It means not every Saturday in the fall needs to be hijacked by people who think a left tackle’s recruiting visit should double as a civics seminar.

The bottom line is simple: the NAACP can make this pitch, but it looks wildly out of touch with the reality of college football. Elite recruits are not likely to pass on powerhouse programs, giant stages, and life-changing opportunities because an outside group wants to turn their decision into a political statement. Most of these athletes have worked too hard and come too far for that. And most fans, meanwhile, are going to have the same reaction they usually have when politics barges into sports uninvited: enough already.

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