Major League Baseball tried this exact move against Georgia in 2021.
Georgia's law never changed – and the All-Star Game came back four years later anyway.
Now the NAACP is running the same play against SEC football, and they think you won't notice.
Democrats Are Holding College Rosters Hostage
The NAACP and Congressional Black Caucus launched a campaign called "Out of Bounds" Tuesday, urging Black athletes, families and fans to pull their support from public universities in eight southern states accused of weakening Black voting representation: Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Tennessee and Texas.
The trigger was last month's Supreme Court ruling in Louisiana v. Callais – the decision House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries has already declared the work of an "illegitimate" court.
https://twitter.com/AAReports/status/2056904920159187034?s=20
The schools on the target list aren't random.
Alabama, Georgia, Texas and Ole Miss carry nationally ranked football programs built on the exact recruiting pipelines the NAACP now wants to shut down.
The Shakedown Letter
The Congressional Black Caucus didn't stop at asking athletes to walk away.
They sent a letter directly to SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey, ACC Commissioner Jim Phillips and NCAA President Charlie Baker with a concrete threat: oppose the SCORE Act – federal legislation that would establish a unified national framework for college athlete NIL contracts – unless the conferences act against GOP redistricting efforts in member states.
Here's what makes that threat land with force: the SCORE Act is already on life support.
The bill passed out of the House committee on a party-line vote, got pulled from the floor calendar in December when Republicans broke ranks, and currently needs seven Democrat Senate votes to clear the 60-vote threshold.
Seven Democrat votes.
The Congressional Black Caucus just told Greg Sankey that every one of those votes has a price – and the price is fighting Republican mapmakers in southern state legislatures.
That's not a civil rights campaign.
That's a protection racket dressed in the language of justice.
Jeffries stood at the Capitol and called the boycott resistance to "a dramatic return to racially oppressive Jim Crow-like tactics."
He also said athletes would be "supported by lawmakers and civil rights leaders" in their choices.
Translation: we'll pressure 18-year-old kids to blow up their college careers for our congressional agenda.
They Ran This Play Before and Lost
The NAACP urged professional free agents to avoid Texas in 2021 over voting laws.
Texas teams kept signing players.
That same year, Major League Baseball pulled the All-Star Game from Atlanta while Democrats called Georgia's election integrity law "Jim Crow 2.0."
Atlanta's own Democrat mayor said immediately she was "absolutely concerned this will backfire."
She was right.
Georgia's law never changed.
The game returned to Atlanta in 2025.
The restaurant owners and hotel workers in Cobb County paid the price for four years while the politicians who demanded the boycott paid nothing.
Now the NAACP wants to run the same play on college football – except the transfer portal for football and basketball is closed until 2027.
The people running this campaign know that.
It can't touch a single current roster.
What it can do is pressure uncommitted high school juniors and seniors – kids who haven't signed yet – to walk away from Alabama, Georgia, Texas and Ole Miss while Democrats use their hesitation as leverage in Washington.
Every time the left pulls sports into its political fights, the sport survives and the fans get angrier.
Republicans in Congress should make sure the SCORE Act moves forward on its own merits – and let the NAACP explain to the next class of five-star recruits why they should sacrifice their futures for a redistricting dispute in Washington.
Sources:
- Simon Kent, "Say No: NAACP Urges Boycott of Southern College Sports over Voting Rights," Breitbart, May 20, 2026.
- NAACP, "NAACP Calls on Black Athletes and Fans to Withhold Support of Public Schools in States Attacking Black Voting Rights," NAACP.org, May 20, 2026.
- OutKick, "NAACP Asks Black Athletes to Boycott SEC, ACC Powers in Latest Sports-as-Politics Pressure Campaign," OutKick/Fox News, May 20, 2026.
- Groom Law Group, "College Sports Legislation Is Missing a Critical Ingredient," Groom Law Group, March 3, 2026.
- 11Alive, "Georgia's Election Law Still in Place – So Why Did MLB Lift Its All-Star Boycott of Atlanta?" November 17, 2023.