Calls for Black athletes to boycott SEC schools miss the strategic moment

The NAACP’s recent call urging Black athletes to boycott SEC schools comes from a place of real concern. The attacks on voting rights across the South are coordinated and well-funded. Many of the leaders advancing this call are people I respect and have worked alongside for years, and I share the urgency behind it.

But good intentions don’t automatically make good strategy.

I came through a predominantly white institution as a Black athlete. I have spent more than two decades since then in progressive organizing, movement strategy and leadership development. And from where I sit, this approach misses the mark.

I’m not saying this because the threat isn’t real — it absolutely is, it is because the tactic misunderstands the economics, the psychology of young people today, and what it actually takes to build power over time.

This moment calls for strategy, not just symbolism.

We’re not in the amateurism era anymore. “Name, Image, Likeness” or NIL deals exceeded $1.2 billion in 2023–24. Football and men’s basketball athletes account for roughly 65 to 70 percent of those earnings, and Black athletes make up the majority of those rosters. Top SEC athletes are now earning between $250,000 and $1 million each year through NIL and collectives. Some of those collectives are operating with budgets of $5 million to $15 million per school. Revenue-sharing models on the horizon could put $600–$800 million annually into athletes’ hands across the Power Five.

That’s not hypothetical money; it’s support-your-family, change-your-trajectory, start-building-something-real type of money. Asking an........

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