Clay Travis' defense of Harrison Butker is dishonest, at best

Not only did he omit the Chiefs' kicker's comments on sexuality, he lied about the NFL's response

Stories like that of Harrison Butker causing waves for political comments at a college commencement are exactly how Clay Travis built his career as a purveyor of outrage and internet clicks. Colin Kaepernick’s sideline protests launched Travis’ Outkick into the mainstream with the purpose-built takes meant to stir arguments centered around race, privilege, and free speech.

Just as vehemently as he shouted down Kaepernick, however, Travis has immediately come to the defense of Kansas City Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker, who spoke at Benedictine College’s commencement ceremony. During his prepared address, Butker spoke of the female graduates being “diabolically”, lied to by society, suggesting that they focus on getting married and having children over job titles and corner offices.

He also spoke of Joe Biden as a “delusional” leader and ripped the president’s pro-choice beliefs along with his handling of COVID.

Butker is completely entitled to believe these things, and if they are what Benedictine College wants to impart on its graduating class, that’s their prerogative and right to do so.

Travis’ complete defense of the player, however, decidedly danced around a few key comments which Americans are actually talking about. During Thursday’s Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show, Clay tried to position Butker’s comments about women as homemakers as the controversial issue. He played audio from the speech, reaction from various talkers, and tried to position the athlete’s beliefs as mainstream.

What Clay Travis did not do during Thursday’s program was play or mention what Butker said about the LGBTQ+ community, which saw him refer to alternative sexuality as a “deadly sort of pride that has a month dedicated to it.”

Rightly, it is this line that people are actually talking about, including the NFL.

Upon the league’s release of a statement, Travis took to his various platforms and screamed that the NFL had “condemned” Butker and his comments at the ceremony. This is that condemnation:

“Harrison Butker gave a speech in his personal capacity,” NFL senior vice president and chief diversity and inclusion officer Jonathan Beane said in a statement. “His views are not those of the NFL as an organization. The NFL is steadfast in our commitment to inclusion, which only makes our league stronger.”

Stating that Butker was speaking in a personal capacity and not on behalf of the league and tagging it with a company line certainly doesn’t read as a fiery condemnation to me, but that doesn’t get Clay Travis his clicks and outrage porn.

Two other notes from Clay’s response on the Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show:

Clay: The NFL doesn’t condemn wife beating, drunk driving, or sexual assault.
Unsurprisingly, Clay tried to use one of his favorite tactics: whataboutism - because when you don’t actually have a defense to offer up, just flip the script entirely and try to make the argument about something else. Unfortunately for Clay, this is a complete lie. The NFL, like all companies, has a PR department who carefully crafts statements when a player (read: employee) is involved in a legal matter or other negative circumstance. If you pick an instance where a player was accused of or charged with a crime, you’ll find a statement from the team — coordinated through the league office — in just about every single case. Sure, they may be full of garble to an ongoing investigation or legal proceeding, but they are condemnations by any other name.

Clay tried to defend the idea of one-income households and for some reason cited that most athletes live this way.
On the radio show, Clay spent much of the first hour telling his own story about moving from a dual-income household to the ability of having his wife, Lara, stay home with the couple’s children as he found success (you know he’s a self-professed hundred millionaire, right? Just ask him.) He also drove home the obvious fact that most professional athletes are able to live the way Butker described in his speech, with a wife/girlfriend acting as homemaker or simply not having to work.

To my knowledge, no one is fighting Clay Travis (or anyone) on this claim. Yes, we know that if you become rich and famous, your spouse probably doesn’t have to work. The real question here is why Butker used a college commencement to push this ideal scenario which won’t be attainable by the vast majority of the graduates who were in attendance listening to his speech. Personally? I think the guy saw it as an opportunity to lean into his heavy Catholic faith and stir up some headlines with some borderline (at least) offensive commentary on how people choose to live their lives.

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As we know Clay Travis to do, he jumped on a simmering political and sports combination story and found himself a perch on the opposing viewpoint from most of America.

This time, however, he was a bit sloppy in his narrative building in completely omitting the most controversial of Harrison Butker’s comments and trying to portray the kicker’s more mainstream beliefs as the topic of outrage. This type of dishonesty works when your audience consumes your takes as gospel, but less so when people actually follow the story and do their own research.

More people are beginning to do the latter, and it’s how we take power away from people like Clay Travis who are paid make bad-faith arguments that contribute to the degradation of respectful, well-informed debate and dialogue in our country.