Gov. DeSantis deems TV sports necessary to ‘get back to normal’

Ron DeSantis. Image via Twitter.

Gov. Ron DeSantis, on Friday morning’s edition of the Clay Travis radio show, defended Florida’s proactive approach to resuming sports to the friendliest of interviewers and audiences.

Florida has seen events from both major professional wrestling companies and the Ultimate Fighting Championship, as well as charity golf one-offs. But as the nation reopens and begins to ramp up sports, America is starting to catch up with Florida.

Travis proved to be a better exponent for the Governor than his own staff, crediting him ahead of the interview with driving California and New York to reopen by making a call for displaced sports leagues and teams such as the NBA to come to the Sunshine State.

“We are going to get a NASCAR race in June,” DeSantis said, along with “hopefully Major League Soccer and the NBA.”

“The red carpet is open,” the Governor said, noting that the first league back will have a huge audience, and that these events are key for national recovery

“We’re not going to get back to normal unless sports are on TV,” DeSantis said, noting that he “watched [a rerun of a] Fiesta Bowl last night.”

The Governor waxed nostalgic about the golden age of Florida collegiate sports.

“It was phenomenal growing up,” DeSantis said, noting that he was a frontrunner fan, a Miami Hurricanes fan during their glory days before becoming a Gator fan “in the 90s and the Tebow years.”

The Governor expects high school football to be back in the fall.

“We turned on all the youth sports and summer camps,” DeSantis said, predicting “momentum” for the return to the high school gridiron.

DeSantis also said that the Tampa Bay Buccaneers were a legit Super Bowl contender after adding Tom Brady, saying he was “really excited.”

“Tom, he works his butt off,” DeSantis said, decrying “too many turnovers” by Jameis Winston in 2019.

The Governor also expects fans in the stands by the fall, given global declines in COVID-19 cases.

“To simply rule it out would be a mistake,” DeSantis said.

Though DeSantis largely stuck to sports, as the saying goes, there was some red meat.

The Governor spotlighted the National Media and their “#1 mission in life” as “ejecting the President from office,” as a way of framing his counternarrative against media bias long established this Spring.

Travis fed DeSantis, noting the media was “dishonest and untrue,” and the Governor said it was due to the “rabidly partisan” nature of the “out of touch” national press devoted to “political narrative.”

“That’s just the nature of the beast,” DeSantis said, noting that even the sports media is “partisan and political,” perhaps because sports writers aren’t “taken as seriously” as reporters covering “international affairs.”