Sports
Will Braves first baseman Matt Olson be the last MLB Iron Man of the 21st century?
It was 29 years ago this month that Cal Ripken Jr. showed us what a 20th-century Iron Man looked like. By which we mean this.
OTD in 1995, Cal Ripken Jr. took a victory lap for the ages after playing in his 2,131st consecutive game and officially breaking Lou Gehrig’s historic streak 👏🧡🖤 pic.twitter.com/hzfFD2ciNz
— MLB (@MLB) September 6, 2024
But in case you hadn’t noticed, it’s a very different time to be a baseball player in North America. So on that note, here’s what a 21st-century Iron Man looks like.
Matt Olson is closing in on his fourth career season of 162 games played. (Dale Zanine / USA Today)
That’s Matt Olson, who may not be as iconic as Ripken but still is a man with two current Iron Man claims to fame:
1) He has been an Atlanta Brave for three seasons now. You could locate him at first base in every darned game the Braves have played in that span — all 473 of them, the most games played by anyone in baseball since the start of 2022.
2) But that’s not all, because if you roll the Iron Man clock back to his time in Oakland, Olson just blew past a very cool round number: 600 games played in a row.
So … only another 2,000, and he’ll be breathing down Ripken’s neck hairs. Right? You think he’ll take one of those Ripken-esque victory laps when he breaks the Iron Man record … in 2037?
“What is that — like, 18 years?” Olson said, with a mathematically incorrect chuckle. “Yeah, if I’m playing when I’m 48, I’ll take a victory lap.”
Aw heck, it’s only another 13 years. So he’s almost there. Or not. But forget that Ripken stuff. We’re actually calling your attention to Olson’s streak because he is about to pass another legendary name. And once he does, he’ll carve out a slice of Iron Man history that will be all his.
This Thursday, according to STATS Perform, Olson is in line to play in his 477th consecutive game as a first baseman. And why is that so special? Because he will tie Pete Rose that day for the longest streak of games played at first base in the last 80 years.
Once Olson passes Rose, he’ll own the second-longest streak at first base since Lou Gehrig — behind only Frank (Buck) McCormick of the 1938-42 Cincinnati Reds (652 in a row). And it will give Olson the fourth-longest streak at first of anyone in the modern era not named Gehrig, trailing just McCormick, Fred Luderus (533) and Gus Suhr (505).
“Those are some cool names for sure,” Olson said. “Especially nowadays.”
Fortunately for us, he then helpfully supplied his own definition of “nowadays.”
Nowadays, load management has become a thing in this sport, even though, in Olson’s eyes, “we’re not full NBA.” And nowadays, matchups have also become a thing. Never in history have there been fewer true everyday players, as more teams play platoon-advantage, mix-and-match lineup bingo all over the diamond.
So let’s think about this. Will there ever be another Ripken? Will there ever even be another Matt Olson? Is the whole Iron Man concept dying before our eyes? And if it is, is that a good thing — a smart, scientific, health-driven thing? Or is it another once-romantic baseball phenomenon that is being driven out of the sport by the new wave of deep, analytical thinking?
All Olson set out to do when he began this streak was play, and be there for his team. But his streak has also given us a reason to dig in on what this all means. So let’s do that, OK?
Let’s talk history
Before we get into why Matt Olson does what he does — and why the Braves are all-in on him doing it — let’s look deeper into just how rare this is.
Life after Ripken — Did you know that since Ripken’s streak of 2,632 consecutive games played ended in 1998, Olson is only the second player to have a consecutive games streak of 600 games or longer? The other: Miguel Tejada, who played in 1,152 in a row from 2000-07.
He’s well positioned — But it’s the number of games Olson has strung together, while playing defense at his position, that truly separates his streak from almost every other recent Iron Man streak.
Even Tejada played “only” 807 consecutive games at shortstop (from 2000-05), according to STATS. So Olson could pass him, for the longest streak at any position since Ripken, by April 2027.
And by the end of this season, only six men would rank ahead of Olson for the longest streaks at any position in the last 80 years:
|
SS Cal Ripken Jr. |
2,216 (1982-1996) |
|
SS Miguel Tejada |
878 (2000-2005) |
|
2B Nellie Fox |
798 (1955-1960) |
|
CF Richie Ashburn |
694 (1950-1954) |
|
SS Roy McMillan |
583 (1951-1955) |
|
3B Eddie Yost |
576 (1951-1955) |
|
1B Matt Olson |
481* (2022-24) |
(Source: STATS Perform; *projected total at end of season)
A relevant side note about that list: Just two of those six players (Ripken and Tejada) compiled those streaks in the 162-game era, now six decades old.
Cal Ripken Jr. jokes with Miguel Tejada during the 10th anniversary celebration of his record-breaking 2,131st consecutive game. (Matthew S. Gunby / Associated Press)
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Where’s Garvey? We know what you’re thinking: What about Steve Garvey, who famously strung together a 1,207-game streak from 1975-83, as the first baseman for the Dodgers and Padres? Excellent question!
Garvey’s streak is one of three 1,000-gamers (or longer) in the last half-century. But it didn’t make the list above because he extended it seven times with pinch-hitting appearances. Therefore, it doesn’t qualify for the leaderboard of longest streaks playing first base. And that’s an important distinction.
Who’s on first — Would it shock you to know that it’s not out of the question that Olson could catch Gehrig himself? It stunned us. But we’re not talking about Gehrig’s fabled 2,130-game streak that Ripken passed. This would be only his longest streak while playing first base.
Did you know that Gehrig occasionally wore an outfield glove when the Yankees needed him to? Look it up.
And because he did, his longest consecutive-games streak while playing first was “only” 885 games, from 1925-30, according to STATS. That means that if Olson can keep going, he could grind past that Gehrig streak in July 2027 … and (amazingly) rank No. 1 in the modern era. That could actually happen.
At that point, only two men in the modern era would stand in front of Olson at any position:
|
Cal Ripken Jr. |
2,216 at SS (1982-1996) |
|
Everett Scott |
1,307 at SS (1916-1925) |
(Source: STATS Perform)
Are we getting ahead of ourselves? Of course we are. But what the heck. Olson has no intention of pulling the plug on this streak any time soon. So he’s closer to big-time Iron Man history than anyone seems to have noticed. Now let’s look at what drives him.
Why Matt Olson just keeps on posting
Long before Matt Olson began streaking toward Rose and Gehrig, he played all 162 games for the A’s back in 2018. He was 24. It was his first full season in the big leagues. But he didn’t join the 162-Game Club just because the A’s had no one else to play first. No, even back then, Olson was a man with a purpose.
“It’s kind of how I was wired, growing up, a little bit anyway,” he said. “But when I got to the big leagues, Marcus Semien was there in Oakland. And he was adamant about playing every day.”
You hear Semien’s name a lot when this subject comes up. Maybe because the Rangers’ second baseman is about to rack up his eighth season playing 155 games or more, in just 10 seasons as a regular in the big leagues. How many other players have done that over these last 10 seasons? Yep, none.
Semien has had three seasons in that span when he played all 162 games. That’s tied for the most among all active players. Want to guess who’s tied with him? Right. Matt Olson.
So even as he was still figuring out how to be an everyday player, Olson had Semien’s voice in his ear, preaching the meaning of literally playing every day. All these years later, that voice is still there. He was so conscious of Semien’s determination to will his way into the lineup every day, it was hard for Olson — and the rest of those A’s — to envision what would happen if anyone even tried to make Semien take a day off.
“I don’t think anybody wanted to find out,” Olson said. “I remember he had, like, a little wrist thing going on one time — some inflammation, that sort of thing. The staff wanted to give him a couple days off. I don’t know exactly how it went. I just know there were some words exchanged. Then sure enough, he’s in the lineup that night.
“What Marcus always preached was: You owe it to your teammates and the fans (to be out there). And you get paid to play. You’re not going to be 100 percent every game. But you know, a lot of times, Marcus Semien at 85 percent is better than a lot of other people’s 100 percent. So you just have to be able to find how to navigate it, maybe cut some workload down before the game … so you find a way to be out there.”
Now, that’s exactly what Olson preaches to the players around him. He says that since he arrived in Atlanta, he has never once had to fight his way into the lineup — and has never been physically hurting enough that his health even became a question.
“The way I look at it, you’re either hurt hurt, or you’re able to go,” he said. “So knock on wood, I haven’t had a lot of those, like, halfway injuries — you know, something where they tell you rest would help but you’re not totally hurt.”
So he’s a firm believer in the old Marcus Semien adage: If it’s not broken, you can play. But he also has seen enough of his teammates go down around him that he knows how fortunate he is that all that stuff that can happen in baseball hasn’t happened to him.
“There’s a ton of luck involved with that,” he said. “You know, shoot, just look at our last 30 games, of (all the) guys getting hit by pitches.”
There was one day in September 2022 when his manager, Brian Snitker, didn’t start him, on a Saturday afternoon in Philadelphia. It was Game 152 of Olson’s first season in Atlanta. So his streak wasn’t a topic yet. And Snitker acknowledged he wanted to give his first baseman some kind of breather — but knew going in it almost certainly wouldn’t be for all nine innings.
“I said (to him): ‘You know what? We’ve got to win, like 12-0, for you not to play in that game,” Snitker recalled.
So sure enough, he subbed Olson in for defense in the eighth inning. Olson has started every day since. But that can only happen if his team buys into the meaning of that. So let’s look at …
Why the Braves are on board
Matt Olson admires a home run. “The players are the ones that set the culture,” Braves president of baseball operations Alex Anthopoulos said. (Brad Penner / USA Today)
Is less really more? People may think that way now in the inner sanctum of most franchises. But in Atlanta, they have a different motto:
More is more.
Nowhere else in baseball is the concept of posting up more ingrained in the culture than it is in the heartbeat of the Atlanta Braves. Remember 2021, when their entire starting infield played between 156 and 160 games, missing 13 games combined? That wasn’t an aberration. It’s what they do.
Most seasons of 157+ games, 2018-23
|
Braves |
14 |
|
Royals |
7 |
|
Blue Jays |
6 |
Most seasons of 162 games, 2018-23
|
Braves |
5 |
|
Other 14 NL teams combined |
5 |
So part of why he’s so committed to going out there, Olson said, is that he grew up in Georgia as a Braves fan … “and that’s just what they’ve done forever. Maybe it’s because maybe I grew up watching the Braves, and I loved seeing the guys in the lineup every day.”
That work ethic was preached by Chipper Jones, back when he was playing more than 150 games in eight seasons in a row. It was passed down to Freddie Freeman, who had six seasons as a Brave in which he missed five games or fewer. Now, it’s Olson … and Austin Riley … and Ozzie Albies … who keep that culture alive, broken bones notwithstanding.
“I don’t believe that it’s the organization that’s setting the culture,” Braves president of baseball operations Alex Anthopoulos said. “The players are the ones that set the culture. That’s impacted by what players we acquire. But look, the ‘Games Played’ column is something we looked at with Matt Olson. … Obviously, he’s a very good player, but that’s part of what drew us to him as well.”
And never have the Braves appreciated that quality more than this year, when it feels as though some sort of freak injury has knocked out everybody on the roster … except Matt Olson.
But it isn’t just the Braves’ injury epidemic that Olson has had to dodge this year. It’s a force that can sometimes be even harder to avoid:
The Noise.
When you hit 54 homers with a .993 OPS one year … and then sag to 25 homers with a .764 OPS the next, it’s amazing how all those standing ovations can turn into The Noise. When your OPS plunges by more than 200 points, The Noise can turn a guy’s dedication to playing every day into a whole different narrative: He’s selfish. He needs a rest. He’s killing that team. Blahblahblah.
That noise is out there. But if the Braves hear it, or care about it, they’re doing an excellent job of disguising it.
“I hear it,” Snitker said. “But I don’t pay attention to it, because I’ll talk to the player. And if he feels like he needs a day off, then I will. But I never (thought that), watching (Olson) and how he handled everything. It wasn’t going like he really wanted. But you know what? He came to work every day, the same guy, and I never saw that he was tired. … So I just never felt like he needed it.”
Olson, not surprisingly, seconds that motion.
“You never know when your day is going to be,” he said. “You know, if it’s going bad, sure, I can see the benefit of sometimes sitting back and watching the game. But it doesn’t solve the problem. The only thing you can do is go out there and work your way out of something that’s not going well. So it’s never been something that’s really crossed my mind.”
But there’s a bigger question out there — and it isn’t only about Matt Olson. So let’s just ask it …
Is it OK to ignore load management?
If Cal Ripken Jr. was just arriving in the big leagues in 2024, what would the odds be that he’d be chasing down Lou Gehrig’s record someday? What do you think … 10 percent? … 5 percent? … 0 percent?
I asked that question of one of baseball’s brightest workload-management authorities, Casey Mulholland, the other day. He found it just as intriguing as you’d imagine.
“It would sort of depend on what organization he’s playing for,” Mulholland said. “It would depend on how much they value the idea of him being a franchise player for them.”
Would he be playing for a team that didn’t believe anybody should play more than 150 games? Or would he be playing for a team that did what Ripken’s Orioles did back in the day — listen to him all those times when he said: “I’m not really hurt. Let me play. I can do this.”
“Players are still having that discussion,” said Mulholland, the founder/lead developer at KineticPro Performance in Tampa, Fla. “Just now, it’s becoming much more scientific, a much more mathematical discussion, versus, ‘Hey, I feel good,’ and we’re going to talk (about those) feelings and put them back out there on the field. I think that’s the difference.”
You probably can guess where the Braves stand on the load-management spectrum. But when Snitker was asked, point blank, whether he believes in load management, he didn’t hedge.
“No,” he replied, succinctly. “I think these guys train to do this every day, right? Because (that’s) the Braves’ culture. … We’ve had guys with broken bones and things like that. But (that mindset of playing every day), I think that keeps them from getting the soft-tissue stuff and pulled muscles and everything.
“I’ve learned that over the years. I used to think that, but after being with these guys and talking to the guys that are doing it every day, yeah, they’ve made a believer out of me.”
You should know that even though Snitker is 68 and a baseball lifer, he regularly displays a balance between new-age analytic concepts and age-old baseball wisdom. But which of those is “Less is More”? We ask because there’s no simpler way to explain the idea behind load management than that: Less really can be more. And the science proves it.
Mulholland often uses the analogy of a guy running a marathon who had never trained to run those 26 miles. We all know how that works out.
“So then guys get fatigued, and then guys get hurt,” Mulholland said. “And that’s the idea of load management. We’re trying to avoid fatigue.”
But to be done right, load management needs to be nuanced. Wearable technology can provide important, detailed information on what athletes are and aren’t capable of. But Mulholland asks: Are teams actually using that data? Are those athletes even granting them permission to use it? And if not, and teams are just using arbitrary limits — 100 pitches for every pitcher, 150 games a year for every position player — that can create a whole different set of issues.
Or then there’s the even more basic question: What if this guy has trained to run that marathon?
And that’s exactly how Anthopoulos looks at Matt Olson — as just the latest star player he’s been around who has devoted his life, on and off the field, to the idea that it’s important to play every day.
“So if he’s not on the injury report and he’s not complaining of anything,” Anthopoulos said, “we’ve just had too many years and too many examples of (what he’s capable of). The guy was a top-four MVP candidate last year, and played every day. … He’s been an elite player with all those games played. So it’s hard to just all of a sudden point to that and say he needs a rest.”
If fatigue was the problem this year, how do we explain why August was Olson’s best month (eight home runs, .573 slugging percentage, .912 OPS) of the season?
The Braves have looked long and hard at the concept of load management. But they also believe in the value of a centerpiece player who sends a message to everyone around him that the quest for greatness begins with work ethic.
“It’s all just been a mentality,” Anthopoulos said. “And look, obviously, some of it is luck. You can get hit by a pitch, and so on. But those guys that post and play every day, year after year, I don’t think it’s a coincidence. I don’t think it’s luck. There’s definitely a common trait to all these guys.”
And Matt Olson is all about that trait. He knows his streak will end someday, because all streaks do. But when it does, it won’t be because he and his team suddenly have discovered a newfound belief in load management.
“I’m not a fan of it,” Olson said. “I mean, I can see the reasons for it. It’s a long season. But it’s also a game of rhythm and flow. And I would rather just continue to go.”
— The Athletic’s David O’Brien contributed to this report.
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Sports
Law firm fighting for women’s sports in SCOTUS battle comments on ruling possibly impacting SJSU trans lawsuit
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A law firm leading the charge in the ongoing Supreme Court case over trans athletes in women’s sports has responded after a federal judge suggested the case’s ruling could impact a separate case involving a similar issue.
Colorado District Judge Kato Crews deferred ruling in motions to dismiss former San Jose State volleyball co-captain Brooke Slusser’s lawsuit against the California State University (CSU) system until after a ruling in the B.P.J. v. West Virginia Supreme Court case, which is expected to come in June.
Slusser filed the lawsuit against representatives of her school and the Mountain West Conference in fall 2024 after she allegedly was made to share bedrooms and changing spaces with trans teammate Blaire Fleming for a whole season without being informed that Fleming is a biological male.
Meanwhile, the B.P.J. case went to the Supreme Court after a trans teen sued West Virginia to block the state’s law that prevents males from competing in girls’ high school sports.
The Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) is the primary law firm defending West Virginia in that case at the Supreme Court, and has now responded to news that Slusser’s lawsuit could be affected by the SCOTUS ruling.
“We hope the ruling from the Supreme Court will affirm that Title IX was designed to guarantee equal opportunity for women, not to let male athletes displace women and girl in competition. It is crucial that sports be separated by sex for not only the equal opportunity of women but for safety and privacy. Title IX should protect women’s right to compete in their own sports. Allowing men to compete in the female category reverses 50 years of advancement for women,” ADF Vice President of Litigation Strategies Jonathan Scruggs said.
Slusser’s attorney, Bill Bock of the Independent Council on Women’s Sports, expects a Supreme Court ruling in favor of the legal defense representing West Virginia, thus helping his case.
(Left) Brooke Slusser (10) of the San Jose State Spartans serves the ball during the first set against the Air Force Falcons at Falcon Court at East Gym in Colorado Springs, Colorado, on Oct. 19, 2024. (Right) Blaire Fleming #3 of the San Jose State Spartans looks on during the third set against the Air Force Falcons at Falcon Court at East Gym on October 19, 2024 in Colorado Springs, Colorado. ( Andrew Wevers/Getty Images; Andrew Wevers/Getty Images)
“We’re looking forward to the case going forward,” Bock told Fox News Digital.
“I believe that the court is going to find that Title IX operates on the basis of biological sex, without regard to an assumed or professed gender, and so just like the congress and the members of congress that passed Title IX in 1972, allowed this specifically provided for in the regulations that there had to be separate men’s and women’s teams based on biological sex, I think the court is going to see that is the original meaning of the statute and apply it in that way, and I think it’s going to be a big win in women’s sports.”
The Supreme Court’s conservative majority appeared prepared to rule in favor of West Virginia after oral arguments on Jan. 13.
Slusser spoke on the steps of the Supreme Court on Jan. 13 while oral arguments took place inside, sharing her experience with a divided crowd of opposing protesters.
With Fleming on its roster, SJSU reached the 2024 conference final by virtue of a forfeit by Boise State in the semifinal round. SJSU lost in the final to Colorado State.
Slusser went on to develop an eating disorder due to the anxiety and trauma from the scandal and dropped out of her classes the following semester. The eating disorder became so severe, that Slusser said she lost her menstrual cycle for nine months. Her decision to drop her classes resulted in the loss of her scholarship, and her parents said they had to foot the bill out of pocket for an unfinished final semester of college.
President Donald Trump’s Department of Education determined in January that SJSU violated Title IX in its handling of the situation involving Fleming, and has given the university an ultimatum to agree to a series of resolutions or face a referral to the Department of Justice.
Among the department’s findings, it determined that a female athlete discovered that the trans student allegedly conspired to have a member of an opposing team spike her in the face during a match. ED claims that “SJSU did not investigate the conspiracy, but later subjected the female athlete to a Title IX complaint for ‘misgendering’ the male athlete in online videos and interviews.”
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SJSU trans player Blaire Fleming and teammate Brooke Slusser went to a magic show and had Thanksgiving together in Las Vegas despite an ongoing lawsuit over Fleming being transgender. (Thien-An Truong/San Jose State Athletics)
SJSU Athletic Director Jeff Konya told Fox News Digital in a July interview that he was satisfied with how the university handled the situation involving Fleming.
“I think everybody acted in the best possible way they could, given the circumstances,” Konya said.
Follow Fox News Digital’s sports coverage on X, and subscribe to the Fox News Sports Huddle newsletter.
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Myles Garrett cited for speeding a ninth time, an elite pass rusher seemingly always in a rush
Myles Garrett is in a hurry to become the greatest pass rusher in NFL history. The Cleveland Browns All-Pro defensive end set the single-season sack record in 2025 and has cracked the top 20 career leaders after only nine seasons.
“I’m going to take that down, and I prefer I take it down in the next five years,” Garrett told Casino Guru News last month.
Off the field, however, his urgency to get from point A to B is a problem. He’s accumulating speeding tickets at an alarming rate.
On Feb. 21, Garrett was handed his ninth speeding ticket since his NFL career began in 2017. He was cited for driving 94 mph in a 70-mph zone on Interstate 71 between Cleveland and Columbus, Ohio.
The citation from the Wayne County Sheriff’s Office says Garrett was driving his green 2024 Porsche at 1:35 a.m., returning home after attending a Miami of Ohio basketball game in Oxford.
Body cam footage shows the officer telling Garrett that she kept the charge under 100 mph so that a court appearance wouldn’t be mandatory. Garrett reportedly still holds a Texas driver’s license — he attended Texas A&M — and told the officer that he did not have an Ohio license.
Cleveland Browns’ Myles Garrett wears a jacket displaying his girlfriend Chloe Kim before the women’s snowboarding halfpipe finals at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Livigno, Italy.
(Lindsey Wasson / AP)
The officer wrote that the famously affable Garrett was “kind and cooperative,” and that drugs and alcohol were not a factor.
Garrett’s need for speed flies in the face of his persona. He has written poetry since high school, peppers social media with inspirational sayings and donates time and money to several charities.
His girlfriend is two-time gold-medal-winning U.S. Olympic snowboarder Chloe Kim, for whom he wrote a poem he shared on social media: “You enrapture fools to kings, and exist without a peer, put on this Earth for many things, but our love is why you’re here.”
Verse hasn’t slowed his roll. On Aug. 9 he was cited for ticket No. 8, clocked at 100 mph in a 60-mph zone in a Cleveland suburb a day after the Browns returned home from a preseason game at Carolina.
Garrett’s seventh ticket followed a frightening crash in 2022. He flipped his gray 2021 Porsche 911 Turbo S off State Road in Sharon Township and he and a female passenger were injured. He was cited for failing to control his vehicle due to unsafe speeds on what had been a slick roadway.
A witness told a responding police officer that Garrett’s vehicle went airborne, took out a fire hydrant and rolled three times. Garrett sustained shoulder and biceps sprains and was sidelined for the Browns’ game that week against the Atlanta Falcons. His companion was not seriously injured.
Cleveland television station WKYC reported that in September 2021 Garrett was stopped twice in a 24-hour period — for driving 120 and 105 mph. The infractions occurred on Interstate 71 in Medina County, where the speed limit is 70 mph, and he paid fines of $267 and $287.
A year earlier, Garrett was cited for driving 100 mph in a 65-mph zone of Interstate 77 — again while driving a Porsche — and paid a $308 fine. He accumulated his first batch of speeding tickets in 2017 and 2018, and the police reports recite similar circumstances: Garrett driving well over the speed limit, cited without incident, paid a nominal fine.
The piddly fines certainly aren’t a deterrent. Garrett, 30, and the Browns agreed to a four-year contract extension in March 2025 that made him the highest-paid non-quarterback in NFL history at the time. The deal pays the seven-time All-Pro more than $40 million a season and includes more than $123 million in guaranteed money.
He set the NFL single-season sack record with 23.0 last season, surpassing the 22.5 accumulated by T.J. Watt and Michael Strahan. Garrett has 125.5 career sacks, averaging 14 a season, a pace that would enable him to break Bruce Smith’s career record of 200 in five years.
“That is definitely on my mind to go out there and get,” Garrett said. “That’s a goal I’ve had for years now since college.”
Garrett has declined to discuss his driving habits.
“I’d honestly prefer to talk about football and this team than anything I’m doing off the field other than the back-to-school event that I did the other day,” he told reporters after ticket No. 8 in August, referring to a charity appearance.
“I try to keep my personal life personal. And I’d rather focus on this team when I can.”
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Former ESPN broadcaster Keith Olbermann once again incited backlash on social media Wednesday after he called late legendary college football coach Lou Holtz a “legendary scumbag” in an X post on the day Holtz was announced dead.
“Legendary scumbag, yes,” Olbermann wrote in response to a clip of Holtz criticizing former President Joe Biden in 2020 for supporting abortion rights.
Olbermann received scathing criticism in response to his post on X.
“You’re a scumbag that needs mental help,” one X user wrote to Olbermann.
One user echoed that sentiment, writing to Olbermann, “You’re the real scumbag here. Lou Holtz had more class, integrity, and genuine decency in his pinky finger than you’ll ever show in your lifetime.”
Another user wrote, “You’re a grumpy, lonely, Godless man. All the things Lou Holtz was not.”
Keith Olbermann speaks onstage during the Olbermann panel at the ESPN portion of the 2013 Summer Television Critics Association tour at the Beverly Hilton Hotel July 24, 2013, in Beverly Hills, Calif. (Frederick M. Brown/Getty Images)
Olbermann has made it a pattern of sharing politically charged far-left statements that are often combative and ridiculed on social media, typically resulting in immense backlash.
After the U.S. men’s hockey team’s gold medal win, Olbermann heavily criticized the team for accepting an invitation from President Trump to the State of the Union address. Olbermann wrote on X that any members of the men’s team who attended the event were “declaring their indelible stupidity and misogyny,” while praising the women’s team for declining the invitation.
In January, Olbermann attacked former University of Kentucky women’s swimmer Kaitlynn Wheeler for celebrating a women’s rights rally outside the U.S. Supreme Court during oral arguments for two cases focused on the legality of biological male trans athletes in women’s sports.
Former Notre Dame football coach Lou Holtz listens before being presented with the Presidential Medal of Freedom at the White House in Washington, D.C., Dec, 3, 2020. (Doug Mills/The New York Times/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
“It’s still about you trying to find an excuse for a lifetime wasted trying to succeed in sports without talent,” Olbermann wrote in response to Wheeler’s post.
In 2025, Olbermann faced significant backlash after posting (and later deleting) a message on X aimed at CNN contributor Scott Jennings, that said, “You’re next motherf—–,” shortly after the assassination of conservative influencer Charlie Kirk.
Holtz was a stern supporter of President Donald Trump, even saying in February 2024 that Trump needed to “coach America back to greatness!”
Near the end of Trump’s first term, shortly after former President Joe Biden defeated him in the 2020 election, Trump awarded Holtz with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian award of the United States.
After Holtz’s death was announced Wednesday, several top GOP figures paid tribute to the coach on social media.
Those GOP lawmakers included senators Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala.; Todd Young, R-Ind.; Tom Cotton, R-Ark.; and Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.; representatives Greg Murphy, R-N.C.; David Rouzer, R-N.C.; Erin Houchin, R-Ind.; and Steve Womack, R-Ark.; and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis; Indiana Gov. Mike Braun; U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon; and Rudy Giuliani.
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Lou Holtz, former Notre Dame football coach, addresses the America First Policy Institute’s America First Agenda Summit at the Marriott Marquis July 26, 2022. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc)
At the time of publication, prominent Democrat leaders have appeared silent on Holtz’s passing, including prominent Democrats with a football background.
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, who worked as an assistant high school football coach; Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., who was a recruiting target for Holtz in 1986 as a college prospect; Rep. Colin Allred, D-Texas, who played in the NFL; and Rep. Kam Buckner, D-Ill., who played football for the University of Illinois, have not posted acknowledging Holtz’s death.
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