One of the biggest stories in a year of big stories was the intersection of sports, race and politics, and it’s looking like that story won’t go away in 2018.

And at several key moments one of the people who seemed right in the middle of this story was ESPN’s Jemele Hill.

Back in February, ESPN relaunched the evening edition of its flagship sports news show, SportsCenter, with Jemele Hill and Michael Smith as its new anchors.

The subtext was hard to miss: The dominant force in the sports media world was promoting two young, popular black personalities, known for their chemistry and candor, in hopes they might bolster sinking ratings by attracting a younger, hipper and, yes, browner audience.

And then all hell broke loose, as the sports world became one of the most contentious battlegrounds around race and politics. Professional athletes whose teams had won championships said they would skip the traditional White House meet-and-greet out of distaste for President Trump’s rhetoric around race. And then came the massive controversy around the NFL, the national anthem, Colin Kaepernick and black players taking a knee to protest racial inequality and police violence.

ESPN’s coverage came in for particular scrutiny: Was the network promoting a liberal agenda by covering the ongoing protests? Couldn’t its anchors and commentators just stick to sports?

It was against that backdrop, and following the violent white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Va., that Hill fired off a barrage of tweets that landed her in serious trouble. In one, she called the President of the United States a “white supremacist.”

A White House spokeswoman called for Hill to be fired and, later, President Trump lambasted her on Twitter. (There was plenty of rancor among Hill’s ESPN colleagues regarding the network’s decision not to punish her.)

About a month later, after the owner of the Dallas Cowboys threatened to bench players who protested during the national anthem, Hill took to Twitter again. She suggested that people who disagreed with the owner could stop patronizing businesses that advertised with the Cowboys.

ESPN suspended Hill for two weeks for violating its social media policy — a move that turned out to be as controversial and polarizing as anything else in 2017.

I talked with Jemele Hill last month about becoming a flashpoint in the culture wars, about the flimsy partition between racial politics and sports in this country and about where all this is headed in 2018. Our conversation has been edited for clarity and length.

We want talk to about the biggest stories in sports and race in 2017, but I guess we kinda got to start with you. Because you’ve had a very interesting year.

To say the least.

Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary, went on TV and said that you should be fired for your comments [on Twitter]. Where were you when you heard that? What were you thinking?

I was actually at work. We were putting the show together. And I have a couple of friends that cover politics, and one of them was in the White House briefing room. And she texted me. It was like, “You will not believe what just happened.” And she told me. And I was, like, “What!?!”

And so I go to Twitter and it’s everywhere. But my first reaction is still is my reaction — I thought it was kind of cool! I mean, I know that’s going to sound bizarre to people. Look, when I came up in journalism I had the pleasure to be a lot around a lot of great journalists and people that I respect [who] take down public officials. And I’ve seen some of my friends who have had public officials call for them to be fired because they were upset about their reporting. For journalists, it’s kind of a badge of honor, you know what I’m saying?

That tweet — calling Donald Trump a “white supremacist” — do you feel that statement is justified?

I think time and place are everything. And I don’t think that that’s necessarily an opinion to be shared on Twitter. I mean the odd thing about the reaction is — naive as this may sound — it kind of surprised me just because I wasn’t the first person to say it. It wasn’t like, “Oh my God, nobody is saying this!” I think it was because of who I am and that I represent ESPN and the SportsCenter brand.

That being said, people have to realize the timing of that. I was coming off of Charlottesville. Obviously, a lot of people in this country, not just me, were very emotional about witnessing a bunch of Nazi sympathizers and self-branded white supremacists taking over an American city. That’s just something I don’t think I ever would have imagined that I would have seen in my lifetime. That’s something my mother grew up with, you know, as a child of the ’60s living in Detroit and witnessing racial strife. That’s not to say that I didn’t know racism existed before Charlottesville, but I think it was just jarring to see it play out so physically and so obviously, I was emotional from that.

But there’s a reason why they tell you, you know, when you’re on Twitter and your emotions are running high — that’s probably not the time to be on Twitter. So between that and just some other troubling incidents that I don’t necessarily need to regurgitate because if you hit Google, you know they’re there … and you know, I just called it what it is.

I’m curious about where the line is for you now. Because at Code Switch we obviously tweet about race in America all the time, and we have to be careful in how we talk about race and electoral politics, for example, because they are so incredibly racialized, and at NPR we’re not supposed be partisan. …

That’s why I’ve never tried to make it about parties — and for me it never has been. Because for me it’s just right and wrong. That’s it. I don’t care what party you’re with or what your political affiliation is. Even in legislation and policy-making, it’s about, does this make sense or not? And so, for me, it wasn’t an issue of attacking Republicans. It was issue of feeling that something was wrong, feeling that wrong is happening and reacting as a citizen of this country. And I think that’s what makes this time so unique and so different and so sensitive for a lot of us who are in charge of delivering the news — and especially for me because I’m not a political reporter. Clearly. I’m in sports, all right? And it’s being brought right to the doorstep of sports all the time. And so, I think what can be a struggle for us is: Where does the job end and where do we begin?

One of the things that’s been really fascinating to watch over the last year is the repeated suggestion that there be a hard partition between sports and politics and that sports is a respite, and separate from the world of politics. But if you think about a sports story like the Oakland Raiders moving to Las Vegas, for example, that story is about … municipal politics. I’m curious as to how you think SportsCenter and ESPN should go about navigating these spaces that have always been political but are now very explicitly so.

The only thing different about it now is things are more divided in our country in general. That’s the thing that makes it hard. Because even if you can even just do flat reporting about, say, Colin Kaepernick taking a knee, you’re going to get wildly emotional reactions, and we’re just reporting the news. We’re not even weighing in, we’re just telling you it happened!

Or telling you why he’s doing it, which is our journalistic responsibility, to explain it in context. And so, people still get mad, and it’s like, “All right, but it is just the news.” It’s the biggest story in sports of the year — you can even argue the last two years. And we would be journalistically irresponsible if we did not discuss it. And what I often do, I just remind them that politics has been everywhere in sports for so long that you’ve just come to accept it and didn’t even realize it. Again, using the Raiders as an example: Any time a team gets a stadium built, those are built largely with taxpayer dollars. It has to be voted on, which makes it political, all right? And even the association with the NFL and the military. Flyovers are political. The anthem is political. The NFL was paid by the military to showcase certain military things. I’m not making a commentary on it, but that’s part of the the story, too. It’s funny how people pick and choose when they’re OK with politics being in sports depending on how they feel about said politics.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the really unique position the NFL is in. Baseball has a television fanbase that is overwhelmingly white and its players are overwhelmingly white, although there is a sizable Latino contingent. The NBA is mostly black players and its viewership is mostly brown and skews younger. But the NFL, which is the biggest league by leaps and bounds, has a TV audience that is at once very white — I was actually surprised when I looked at the numbers — and has a median viewer age that is a little bit higher, in the low 50s. So you have this older, white audience while the player base is around 70-percent black. There’s this unspoken, underlying demographic tension and it seems like watching the protests this fall and the reaction to them, that a lot of this conflict was probably overdue. I’m curious how you think the controversy around these protests will resolve themselves.

I don’t think they will. I don’t know if that toothpaste is going back in the tube. You pointed out that automatic tension just given who the base of the fans are versus who the players are versus the structure of the NFL, from who is the ownership and even the way that players are paid.

Because the NFL doesn’t guarantee contracts.

Right. The fact that the contracts are not guaranteed. So you have a lot of elements there. I would liken it to college football, too, because I think it’s the same dynamic. The difference is, because the schools and the coaches and the teams have the leverage of having their scholarship and being in control, then the conformity is there because it has to be. [The players] want to get to the NFL. They want to showcase themselves, and so, by and large they go along with whatever the program is.

And in the NFL it’s the same. Even though players are getting paid, they’re are also in a sport that has the dynamic of them being disposable. You’re hired to be fired. You’re there to be replaced.

Throughout the history of sports, when it comes to sports and race, we’ve seen this routinely. It’s that whenever black athletes [move] outside the box of going beyond just being the entertainment of society, it is met with tremendous blowback. Tremendous. It’s all good when you’re catching touchdown passes or when you score 30 points a game. But the moment you start talking about some issues of substance or start demanding that your audience do something, then it becomes a different situation.

Now the owners and the fans know that whatever values they imagined [they shared with these players] are not so. They’re critically thinking about things: “We don’t want that. We just want them to play. We just want them to score. And we just want them to entertain us.”

And you know, that’s why I think Colin it doesn’t have a job. I don’t say this to be casual about the issue because it’s very serious, but had Colin Kaepernick put his hands on a woman, he’d be back in the league. Because that’s a tale of redemption that can be sold. Like Josh Gordon: “No, no, no! He doesn’t use drugs anymore, because he said it!”

You can’t do that with Kaepernick, because we’re talking about how he is as a person and as a man. He’s not to all of a sudden tomorrow going to say, “You know what? Come to think of it, Philando Castile got what he deserved.” That’s not going happen. So he’s exposed that he’s not a conformist. And while he is a team player — with the 49ers, he got the highest leadership award that you can give a player, and that was from his teammates — he has certain beliefs that are intrinsic to the person he is and he’s not given those up. So they can’t “redeem” Colin Kaepernick. They can’t sell that story.

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The U.S. unveiled its roster for the men’s Olympic Hockey team on Monday.

And the joyful, emotional moment when forward Bobby Butler told his dad that he made the team was caught on video.

It shows Butler skating up to the side of the rink as his father walks in. The two men shake hands, then Butler breaks the news. His dad immediately throws his arms around him as his teammates cheer.

Watch, it will probably brighten your day:

The 30-year-old Butler, who hails from Marlborough, Mass., skates for the American Hockey League’s Milwaukee Admirals.

Like 14 of his Olympic teammates, Butler has played on NHL teams. But this is the first Olympics in two decades that no U.S. team members are currently playing for the NHL.

That’s because the NHL announced last April that it wouldn’t pause its regular season to accommodate players who want to compete at the games in Pyeongchang, South Korea. The NHL stated that the “overwhelming majority of our clubs are adamantly opposed to disrupting the 2017-2018 NHL season.”

The decision was also about money, as NPR’s Camila Domonoske reported: “The International Olympic Committee has previously paid for players to travel to the Olympics, and covered their insurance costs. But the IOC wasn’t planning to foot the bill for 2018.”

The players on the men’s final roster came from colleges, from Americans playing in Europe and from the American Hockey League. And, as SB Nation wrote, NHL stars are out and “in their place are a bunch of guys you’ve probably never heard of.”

In previous years, “USA Hockey got all its Olympic players from one league: the NHL,” according to SB Nation. “Without that option, management turned to a wide variety of sources, plucking players from leagues around the world to piece together a roster for Pyeongchang.”

The NHL’s decision created a unique opportunity for players who would not have been able to make the team otherwise. Just one member of the team, captain Brian Gionta, has played in the Olympics before.

“We really like our roster,” team general manager Jim Johannson said in a statement. “It’s a group that brings versatility and experience and includes players with a lot of passion about representing our country.”

The roster is perplexing to some hockey observers, such as Deadspin’s Barry Petchesky, who calls it “weird as hell” with little name recognition.

But it may be that the lack of prior fame makes moment like Butler’s all the more poignant.

“I know we’re a little down on the Olympics without the NHL, but these are the kinds of moments that make me so happy for the players selected,” writes ESPN hockey analyst Chris Peters. “You know they’ll battle every day for the crest on that jersey.”

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The Crimson Tide eked their way into the NCAA football playoffs this year, but they rolled into a third straight national title game Monday night against nemesis Clemson.

Alabama dominated the Sugar Bowl — a rematch of the 2016 and 2017 title games, which the Tide and Tigers split — from the start, but the 10-6 halftime score suggested another nailbiter was possible. Alabama’s defensive players erased that possibility in a span of seconds in the third quarter.

Hulking defensive lineman Da’Ron Payne got Alabama the ball with an interception, then made an unusual appearance with the offense and caught a short touchdown toss from quarterback Jalen Hurts. On Clemson’s first play after the ensuing kickoff, Alabama linebacker Mack Wilson caught a tipped pass from Clemson quarterback Kelly Bryant and ran it back 18 yards for a score.

The suddenly insurmountable 24-6 score would hold the rest of the game.

Alabama’s defense kept Clemson pinned down from the start; the Tigers barely managed 100 total yards through the end of the third quarter. No Clemson rusher had more than 22 yards, and only half of quarterback Kelly Bryant’s passes found their target.

The win puts Alabama in the Jan. 8 national title game against Southeastern Conference rival Georgia, winner of the Rose Bowl earlier Monday.

Senior running back Sony Michel kept Georgia in that game for three quarters as they trailed Oklahoma, got the Bulldogs back to a tie at the end of the third quarter, and got them into the national title game in double overtime Monday night.

He covered 222 total yards doing it, including touchdown runs of 75, 38 and 27 yards. Senior running back Nick Chubb added 145 yards and two touchdowns, one of them on a 50-yard run.

The Bulldogs needed every inch of it in the 54-48 win, as Oklahoma’s Heisman-winning quarterback, Baker Mayfield, and sophomore running back Rodney Anderson sprinted the Sooners down the field again and again. Anderson finished with 201 yards rushing, while Mayfield threw for 287 yards and two touchdowns — and even caught a touchdown himself.

But Mayfield was also sacked five times by the Georgia defense, and wasn’t able to get much going once the Sooners got to overtime. Oklahoma matched Georgia’s field goal in the first OT, but kicker Austin Seibert’s second attempt was deflected by senior linebacker Lorenzo Carter.

That meant all Georgia needed was a field goal of their own in double overtime. With a start at the Oklahoma 25 in the college OT format and kicker Rodrigo Blankenship nailing a Rose Bowl-record 55-yarder earlier in the game, that seemed likely.

But as he had all game, Michel broke free. His nearly untouched run up the left sideline ended the game and put Georgia in title game. The game will be broadcast from Atlanta by ESPN at 8 p.m. ET.

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Former international soccer star George Weah has won Liberia’s presidential runoff, the country’s election commission announced Thursday.

Weah won 61.5 percent of the vote, with more than 98 percent of ballots counted. He defeated the current vice president, Joseph Boakai.

This marks the first time in 70 years that Liberia will transfer power from one elected president to another. President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, a Nobel Peace Prize winner and the first female head of state elected in Africa, is stepping down after two terms in office. She did not publicly endorse either candidate.

Weah had run unsuccessfully for president twice before. NPR’s Ofeibea Quist-Arcton reports that many Liberians identify with the 51-year-old footballer, who grew up poor and was not part of the social or political elite. Critics say Weah has limited experience and education.

The job won’t be easy, as Ofeibea explained on NPR’s Morning Edition:

“Liberians will tell you that Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the outgoing president, has managed to cement peace, which is hugely important after back-to-back civil wars and then that Ebola outbreak three years ago in Liberia but that she has not done enough to make Liberians prosper, to pull them out of poverty and to give them jobs and deal with the economy. And also, there have been allegations of corruption. So whoever wins has huge challenges ahead of him.”

Soccer’s international governing body, FIFA, has described Weah as “a towering figure on the ’90s football scene.” He burst onto the world stage at Monaco under manager Arsene Wenger and went on to play at some of the sport’s pre-eminent clubs: Paris Saint-Germain, AC Milan, Chelsea and Manchester City. He is the only African player to have won FIFA’s World Player of the Year. He announced his retirement in August 2003.

Weah’s vice president will be Jewel Howard Taylor, ex-wife of former president Charles Taylor, who is serving a 50-year sentence for war crimes. Some are asking whether the former president will try to influence the country’s politics from prison.

“She’s my colleague in the Senate,” Weah told Deutsche Welle, explaining his choice of running mate. “She is a Liberian, capable, qualified, and Liberian people love her. I also believe in gender and equality, so I think having a woman as my vice president is a good thing.”

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