Football Becomes a Political Football

Filed in National by on June 5, 2018

It’s no secret that blustery, overcompensating macho types like Donald Trump love football. Trump himself, you’ll recall, tried to buy an NFL team in the 1980s and failed. He then bought a team in the startup USFL, which began in 1983 as a spring supplement to the NFL but went tits up in 1985 when, at Trump’s insistence, the league switched to a fall schedule and went head-to-head against Goliath. Some wags take that as evidence that he has a track record at destroying pro football leagues.

With Trump, we can never rule out revenge as a primary motive, but it seems to me he understands perfectly well what he told Cowboys owner Jerry Jones: “This one lifts me,” meaning he can’t lose by attacking the NFL.

His disinvitation* of the Super Bowl champion Philadelphia Eagles is the latest sign that Trump understands how to frame the racially fraught demographics of the NFL — an 85% white audience watching a 75% black sport — to appeal to the racial fears of a big chunk of his base. With help from right-wing media, he’s framed a plea for social justice as an anti-American slave revolt, proving the NFL still has a Trump problem, and it’s likely to persist. How ironic that the people who love football the most are being asked to give it up by their Rasputin, and enough are doing so to have NFL owners wearing Depends.

Like it or not, the Eagles are all over the news today, because this is one of those stories the media can cover by running up to all sorts of sports stars and other celebs and breathlessly tweeting their reaction. But if you read just one thing about this, make it this column by Marcus Hayes of the Philly Daily News, who calls out to the many Trump fans who populate the parking lots at The Linc, “How ya like your boy now?”

As with so many things in Trumpworld, the courts may prove the undoing . Legal experts think Colin Kaepernick’s lawsuit against the league is on solid legal ground:

in certain cases, private businesses can be considered state actors, and Kaepernick and other NFL players ― like his former San Francisco teammate Eric Reid ― who appear to have been ostracized over their protests, could have a credible argument that the NFL, in this instance, was a public entity that was improperly influenced by the president.

The NFL, Edelman argued, could be considered a state actor for two reasons: First, because it receives tax breaks from the federal government, and second, because most of its teams play in stadiums that are partly financed by local governments. NFL stadiums have also received billions of dollars in federal tax subsidies.

Federal courts have previously ruled that sports franchises have acted as state actors. In 1978, a judge found that the New York Yankees’ policy banning female reporters from their locker room violated the Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause because New York City owned Yankee Stadium, qualifying the team as a state actor, as Edelman notes in a brief he wrote examining the possibility of NFL players filing a free speech lawsuit.

Trump, naturally, made it worse for himself legally by tweeting his threat to rescind tax breaks if the owners didn’t restrict the protests.

Unlike Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, Trump never played the game, and you can see why — he’s prone to fumbling. Maybe it’s the tiny hands.

*”Disinvitation” is a recently coined word seen mostly in controversies over speakers at colleges; socially it just isn’t done. I bring this up because it’s evidence that Trump violates all norms, not just political ones, and I suspect it’s out of equal parts ignorance, dickishness and childish self-regard.

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  1. Alby says:

    I didn’t realize when I posted that Fox News piled on by showing kneeling Eagles “protesting” — when they were actually praying. That late hit merits a 15-yard penalty.

  2. Tom Kline says:

    The players need to do their jobs and stop the BS.

  3. Liz Allen says:

    The players are doing their jobs, playin football! This fake story by Trumpolini is to keep fear, racism attached to football. Narry an Eagle took a knee all last season. His crazyiness is to make people FEAR black football players. He wants a bunch of white, blonde haired, orange skinned MEN playing. His plan is to make it about headlines about football NOT about Russia Manifort. Mueller….,..its about throwing red meat to his rascist, hatefilled, supporters. He should understand blacks are in our military as are brown, red, yellow! When he tries his “coup de tat”, those folks and a lotta good white will never permit the “stupid people” destroying our Consituition, rule of law, and republic His “sick tribal leaders” think they can win in the Supreme Court…will, maybe not by the citizens of our country..

  4. Liz Allen says:

    TK: the trouble with your views, they fall flat on facts. Players and Owners KNOW why some courageous ones took a knee…For police brutality all over this country, worse than ever under the fascist, authoritarian lovin Trumpolini. Do you love Kings? Are you for King George?

  5. Liberal Elite says:

    @TK “The players need to do their jobs and stop the BS.”

    Maybe so, but it’s illegal for owners to force players to make political statements.
    Getting penalized for not making a political statement is completely ridiculous.
    Owners simply cannot demand that.
    And so the owners need to stop the BS and do their jobs, too.

  6. Liz Allen says:

    During our report about President Trump canceling the Philadelphia Eagles trip to the White House to celebrate their Super Bowl win, we showed unrelated footage of players kneeling in prayer.” (1 of 2)

    EVEN FAUX knows the whole thing is pure unmigated horseshit. LB…you do know the players were kneeling to protest nationwide police brutality, NOT to offend the country, or the flag or the anthem… No one loses their right to freedom of speech no matter who they work for.

  7. Jason330 says:

    Was there ever anyhting as pitiful as the sham “celebration of the flag” Trump tried to replace the Eagles visit with? #loser

  8. puck says:

    Bunch of crisis actors.

  9. Alby says:

    Hey, it worked in Florida in 2000.

  10. RSE says:

    Liz Allen – “No one loses their right to freedom of speech no matter who they work for”.

    So, let’s say I worked at Outback Steakhouse. According to your concept of “freedom of speech”, I could just stand up at work and announce to all the customers, that eating meat is immoral, right? And my job should be totally secure…lol.

  11. mouse says:

    Well it has certainly coalesced the cohort that is easily manipulated by their racial resentments and obsession with a game played by giant steroid laden millionaires using a funny shaped ball

  12. Alby says:

    RSE translation: My life sucks, so theirs should too.

    This is the default conservative position on everything.

  13. RE Vanella says:

    It owns the libs!

    The one thing that’s very precarious is an employer mandating some sort of political or religious act as a requirement for employment.

    So while you can’t pass out PETA leaflets in the Outback, the Outback can’t make you recited the Our Father prayer everyday before your shift. That’s the difference.

    I guess they could do, but that’s headed to court as well on the grounds I said.

  14. mouse says:

    The default conservative position, lol! So spot on

  15. Alby says:

    @mouse: I don’t know if RSE’s life actually sucks — he seems pretty happy-go-lucky in blog comments — but conservatives all seem to think that, because life is cruel, it must have been designed to be so. Therefore any attempt by collective governmental action to make life less cruel is against the will of the Creator. Or something. I can’t figure it out. They look at an unfair world and, even though they’re closer to the bottom rung than the top, say, “Yep, this is the best we can hope for. Shut up before it gets worse.” Fighting the powerful never occurs to them; they save their violent tendencies for the powerless. I have an easier time figuring out how my cat’s brain works than a conservative’s.

  16. Ben says:

    Tom, their job is to run fast and cause brain injuries to each other… not recruited for your Dear Leader’s cannon fodder brigade. dumbass.

  17. Liberal Elite says:

    @B “…their job is to run fast and cause brain injuries to each other… not recruited for your Dear Leader’s cannon fodder brigade.”

    But there has always been a tight connection between professional sports and military recruitment. …lots of military advertising props up sports.

    I guess the military leaders think that if you’re dull enough to spend a nice Sunday afternoon watching brain damage ball (aka football), with nothing better in your life to pursuit, then maybe…

  18. Arthur says:

    Everything is politicized.

    considering army/navy first played in 1890 and the first pro game wasnt played till 30 years later sports and the military are more linked than just ads. i think having military ads being a part of professional sports is a good thing. considering 99% of the overly testosteroned athletes who will never make a career out of pro sports need an outlet for that aggression, the military is a good alternative

  19. Ben says:

    So you agree with Tom that football players are Army ads?

  20. RE Vanella says:

    Having military advertisements is a bad thing. Full stop.

  21. Liberal Elite says:

    …but far better than a draft.

  22. RE Vanella says:

    I’d argue a draft is better for Democracy, but engaging in organized industrial slaughter for vague geopolitical reasons and the financial interest of oligarchs is atrocious regardless of the method used to fill the ranks.

  23. Ben says:

    “but far better than the draft”…. that sounds like the people whos only argument they could muster for Clinton was “shes far better than trmp”, but ok.