Ahhh, the Super Bowl. Where families gather to watch the big game. Eat lots of food. Drink some. Party a little. Get together with friends to laugh, chill, hang out. It’s one of the few moments, the extremely few, few moments, where Americans genuinely come together.
We put aside politics. We put aside our differences. We take part in a great American tradition. It’s actually pretty cool. Well, it was. Because now President Donald Trump is attending the game.
Punchbowl News was the first to report that Trump will attend Super Bowl 59 between Philadelphia and Kansas City in New Orleans. So the most divisive president of our lifetime is attending a game that often serves as a genuine moment of unity. Trump soils everything. Now, he’s doing the same to the biggest game of the year.
Trump is believed to be the first sitting president to possibly attend the Super Bowl. There’s a reason sitting presidents don’t normally go. It’s potentially a security nightmare. But also, to me, they want the game to be the center of attention, not them.
Trump wants to go to get attention but also to show dominance over a league that once rejected him. He holds grudges the way Tom Brady holds Super Bowl records.
It doesn’t matter that Trump is a huge sports fan or has attended Super Bowls before. Who cares. What matters is now. Now, Trump stands for the opposite of everything we love about the Super Bowl. Yes, the game has become corporate, but it’s retained a level of coolness in a way the league itself hasn’t.
There’s evidence that Trump has already had a negative impact on the game. The Athletic first reported that for the first time since February of 2021 the signage ‘End Racism’ won’t be included as a message in the back of the Super Bowl end zones. The league will instead display the messages of “Choose Love” and “It Takes All of Us.”
The fact the league made this move at the same time Trump is attending the game could be the greatest coincidence of all time. It looks…weird.
(Just for the record: racism isn’t over. Will check my sources but pretty sure that’s accurate.)
NFL spokesman Brian McCarthy denied the change had anything to do with Trump. McCarthy also explained that the stencils are part of the NFL’s ‘Inspire Change’ campaign. Teams, McCarthy said, have used “Vote,” “End Racism,” “Stop Hate,” and “Choose Love.” He noted that for the title games several weeks ago Kansas City had ‘Choose Love’ on its field and the Eagles had ‘End Racism’ on theirs.
‘The Super Bowl is often a snapshot in time and the NFL is in a unique position to capture and lift the imagination of the country,’ McCarthy said in a statement. He added: ”Choose Love’ is appropriate to use in the Super Bowl this year as our country has endured in recent weeks wild fires in southern California, the terrorist attack here in New Orleans, the plane and helicopter crash near our nation’s capital and the plane crash in Philadelphia.’
Commissioner Roger Goodell was asked recently if the league was committed to continuing its efforts to further diversify the league’s coaching and personnel ranks mainly through the Rooney Rule.
“We got into diversity efforts because we felt it was the right thing for the National Football League,” Goodell said. “We’re going to continue those efforts because we’ve not only convinced ourselves, I think we’ve proven ourselves that it does make the NFL better. We’re not in this because it’s a trend to get in it or a trend to get out of it. Our efforts are fundamental in trying to attract the best possible talent into the National Football League.”
If the game comes and those signs are gone, it’s a terrible look by the league. But it also fits with everything about Trump and this era. Nothing stays unsoiled.
CNN reports that Trump recently appointed one of his former speechwriters, who was fired in 2018 following CNN’s report that he spoke at a conference attended by white nationalists, to a top position at the State Department. This is Trump’s world. This is what he does.
I’m someone that’s become slightly cynical about the NFL. It’s grown into a league concerned solely with making cash. And yes, the Super Bowl isn’t totally exempt from this. Of course. But having covered so many Super Bowls, and watched so many others from home or a party or two (or five), it seriously is one of the last remaining American moments of unity. Not perfect. Not totally. But pretty good. Even people who don’t watch football or even like it, watch some element of it. The halftime shows are as popular as the game itself.
And Trump will soil it. Like he does so many other things. Even the Super Bowl isn’t exempt.
This story has been updated with new information.