2 weeks Ago By Firstpost
Come Sunday, Donald Trump will attend the Super Bowl when Kansas City Chiefs take on Philadelphia Eagles in Super Bowl LIX in New Orleans. Three vice-presidents of the United States have previously attended the Super Bowl. Spiro Agnew had seen Baltimore Colts beat Dallas Cowboys 16-13 in Miami George H.
W. Bush had attended the 1982 Super Bowl between San Francisco 49ers and Cincinnati Bengals in Michigan, wit the 49ers winning 26-21. Al Gore witnessed Dallas Cowboys beat Buffalo Bills 30-13 in Atlanta in 1994.
Fast forward to 2025, Trump is set to become the first sitting President of the United States to attend a Super Bowl game. Donald Trump is known to be an avid sports fan and his love affair with the NFL dates back to the early 1980s. Trump had attempted to acquire the Baltimore Colts in 1981, and although he failed on that occasion, Trump managed to buy a team, the New Jersey Generals, in the United States Football League (USFL), which takes place during the spring-summer period as opposed to NFL that is held during autumn-winter.
Trump was the leading figure behind a lawsuit filed by the USFL. The USFL, in its lawsuit, had accused the NFL of monopoly. The USFL ended up winning the case but received just $3 in damages.
The USFL was eventually closed down in 1986 but would return 36 years later in 2022, with eight teams participating. In 2017, during Trump’s first presidential term, Trump launched a scathing attack at Colin Kaepernick, over his decision to kneel in protest against racism, while the American national anthem was played. “Wouldn’t you love to see one of these NFL owners, when somebody disrespects our flag, to say, ‘Get that son of a bitch off the field right now.
He’s fired!’,” Trump said in September 2017 during a rally in Alabama. Defending Kaepernick, several players across the NFL eventually bent the knee during the national anthem. “Divisive comments like these demonstrate an unfortunate lack of respect for the NFL, our great game and all of our players,” NFL commissioner Roger Goodell had said.
This resulted in a huge outcome, with several teams deciding to skip the traditional White House dinner for Championship-winning teams. The Philadelphia Eagles, Super Bowl winners in the 2017-2018 season, were disinvited by the White House after several players said they would not attend. Yet just like the expansion of his electoral base during the presidential campaign, Trump has gradually found a foothold in sport over the past year.
On Monday he welcomed the Florida Panthers ice hockey team to the White House in recognition of their National Hockey League championship victory last season. A day later, the White House confirmed that Trump would become the first US president to attend the Super Bowl in person, joining around 74,000 other fans at Sunday’s showpiece between the Kansas City Chiefs and Philadelphia Eagles. Amy Bass, a professor of sports studies at Manhattanville University in New York, says Trump’s decision to attend the Super Bowl is “political.
” “Even if he is going because he loves football ...
it is a political move because he is the president of the United States and everything he does is political,” Bass told news agency AFP . Some have interpreted the NFL’s decision to remove the words “End Racism” from the end zone at this weekend’s Super Bowl as a concession to the “anti-woke” stance of the new Trump administration. However NFL chief Goodell insisted on Monday that the league remained firmly committed to diversity programs, despite the Trump administration’s calls for similar initiatives in government and elsewhere to be scrapped.
“We got into diversity efforts because we felt it was the right thing for the National Football League ...
we’ve proven to ourselves that it does make the NFL better,” Goodell said. Players at Sunday’s Super Bowl have reacted positively to Trump’s attendance, with Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce calling it a “great honor.” That could potentially lead to some awkwardness between Kelce and his pop icon girlfriend, Taylor Swift.
Swift endorsed Trump’s election rival Kamala Harris last year, prompting Trump to write on social media: “I hate Taylor Swift.” The Super Bowl’s high-profile halftime concert on Sunday could also be an opportunity for anti-Trump sentiment, with rapper Kendrick Lamar, who has been critical of the president in the past, headlining the show. Bass wonders how fans at the Superdome might respond on Sunday, given the Eagles’ recent history with Trump following the 2018 row.
“Here’s the thing about using a stadium or a ball park as a political arena: you have absolutely no idea what the crowd is going to do, because you, the politician, are not why anyone is there,” Bass said. “You’d be hard pressed to find a city that hates Donald Trump more than Philadelphia, so..
..might they be disrespectful? Yes.
And that’s a shame. Because the office of the president deserves respect. But Donald Trump changed the rules on respect, so all’s fair.
” With AFP inputs.
