American football: Trump vs. the NFL

Sport and politics have always had an uneasy relationship, said Sean Ingle in The Guardian. Last week, Donald Trump brought the two into conflict with his “explosive” comments about American football players. Since the quarterback Colin Kaepernick first refused to stand during the US national anthem last year, as a protest against police brutality towards African-americans, a number of NFL players have adopted the controversial practice of “taking a knee” – that is, kneeling on one knee instead of standing when the anthem is played. Trump, unsurprisingly, has little sympathy for them: if a player refuses to stand, he said, the owner of their club should “get that son of a bitch off the field”. The sport’s response was “defiant”: over the weekend, more than 200 players sat or kneeled as The StarSpangled Banner rang out. Even football executives – a largely white, Republican group that includes friends of Trump – have “expressed unease” over his remarks, said Alexander Burns in The New York Times.

African-american players aren’t protesting against the anthem itself, said Kevin Clark on The Ringer. They’re just taking advantage of a “visible moment to draw attention to their causes”. And their activism goes beyond mere gestures: Malcolm Jenkins, of the Philadelphia Eagles, has met with politicians to push for reform of the criminal justice system. Trump has taken on these players at a difficult time for the NFL, said Rob Crilly in The Daily Telegraph. Viewing figures are down; the sport’s image has been tarnished by a series of domestic abuse scandals. Worst of all, it has become harder to deny the “inescapable evidence” that repeated head trauma is causing degenerative brain disease among players. By uniting football against an “enemy”, the president has done the sport a favour.