San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Best Sports Commander in Chief — Trump or Biden?
When deciding which way to cast your ballot in Tuesday’s presidential election, there are political factors to consider, for sure.
But for the avid sports fan, the political stuff is small potatoes compared with the track records of the two candidates in the world of sports.
We’re not electing a president, we’re electing a Sports Commander in Chief. Let the wonky voters fight over which candidate would best boost the economy or America’s standing in the geopolitical sphere. We sports lovers need to decide which man would be better at running the toy store.
One of the candidates is clearly more sportsoriented. Like, Joe Biden played some football in high school, but Donald Trump was a prep superstar.
“I was supposed to be a professional baseball player,” Trump said in a 2010 interview on MTV. “Fortunately, I decided to go into real estate instead.”
Just as well. As we now know, young Donald was soon to be stricken with bone spurs in his heels.
How good was Trump? He has said he was considered by some experts as the “best ( prep) baseball player in N. Y. state.”
A Slate reporter dug up as many of Trump’s high school box scores as he could, and Trump batted .138 in those games. The reporter also
noted that Trump claims he was intimidated when he attended the same tryout camp as Willie McCovey. When Trump was a high school senior, McCovey was in his fifth season with the Giants.
Hey, the memory can play tricks, and that’s ancient history. Let’s take a look at some of Trump’s accomplishments during his fouryear term:
Trump ( allegedly) brought back Big Ten football
How do we know? Because during the first presidential debate, Trump said, “By the way, I brought back Big Ten football. It was me, and I’m very happy to do it, and the people of Ohio are very proud of me.”
Note: No. Trump did initiate a Sept. 1 phone call with conference commissioner Kevin Warren, but NBC News quoted an anonymous Big Ten university president as saying, “President Trump had nothing to do with our decision and did not impact the deliberations. In fact, when his name came up ( in conversation among the 14 league presidents), it was a negative, because no one wanted this to be political.”
Almost no one.
Trump ( inadvertently) promoted peaceful protests at sporting events
When Trump gave his infamous “son of a bitch” speech in Alabama in 2017, urging NFL team owners to fire players who protested, NFL players had all but gone out of the protest business. That changed almost instantly, as hundreds of NFL SOBs protested in protest of Trump’s protestations.
Under Trump — whose attorney general canceled extensive police reforms set in motion during the Obama Biden administration — peaceful protests by athletes in favor of police reforms have increased dramatically.
Eric Schickler, a Cal political science professor, said Trump’s Twitter fights against protesting athletes like Colin Kaepernick, LeBron James and Stephen Curry have inspired many heretofore apolitical athletes to join the fray.
“I think there’s kind of a broadening of support for these movements in reaction against Trump. He has empowered these sports figures to be more aggressive,” Schickler said.
Trump has brought pride to the protests. In response to the president’s SOB speech, Kaepernick’s mother, Teresa, tweeted, “Guess that makes me a proud bitch.”
Trump actively promotes the game of golf
During his 2016 campaign, Trump said then President Barack Obama “played more golf last year than Tiger Woods. We don’t have time for this. We have to work.”
According to Presidential Golf Tracker, Obama averaged 42 golf outings per year during his term in office. Trump is averaging 87 outings per year.
He’s not just a player. Trump has a unique approach to improving the sport: Get rid of the hoi polloi. He says golf should be an “aspirational” sport, reserved for those who have earned the right to participate by amassing wealth. He acknowledged in an interview with Forbes that this view “may be elitist, and perhaps that’s what golf needs. Let golf be elitist. ... Let people work hard and aspire to someday be able to play golf. To afford to play it.”
Accordingly, Trump buys golf courses and installs waterfalls and gold plumbing fixtures.
He does so at great personal financial sacrifice. The New York Times inspected Trump’s tax returns and reported that since 2000, he lost $ 315.6 million on his 15 golf courses.
It’s not that Trump is careless with money. Rick Reilly, in “Commander in Cheat: How Golf Explains Trump,” documents Trump’s penchant for underpaying or stiffing his golf course workers and vendors. When a man playing in a Trump charity tourney made a $ 1 million holeinone, he had to sue and settle for $ 158,000.
Biden plays golf, but can’t match Trump’s claim of winning 20 club championships. Even more impressive: Trump racked up those victories without even playing in those tournaments. So much winning!
Trump has promoted a return to manly football
On several occasions, he mocked the NFL’s attempts to make the game safer by outlawing dangerous hits and tactics.
“Football has become soft, like our country has become soft,” Trump said at a rally in January 2016. On other occasions, he mocked the new safety rules, urging a return to the time in football when men were men and brains were scrambled.
By the way, Trump is a proven expert on actions destructive to the business of pro football. He owned the New Jersey Generals of the nowdefunct USFL. Trump is widely credited with destroying the promising young league by strongarming the other team owners into moving the league schedule to the fall, in competition with the NFL. Trump promoted NASCAR
He helped bring attention and more popularity to the sport in July. First, Trump blasted NASCAR for banning Confederate flags at races, which NASCAR did at the urging of its lone Black driver, Bubba Wallace.
In June, a noose was found in the Wallace team’s garage at Talladega. Other NASCAR drivers and crew rallied in support, pushing Wallace’s car to the starting line. Subsequently, the FBI found that the noose had been in the garage for a year.
Trump then tweeted that Wallace should apologize for the “HOAX,” and noted, “That & Flag decision has caused lowest ratings EVER!” NASCAR’s network reported that ratings for the 2020 season were actually up 8%. NASCAR driver Cory LaJoie drove a TRUMP2020 car, sponsored by a political action committee backing Trump. The car failed to win a race but might have inspired Trump’s campaign rally cry, “We’re rounding the corner.”
Trump has saved taxpayer money on White House visits by athletic teams
He disinvited the Warriors and the Eagles from traditional White House visits. Pretty sure he won’t be inviting the Lakers.
When Trump does hold a White House reception for a championship team, he saves money by serving fastfood burgers and fries.
Trump’s philosophy on team nicknames evolved during his presidency
Two years ago, when the Cleveland MLB team and the Washington NFL team both announced they would review their team’s nicknames, Trump tweeted his objection to any such changes.
In 2013, when Obama urged the Washington football team to drop its racial slur nickname, Trump tweeted, “Our country has far bigger problems. FOCUS on them, not nonsense.”
To show America how harmless nicknames are, Trump has poked goodnatured fun at such people as “Sleepy” Joe Biden, “Crooked” Hillary Clinton, Kamala “Monster” Harris and Elizabeth “Pocahontas” Warren.
That’s a partial list of Trump’s achievements as Sports Commander in Chief. During that time, Biden had little or no impact on the American sports scene, though he still managed to get an endorsement from Curry via video at the Democratic National Convention.
In recognizing Trump’s accomplishments in the sports realm, it is important to note that he is just getting started. If he is reelected, there is no reason to believe his interest in sports would wane. If anything, given a power mandate by the electorate, he surely would become more involved.
For instance, Trump probably would not abide the mounting political protests by athletes. His favorite tool for punishing wrongdoers is to hit ’ em in the wallet.
He once tweeted in response to NFL player protests, “Why is the NFL getting massive tax breaks while at the same time disrespecting our Anthem, Flag and Country? Change tax law!”
Under a President Biden, who likely would be easily distracted by political stuff, college football would go back into hiding, the NFL would become the NTFL ( T for touch), and golf courses would be overrun with sub-aspirational riffraff.
“It’s hard to know what the next four years would be like if ( Trump) is reelected,” Schickler says, “but certainly he’s not going to shy away from using his Twitter feeds and other means to take stands on things he cares about. It’s certainly possible he’ll have escalating fights with NBA players, for example.” MMA, perhaps?