Super Bowl’s focus squarely on the action — plus politics
This will be one very political Super Bowl. It will start with President Trump’s pregame interview with his Fox News confidant, Sean Hannity — which is likely to be about as interrogative as a foot massage — and continue through the boozesoaked postgame chaos.
Sunday will become even more political, should the winning team be from San Francisco, the city Trump has mocked as a “dangerous and disgusting slum,” located in a district represented by his nemesis, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
(Shhh. Don’t tell the president that the team is based in Santa Clara, which would make it represented by Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna. Not as good for the postgame tweeting.)
Some of Sunday’s politics will be obvious, starting with two billionaires’ presidential campaigns — Trump and former New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg — torching $10 million
apiece to secure 60 seconds worth of airtime before the largest TV audience of the year, an estimated 100 million people. A few will even be sober.
But the most profound political statements will be elsewhere. Some messages have become so ingrained in professional sports that many viewers won’t notice.
Start with the NFL’s new social justice-themed public service announcements it has produced under a program called Inspire Change, created with the Players Coalition, a group cofounded by ex49ers wide receiver Anquan Boldin. One recent ad featured Boldin talking about the 2015 fatal shooting of his cousin Corey Jones by a plainclothes police officer in Florida.
It’s odd that the NFL is promoting ads about police brutality, said Howard Bryant, one of the nation’s leading commentators on the intersection between sports, politics and race. After all, the league at one point banned players from calling attention to the topic by kneeling during the national anthem.
“The message that they’re sending is that they think the public is stupid,” Bryant, an ESPN and National Public Radio commentator, told The Chronicle’s “It’s All Political” podcast.
“They are trying to sell the public on an idea of justice without practicing justice,” said Bryant, author of the new book “Full Dissidence: Notes from an Uneven Playing Field.” “That they are part of a movement that they have never been part of.”
One person who won’t show up in the ads is Colin Kaepernick, the former 49ers quarterback who started the protests.
No NFL team has signed him since the 49ers let him go after the 2016 season. Last February, Kaepernick and Eric Reid, his former 49er teammate who knelt in protest with him, reached a confidential settlement with the NFL over their suit claiming that teams colluded to keep them out of the game. (Reid has played the past two seasons with the Carolina Panthers.)
Kaepernick’s continued exile sends the message that if players “advocate for a position, then they are somehow antiAmerican,” Bryant said. “That is absolutely, in a lot of ways, a win for Trump and a win for NFL owners.”
Many fans say they don’t want to hear about politics during a ballgame. Bryant said those fans “are not paying attention.”
“How can you say you don’t want politics in your sports, but you’re completely comfortable with an American flag the size of a football field and you see F14 flyovers during the pregame?” Bryant said.
If fans say they’re OK with military messages but not political ones, “what you’re saying is that you don’t want to hear black people speak ... but you’re completely comfortable selling war between first and second down,” Bryant said.
The politics won’t stop once the game ends, especially if the Niners win. Just ask cornerback Richard Sherman. When asked if he would visit the White House if the Niners won, he said, “I doubt it.”
But star defensive lineman Nick Bosa would probably be there. Trump tweeted congratulations to Bosa after he was drafted second overall in April, urging him to “always stay true to yourself. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”
Trump backed the rookie because Bosa tweeted back in 2016 that Kaepernick was a “clown” for protesting and said he was a “big fan” of Trump. Bosa deleted the tweets before San Francisco drafted him and apologized for the Kaepernick rip. Why?
“I had to,” Bosa said before the draft. “There is a chance I might end up in San Francisco.”
Then again, if the Niners win Sunday, there’s no guarantee that they would be invited to the White House. Trump famously disinvited the Warriors after they won their 2017 title when several players said they wouldn’t show up. And the president yanked his invite to the 2018 Super Bowl champion Philadelphia Eagles for the same reason.
Then there’s the question of whether Trump will attend the game in Miami.
It’s possible he’d be worried about drawing boos, as he did during the World Series when he attended a game in Washington, D.C., though he was warmly received when he showed up for the college football championship game this month in New Orleans. Then again, the stadium there was filled with fans from two states — Louisiana (53%) and South Carolina (51%) — where Trump’s approval rating is far higher than it is in California (34%), the home of many of the 49ers fans who will help fill Hard Rock Stadium.
But Trump will undoubtedly be watching. Here’s an actual bet being offered: Will Trump tweet more than 13.5 times on Sunday?
That sounds like a lot, but Trump set his personal record as president this month with 142 tweets and retweets in one day. Also, the next day is the Iowa caucuses, on Tuesday, he delivers the State of the Union, and his impeachment trial is still grinding through the Senate. Take the over.
“It’s not a joke,” Bryant said of Trump’s tweeting. “It’s obvious that the industry of the NFL and the industry of professional sports is paying attention to the White House. So there is influence there.”