Hypocrisy of NFL owners is on display
On Monday night, U.S. President Donald Trump nominated District of Columbia Appeals Court Judge Brett Kavanaugh to fill a vacancy on the Supreme Court.
And within hours, several prominent alumni of Georgetown Prep penned an open letter urging U.S. senators to confirm Trump’s choice.
The authors were all graduates of the same exclusive suburban Washington, D.C., prep school that produced Kavanaugh, and in the list of co-signers two names stood out for sports fans.
New York Yankees general manager Brian Cashman signed the letter, as did Arizona Cardinals president Michael Bidwill.
The Cardinals team website later posted an article in which Bidwill, who has known Kavanaugh for 37 years, praises the Supreme Court nominee’s brains, legal bona fides and football prowess.
Bidwill’s pro-Kavanaugh campaigning seems a stunning reversal for a member of an NFL ownership class that recently moved to separate its sport from America’s bitterly divided political climate.
After all, the new NFL rule requiring players to stand for the pre-game anthem aimed to stifle player demonstrations against racism and focus attention on football.
But Bidwill’s vocal support of Trump’s Supreme Court nominee shows NFL owners will gladly mix football with polarizing politics, provided those politics veer conservative, like Bidwill’s, and not pro-Black, like exiled quarterback Colin Kaepernick’s.
And if you think the stance seems hypocritical, you’re probably right.
Bidwill, naturally, disagrees. Tuesday afternoon, he appeared in studio with Phoenixbased conservative radio host Mike Broomhead to promote Kavanaugh further, and argue that his advocacy doesn’t con- stitute a double standard.
“People are saying, Stick to sports,” he said. “We ask our players 20 days a year — game days — to restrict their statements. The rest of the days, we want our players to get engaged in the community.”
But Bidwill, son of Cardinals owner Bill Bidwill, promoted Kavanaugh on the team’s website, which is open for business every hour of every day of the year, not just on autumn game days.
Co-signing a letter to senators conveys Bidwill’s support for his high school classmate to the people who matter most.
But the story on the Cardinals’ website leverages the team’s audience and social media reach to rally public support for Trump’s Supreme Court nominee.
Put differently, Bidwill accessed a broad platform hoping to effect political change.
It’s a similar strategy to the one that prompted NFL critics like Trump to criticize players like Kaepernick, except that, independent of his team, Bidwill is rich but not particularly famous.
A private Twitter account in his name boasts just 19 followers, compared with 917,000 for the team account that posted a link to his pro-Kavanaugh interview.
Meanwhile, Bidwill’s portrayal of his Kavanaugh support as a politically-neutral community engagement campaign strains credulity and good faith.
Bidwill didn’t use the club’s website and Twitter feed Tuesday morning to organize a team visit to a kindergarten class.
He employed them to help influence the fate of a Supreme Court nominee whose confirmation could shape U.S. jurisprudence and politics for de- cades. Kavanaugh has been tapped to replace Anthony Kennedy, the retiring centrist justice for whom he once clerked.
His arrival would add another conservative judge to a Supreme Court that Trump wants to push to the right — and his nomination has Democratic senators planning ways to block the confirmation.
Last year, Kavanaugh opposed net neutrality, issuing a dissenting opinion when the D.C. circuit court declined to hear a challenge to a law, instituted under then-president Barack Obama, forcing internet service providers to treat all data and content equally.
Kavanaugh has also repeatedly signalled his belief that a sitting president should have immunity from civil suits and criminal indictments — a key detail given he’s the nominee of a president linked to special prosecutor Robert Mueller’s investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election.
And though Kavanaugh hasn’t revealed his stance on Roe v Wade, Trump campaigned on the promise he’d appoint Supreme Court justices who would overturn the precedentsetting ruling on abortion.
In campaigning for Kavanaugh, Bidwill isn’t doing the community outreach that’s part of every pro sports team’s marketing program. He’s attempting to muscle a confirmation process that will affect a series of divisive political issues.
If you take at face value the NFL’s contention that it hopes to create distance between its on-field product and the country’s polarized politics, Bidwill’s move seems curious.
But viewed in the context of the league’s attempts to appease Trump, and the different standards in effect for owners and players, Bidwill using his team’s media apparatus to help Kavanaugh makes sense.
Kaepernick’s anti-racist politics might make league officials uneasy, but pro-conservative lobbying from owners like Bidwill is always welcome.