A presidential first: Trump at the Super Bowl, latest chapter in a complicated legacy with football

Donald Trump shakes hands with Herschel Walker in New York after agreement on a four-year contract with the New Jersey Generals USFL football team, March 8, 1984. (AP Photo/Dave Pickoff, File)

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) — As a student, Donald Trump played high school football. As a business baron, he owned a team in an upstart rival to the NFL and then sued the established league. As president, he denigrated pros who took a knee during the national anthem as part of a social justice movement.

He added to that complicated history with the sport on Sunday by becoming the first president in office to attend a Super Bowl.

After flying from Florida to New Orleans, the Republican president met with participants in the honorary coin toss after he arrived at the Superdome, including relatives of victims of a deadly New Year’s Day terrorist attack in the historic French Quarter, members of the police department and emergency personnel.

Trump’s appearance at the Caesars Superdome to see the two-time defending champion Kansas City Chiefs take on the Philadelphia Eagles follows the NFL’s decision to remove the “End Racism” slogans that have been stenciled on the end zones since 2021.

Trump recently ordered the cancellation of programs that encourage diversity, equity and inclusion across the federal government and some critics see the league’s decision as a response to the Republican president’s action. But NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said the league’s diversity policies are not in conflict with the Trump administration’s efforts to end the federal government’s DEI programs.

Trump, who attended the Super Bowl in 1992, thinks the Chiefs will win, with Kansas City quarterback Patrick Mahomes the difference-maker.

“I guess you have to say that when a quarterback wins as much as he’s won, I have to go with Kansas City,” Trump said in a taped interview with Fox News Channel’s Bret Baier that aired during the pregame show. Trump said Mahomes “really knows how to win. He’s a great, great quarterback.”

The president played football as a student at the New York Military Academy. As a New York businessman in the early 1980s, he owned the New Jersey Generals of the United States Football League. Trump had sued to force a merger of the USFL and the NFL. The USFL eventually folded.

Friction existed between Trump and the NFL during his first term as president.

Trump took issue with players kneeling during the national anthem to protest social or racial injustice. That movement began in 2016 with then-San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick taking a knee during “The Star-Spangled Banner” during an exhibition game in Denver.

Trump, through social media and other public comments, insisted that players stand for the national anthem and he called on team owners to fire anyone who took a knee.

“Wouldn’t you love to see one of these NFL owners, when somebody disrespects our flag, you’d say, ‘Get that son of a bitch off the field right now. Out! He’s fired,”’ Trump said to loud applause at a rally in Hunstville, Alabama, in 2017.

Trump watched Sunday’s game from a suite after flying in with a group of some of his closest Republican allies in Congress, including Sens. Lindsey Graham and Tim Scott of South Carolina. House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., had said he’d also be in the suite with the president. Trump saluted when the national anthem was sung. Mahomes' family stopped by to visit with him.

His interest in sports extends beyond football. Trump is an avid golfer who owns multiple golf courses and has hosted tournaments. He sponsored boxing matches at his former casinos in Atlantic City, New Jersey, and attended a UFC match at Madison Square Garden weeks after winning a second term.

Trump played golf with Tiger Woods on Sunday in Florida, the White House said.

Some NFL team owners have donated to his campaigns and Trump maintains friendships with Herschel Walker and Doug Flutie, who played for the Generals. Trump endorsed Walker’s unsuccessful bid as the Republican candidate for a U.S. Senate seat from Georgia in 2022, and has tapped him to become ambassador to the Bahamas.

Trump signed an order last week that is intended to block transgender women and girls from competing in women’s sports by targeting federal funding for schools that fail to comply.

In a statement before the game, Trump said the coaches, players and staff for the Chiefs and Eagles “represent the hopes and dreams of our Nation’s young athletes as we restore safety and fairness in sports and equal opportunities among their teams.”

Alvin Tillery, a politics professor and diversity expert at Northwestern University, said in an interview that the NFL’s decision to remove “End Racism” slogans was “shameful” given that the league “makes tens of billions of dollars largely on the bodies of Black men.”

He said the NFL should explain who it was aiming to please. The NFL said it was stenciling “Choose Love” in one of the end zones for the Super Bowl to encourage the country after a series of tragedies so far this year, including a New Year’s Day truck attack in the host city of New Orleans that killed 14 people and injured dozens more.

Tillery wasn’t convinced. “I think they removed it because Trump’s coming,” he said.

By Darlene Superville, The Associated Press