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Business and personal 45th President of the United States Tenure Impeachments Prosecutions Interactions involving Russia ![]() |
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During his career as a businessman and politician, Donald Trump has had a noted relationship with the sport of American football, both at the professional and collegiate levels. Since the 1980s, he has had a strained relationship with the National Football League (NFL), the largest professional American football league in the world.[1] A 2018 article in Business Insider labeled Trump's relationship with the league "The Pigskin War", calling the NFL "his oldest rival".[1] That same year, sportswriter Adam Schefter of ESPN stated that Trump has "his own little vendetta against the NFL",[1] while Ed Malyon, the sports editor of The Independent, stated in 2019 that, "Trump has long waged war against the NFL".[2]
Starting in the 1980s, Trump has tried on numerous occasions to become an owner of an NFL team, though he has never succeeded in his bids.[1] In the mid-1980s, Trump became the team owner of the New Jersey Generals in the rival United States Football League (USFL) and led the league in a lawsuit against the NFL to attempt to force a merger.[1] The USFL won a pyrrhic victory in the lawsuit, though without a merger or a substantial financial victory.[1] Trump's actions have been widely seen as a major factor in the dissolution of the USFL shortly thereafter.[3] During his presidency, Trump called for a boycott of the NFL over the U.S. national anthem kneeling protests that many players were participating in,[4][5] with some analysts viewing Trump's comments as part of his continued feud with the NFL.[6][7]
As president, Trump attended several high-profile college football games, primarily in the Southern United States, where he was often well received by attendees. Nicholas Sarantakes, a historian from the Naval War College, compared Trump's fandom of the sport and his use of attending games as a form of political theatre to fellow president Richard Nixon's. According to a 2018 article in The Hill, Trump favored college athletics during his time in office due to his high-profile feud with athletes and associates in professional sports leagues such as the NFL and the NBA.
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