Trump tries to put his stamp on the NFL, but gets pushback from some fans - PBS NewsHour

[SouthBayDem]

Nov 27, 2025
Chances are that at some point in the next few days, a couch in your house will be occupied by someone watching football. It's America’s most popular sport and the National Football League unites much of the country in a shared passion. But the league faces a tricky potential threat to that: politics. Christine Brennan, a sports columnist for USA Today, joins Lisa Desjardins to discuss.

Transcript

[Old Crank]

1. He wants it to be

The Trump Football League.

[bmichaelh]

2. Trump wanted to a NFL owner for decades

Trump wanted to be a NFL owner
Most, if not all of its owners, are Trump supporters.
But could not get a team

https://edition.cnn.com/2017/09/25/opinions/trump-tweets-revenge-on-nfl-pearlman

In the 1980s, he owned a team in the competitor USFL.
That league was moderately successful. They had future Hall of Fame talent like Reggie White and Steve Young.
Trump and some other owners changed their schedule to the fall to compete directly to the NFL
Some felt this was a move to force a merger of USFL to NFL.
This did not work so the USFL ceased operations.
The USFL sued the NFL for antitrust but were only granted $3 in effective damages.

Beginning with the trial’s opening day, Rothman asked himself a single question: Who is my bad guy? He sought someone the jury would find difficult to believe and even harder to like. He sought someone with false bravado, with arrogance, with indifference. He didn’t want the jury to think about a sad little league going up against a powerful machine. No, he wanted the jury to see that the USFL, sympathy be damned, was its own Frankenstein. “The more I developed the strategy,” he said, “the more I wanted Donald Trump as my fall guy. I would call it Donald versus Goliath.

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2018/sep/11/the-day-donald-trumps-narcissism-killed-the-usfl