In Harvard visit, author offers an inside look at the powerful, porous NFL
“‘Politics has become a much bigger subject than the Super Bowl,’ [President] Trump boasted in the run-up to the big game. ‘This is usually Super Bowl territory, and now they’re saying that the politics is more interesting to people,’ he said. ‘So that’s good.’” — Mark Leibovich, writing in The New York Times Magazine last Aug. 28 As a club of rich businesspeople and lucky heirs operating a billion-dollar cash cow, the last thing that team owners in the National Football League (NFL) wanted was to be swept into a political maelstrom, with the president pressing them to punish players who protested violence against African-Americans by kneeling during the national anthem. But that’s exactly what happened in 2017 and 2018 when President Trump seized on the protests, brought into the national spotlight by then-San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick in 2016. Trump’s efforts both galvanized his supporters and unsettled the NFL, which had...