President Donald Trump would like a football stadium named after him, according to ESPN and anybody who has ever met him. Trump showed up Sunday in the box of Commanders owner Josh Harris, whose team will play in the new stadium, and then Trump made his way to Fox’s booth in the third quarter, and then, well, that was pretty much it, and judging from the last 10 months, that will remain it.
Trump can’t quit the NFL, but the NFL has quit him. Yes, most owners will still support him, as most billionaires do. But the NFL itself is providing a blueprint for how to tussle with the President: Don’t.
Don’t argue. Don’t engage. Don’t even agree with Trump, because once you get into a public conversation with the President, he wins.
Trump has used the NFL for political gain and would love to do it again. In fact, he keeps trying to do it again. But NFL commissioner Roger Goodell has kept everybody in line, leaving Trump in the ring alone, looking for somebody to hit.
Trump threatens World Cup games
This fall, Trump made a big stink about possibly moving World Cup games out of Boston, on the principle that Boston is unsafe and Democratic mayor Michelle Wu likes it that way. There are many flaws to that argument, but the most obvious one is that Trump is arguing his case in the wrong jurisdiction.
No World Cup games are scheduled to be played in Boston.
There are games scheduled for Foxborough, Mass., 30 miles south of Boston, in Gillette Stadium, home of the Patriots.
You might remember Patriots owner Robert Kraft as a friend of Trump. Trump remembers that, too. But Kraft told Fox News last year that when Trump was elected in 2016, “I couldn’t believe it. It was like having someone who was a drunk fraternity brother become president of the United States.” He said he has not spoken to Trump since the Jan. 6, 2021, riots at the U.S. Capitol.
Plenty of people distanced themselves from Trump that day, only to crawl back later. Trump has built his political career on pressuring people until they fold. Fold once, and Trump knows you will fold again. But from all indications, Kraft has kept his distance.
When Trump made the empty threat to move a high-profile game out of Kraft’s stadium, it might have been directed at Kraft as much as it was directed at Wu. If Trump wanted to scare Kraft until publicly coming back to his side, it didn’t work.
Now read what Trump said last month about those World Cup games:
“If I feel there are unsafe conditions, I would call Gianni [Infantino]—the head of FIFA, who’s phenomenal—and I would say, ‘Let’s move it to another location,’ and he would do that,” Trump said. “He wouldn’t love to do it, but he’d do it very easily.”
This was a message to Kraft (I can go above you) and to Goodell: Stay on Trump’s side, and he’ll call you phenomenal; but cross him, and he’ll trash you. But it was also an admission: If Trump wants somebody in sports to fold, it won’t be Kraft or Goodell.
Now, the NFL is ready for Trump
When Colin Kaepernick kneeled during the national anthem in 2016, Trump protested, and the NFL tried to placate him. The surprising part was not that NFL owners wanted to please the Republican nominee. Rather, it was that they let anything get in the way of pushing product.
That one snuck up on Goodell. By Jan. 20 of this year, he was ready.
Less than two weeks after Trump was inaugurated, Goodell held his annual pre–Super Bowl press conference. Depending on your vantage point, Goodell either choreographs those press conferences or prepares extremely well for them. In any event, he was ready to reiterate his league’s commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. Those are important to Goodell, and the way he framed his answer was both honest and skillful.
“We’ve proven to ourselves that it does make the NFL better,” Goodell said. “We’re not in this because it’s a trend to get into it or a trend to get out of it. Our efforts are fundamental in trying to attract the best possible talent into the National Football League both on and off the field.”
The message there was close to the GOP’s heart: Leave us alone, we’re running a business. Nine months later, Jonathan Beane remains the NFL’s chief DEI officer. The Rooney Rule and its offshoots remain as policy. A lot of corporate behemoths bent on this issue to please Trump. The NFL has not. If Trump or anybody else in MAGA-land wants to make a big deal about it, Goodell has already flipped the discussion. This is not about government meddling in hiring practices; it’s about government not meddling in hiring practices.
The NFL has not ignored Trump entirely. Goodell announced that the 2027 draft will be in Washington, D.C. from the Oval Office. The Super Bowl champion Eagles visited the White House. (When the Eagles won during Trump’s first term, he canceled their visit because of the anthem protests.) But the NFL has avoided getting sucked into multi-day news stories or controversies.
In September, Trump mocked the NFL’s dynamic kickoff rules on Truth Social:
“‘Sissy’ football is bad for America, and bad for the NFL! Who comes up with these ridiculous ideas? It’s like wanting to ‘roll back’ the golf ball so it doesn’t go [nearly!] as far. Fortunately, college football will remain the same, hopefully forever!!”
The last line, of course, was the tell: Trump wants to hurt the league that won’t help him, and the way to do that is to make Goodell seem un-American. True patriots watch college football!
The fallout from this, predictably, was nonexistent. The average American is more likely to stop wearing clothes than stop watching the NFL. Pro football is the premier entertainment vehicle in the country. You might think football is too violent or you might think it’s not violent enough, but people will still watch, and you will probably still watch.
Shortly after Operation Sissy Football went nowhere, the NFL announced that Bad Bunny would perform at halftime of next year’s Super Bowl.
This means Americans will all hear Spanish lyrics, which puts us in severe danger of learning a little Spanish. Though if there is one thing I have observed over the years, it’s that if you try really hard, you can avoid learning anything. More significant than Bad Bunny singing in Spanish is what he said before the NFL made its announcement: He avoided scheduling U.S. tour dates because he was worried that Trump’s U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents would raid his concerts.
Almost everything Goodell does, he does intentionally. There is no way Bad Bunny’s ICE raid comments slipped past him. Whether the contract was already signed or not, Goodell went ahead and made the halftime announcement, and he has stuck by it.
This was, as with all things NFL, primarily a business calculation: Goodell is focused on conquering Latin America, because why should a single person anywhere on the planet prefer baseball, and the benefits of bringing in a Spanish-singing halftime performer outweigh the risks.
Will Josh Harris name stadium after Trump?
Now Trump is apparently privately lobbying for D.C.’s new $3.8 billion stadium to be named after him. Naming a stadium after any sitting politician is unseemly, though there are precedents. In 1981, New Jersey coined Brendan Byrne Arena while Byrne was still governor. But naming a stadium after a sitting politician today is laughably lousy business.
Do you think Taylor Swift is going to perform at Donald Trump Stadium? Do you think Beyoncé will? Just last week, Olivia Rodrigo publicly scolded Trump for using “All-American Bitch” to promote ICE raids. Rodrigo can play football stadiums on her next tour if she chooses. Why would she play that one?
There are, of course, musicians who would prefer to play at a stadium named after Trump, and fans who would love to see them there. But the smart business move is to sell the naming rights to some soulless corporation, the way our founding fathers intended, and then open the doors to everybody.
Harris has shown personal and financial affection for Trump. But if he names his stadium after Trump, he will be alienating some prominent artists who can fill it, along with a lot of his team’s fans.
Harris would also alienate Goodell and his fellow owners—even those who love Trump. They have been so disciplined in avoiding Trump-related drama, and it’s working.
All year, Trump has tried repeatedly to insert himself into the NFL’s conversation, and every time he has failed. This weekend, Trump finally found a way to get attention during an NFL game: He attended one.
In sports, there is an old expression for giving up a fight.
No mas.
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This article was originally published on www.si.com as The NFL and Roger Goodell Are Providing a Blueprint for Tussling With Donald Trump.
