But it was also cultural, he suggested. “The short answer is that there’s probably a lower tolerance to being booed among American politicians than Australian ones,” he told this masthead.
MacCambridge noted that as well as there being no precedent for a sitting president attending the Super Bowl, “there’s also no real precedent for previous presidents having tried so hard to own a team in the NFL”.
Donald Trump shakes hands with Herschel Walker after agreeing a four-year contract with the New Jersey Generals in 1984.Credit: nnaadvidler
Over several decades, Trump attempted to buy, or expressed interest in buying, the Baltimore Colts, Dallas Cowboys, New England Patriots and Buffalo Bills. In the 1980s he purchased the New Jersey Generals, a team in the fledgling and short-lived United States Football League.
In his first term, Trump courted football controversy with his calls for the NFL to fire players who declined to stand for the national anthem as a protest against racially motivated violence. Trump accused the players of disrespecting the flag and the country, and encouraged football fans to boycott games until action was taken.
“Like a lot of other things that happened, those past interactions seem to have been forgotten by a large portion of the American public,” MacCambridge said.
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Now, amid Trump’s dismantling of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs in the federal government, the NFL has opted to remove the message “End Racism” from the end zones of the field. The words have appeared each year since 2021.
Instead, the message “Choose Love” will appear, alongside “It Takes All of Us”. NFL spokesman Brian McCarthy told The Athletic, which revealed the change: “We felt it was an appropriate statement for what the country has collectively endured, given recent tragedies, and can serve as an inspiration.”
This Super Bowl, Trump may find himself only the second most famous American in the crowd. Pop megastar Taylor Swift is in New Orleans to support her boyfriend Travis Kelce, who plays tight end for the Chiefs.
Swift memorably backed Kamala Harris for the presidency – an endorsement that seemed so significant at the time it prompted Trump to write on TruthSocial: “I HATE TAYLOR SWIFT!”
Boston College quarterback Doug Flutie speaks at a news conference alongside team owner Donald Trump in 1985.Credit: Associated Press
If that caused any lingering resentments between the two men, they seem to have dried up. Trump remarked the game would feature “the absolute best tight end in football (ever!)” in an apparent reference to Kelce, while Kelce said it was an honour to have the president in the stands.
In an early clip from Trump’s Super Bowl pre-game interview on Fox News, the president was asked about the extraordinary power he has granted billionaire Elon Musk to inspect and carve up the bureaucracy in a drive to cut costs.
“He’s not gaining anything. In fact, I wonder how he can devote the time to it, he’s so into it,” Trump said, and indicated Musk would soon be instructed to audit the Education Department and the US military.
“We’re going to find hundreds of billions of dollars of fraud and abuse. The people elected me on that.”
Next year, the NFL will host a regular season game in Australia for the first time, with the Los Angeles Rams to play at the Melbourne Cricket Ground. The game does not yet have a date, but a week one outing would coincide with AFL finals season.
The Victorian government has not confirmed the cost of the deal, but the NSW government reportedly passed it up at a price tag of $15 million.
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