Trump Makes History at the Super Bowl: A Football Legacy Precedes His Presidential First

New Orleans Saints owner Gayle Benson, from left, President Donald Trump, his daughter Ivanka Trump and Ivanka Trump's son Theodore watch from a suite prior to the NFL Super Bowl 59 football game.

As a student, Donald Trump played high school football. As a business baron, he owned a team in an upstart rival to the NFL and then sued the established league. As president, he denigrated pros who took a knee during the national anthem as part of a social justice movement.On Sunday, he added to that complicated history with the sport when he became the first president in office to attend a Super Bowl.After flying from Florida to New Orleans, the Republican president was expected to meet participants in the honorary coin toss, including relatives of victims of a New Year’s Day terrorist attack in the city's historic French Quarter, as well as members of the police department and emergency personnel.Trump thinks the Chiefs will win, with Kansas City quarterback Patrick Mahomes being the difference-maker.“”I guess you have to say that when a quarterback wins as much as he’s won, I have to go with Kansas City,” Trump said in an interview with Fox News Channel's Brett Baier that aired on the pregame show. Trump said Mahomes “really knows how to win. He’s a great, great quarterback.”The president played football as a student at the New York Military Academy. As a New York businessman in the early 1980s, he owned the New Jersey Generals of the United States Football League. Trump had sued to force a merger of the USFL and the NFL.Friction existed between Trump and the NFL during his first term as president.Trump took issue with players kneeling during the national anthem to protest social or racial injustice. That movement began in 2016 with then-49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick taking a knee during “The Star-Spangled Banner” during an exhibition game in Denver.“Wouldn’t you love to see one of these NFL owners, when somebody disrespects our flag, you’d say, ’Get that son of a bitch off the field right now. Out! He’s fired,” Trump said to loud applause at a rally in Huntsville, Alabama, in 2017.Trump is expected to watch the game from a box in the company of House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., among others. Trump won Missouri and Pennsylvania — the states represented in the game — on his way to a second term in November.Some NFL team owners have donated to his campaigns and Trump maintains friendships with Herschel Walker and Doug Flutie, who played for the Generals. Trump endorsed Walker's unsuccessful bid as the Republican candidate for a U.S. Senate seat from Georgia in 2022, and has tapped him to become ambassador to the Bahamas.Trump signed an order last week that is intended to block transgender women and girls from competing in women's sports by targeting federal funding for schools that fail to comply.In a statement before the game, Trump said the coaches, players and staff for the Chiefs and Eagles “represent the hopes and dreams of our Nation’s young athletes as we restore safety and fairness in sports and equal opportunities among their teams.”Alvin Tillery, a politics professor and diversity expert at Northwestern University, said in an interview that the NFL's decision to remove “End Racism” slogans was “shameful” given that the league “makes tens of billions of dollars largely on the bodies of Black men.”He said the NFL should explain who it was aiming to please. The NFL said it was stenciling “Choose Love” in one of the end zones for the Super Bowl to encourage the country after a series of tragedies so far this year, including a New Year’s Day truck attack in the host city of New Orleans that killed 14 people and injured dozens more.Tillery wasn’t convinced. “I think they removed it because Trump's coming," he said.

Donald Trump's football legacy was made long before he ever stepped foot in the White House. "I know more about the game of football than any doctor or any guru," Trump once said, according to a 2013 interview with Sports Illustrated. "Football is a tough game. It's a great game."As the then-owner of the New Jersey Generals in the United States Football League (USFL), Trump was instrumental in bringing the league to its knees. He purchased the team in 1984 and promptly shut it down after just one season, citing financial difficulties.Trump's foray into professional football began with a bang – literally. In a nationally televised press conference announcing his purchase of the Generals, Trump famously declared that he was going to "shake things up" in the USFL. He also claimed that his team would win the league championship within three years. Needless to say, neither of those predictions came to fruition.Despite his lack of success on the field, Trump's legacy in football is undeniable. His bombastic persona and willingness to take risks made him a polarizing figure in the sport. As one anonymous NFL executive put it, "Trump was like a train wreck – you couldn't look away."