'Draw the line': NFL veterans rage against Trump using their image to sell his war
President Donald Trump is pursuing an antitrust case against the National Football League (NFL) — but an editor from a magazine one might expect to support him instead implied this is about a vendetta.
The Justice Department is investigation whether the NFL uses anti-competitive tactics to keep watching football too expensive, and Reason Magazine managing editor Jason Russell suspects this has little to do with consumer protection
“Could it be because President Donald Trump tried to get into NFL ownership several different times and came up short?” wrote Russell on Tuesday, adding that Trump tried and failed to buy the Baltimore Colts, Dallas Cowboys, New England Patriots and Buffalo Bills at various points between 1981 and 2014, and even successfully purchase a football team (the United States Football League’s New Jersey Generals) in 1983 — but in a league that eventually folded.
“No one is entitled to watch the NFL,” Russell wrote. “If someone decides a game is too difficult or costly to watch, no one dies or suffers anything other than very minor entertainment-related harm. (The league, it's worth noting, is actually one of the easiest to watch, ‘with over 87 percent of our games on free, broadcast television, including 100 percent of games in the markets of the competing teams,’ according to a league spokesperson.)”
Russell added, “Watching sports on broadcast TV instead of streaming platforms is not some sacrosanct human right that needs to be protected by the federal government. As we prepare to celebrate the 250th anniversary of America's founding, it is mind-boggling to be at the point where ‘Should a sports league be allowed to put more games on streaming platforms?’ is a real question that the Justice Department and the FCC are spending their time on.”
Trump has had other recent feuds with the football world. Last month former football players Kenny Bell of the University of Nebraska and Tampa Bay Buccaneers linebacker Mason Foster expressed dismay that images of them playing were used to promote the US military’s recent wars without their consent.
“I’m at a loss for words,” Foster told The Washington Post. “It’s a strange feeling, seeing those clips like that. I don’t think anything going on in the world today is as simple as a great football play or a hit. I’m still wrapping my head around it. ... When people are losing their lives, I don’t think it can compare to a game.”
Both Bell and Foster said the White House has not obliged their requests to remove the video and that they believe the NFL, which holds the rights, should use the courts if the president does not do so.
Trump appears to be sensitive to his rising unpopularity, even in the football world. During Super Bowl LX in Santa Clara, California in February, Trump reportedly declined to attend because his advisers feared he would be booed en masse, and that this "would instantly create a wealth of viral video clips and media coverage that administration officials would prefer to avoid."
"[Booing is] another thing we don’t want right now," the adviser anonymously told Zeteo.