Donald Trump’s obsession with football, as everyone knows by now, is much older than the Republican-manufactured controversy over players who protest police brutality. He has, of course, used the racist outrage over “ungrateful” black players who take a knee during the National Anthem to solidify his white nationalist bona fides with his base. But his beef with the NFL goes back to his days of trying to own a team in the elite sports league.
Best-selling author Jeff Pearlman, in fact, remembers a time when Donald Trump did own a football team for a couple of years — in the USFL. The United States Football League was meant to be competition for the NFL, although it existed only for a few short years from 1983 to 1986.
Pearlman’s book, Football for a Buck: The Crazy Rise and Crazier Demise of the USFL, offers a first-hand account of the brief lifespan of the USFL, including its most famous team owner — a real estate developer named Donald J. Trump, whose team, the New Jersey Generals, featured football superstars Herschel Walker, Doug Flutie, and even Jim Kelly.
According to the book, Trump wasn’t even remotely concerned with the national anthem during his time with the Generals. It was played, of course — one can scarcely imagine a professional sports event in America happening without the Star-Spangled Banner — but Trump couldn’t have cared less. In an interview with the UK’s Daily Mail, Pearlman recalled:
I’m sure sometimes Trump stood and sometimes he didn’t stand, but it’s just funny that he’s calling out all these guys for kneeling during the anthem when it was well known — and not even a big deal — that Donald Trump would sit during the anthems. [He would] do work, take calls, conduct interviews. Probably never gave it a second thought.”
That certainly doesn’t sound like the über-Patriot™ currently occupying the White House.
If you’re my age, perhaps you even remember the USFL — we all kind of thought it was actually going to be a thing for a while there, and it was until 1986. But with morons like Donald Trump in charge of the teams, it was destined for the end it faced after just a couple of seasons.
Featured image via screen capture
