Although Americans want to keep football and politics strictly separate, the Super Bowl has become increasingly politicized in recent years. The teams reaching for the NFL crown represent divisions in the country. And Donald Trump’s actions are also reverberating.
Ever since Donald Trump had to vacate his desk in the White House, news about the polarized and divided United States of America has not arrived in Germany on a daily basis.
But even without the former US President in office, the country has by no means grown together again. The United States is divided like never before. This is also visible at the mega-event Super Bowl – the national sport actually unites the Americans.
God, country, football. After God and the homeland comes King Football for many in the USA. Sunday’s games are sacred, the Super Bowl is Jesus. On no other day of the year are there fewer weddings and burglaries in the country.
But politics is just as reluctant to be discussed at Super Bowl parties as it is at Christmas or Thanksgiving. The national sport has long been political. In recent years in particular, the NFL and events have become increasingly politicized – and the actions of Trump and Co. in recent years are also having an effect on Super Bowl LVI.
With the Los Angeles Rams and the Cincinnati Bengals, two teams will face each other tonight (0:30 a.m. CET) that reflect the division between Democrats and Republicans, between liberal and conservative.
But they also show how contradictory the division into two camps can be. After all, Rams owner Stanely Kroneke once donated $100,000 to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign, only to then transfer $1 million to Trump’s campaign fund.
One of the toughest abortion laws in the United States
The nation has only just recovered from the shock of the Capitol storm just over a year ago. She remains fragile on the inside. The history of the Los Angeles Rams already shows quite clearly how different people think in the huge country and how deep the rifts are in some cases.
For 20 years, the Rams were the team from St. Louis, Missouri. In the swing state with a predominantly white and very religious population, the Republican George W. Bush won not only in 2000, but also in 2004 after the beginning of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
John McCain even beat Barack Obama in 2008, and Mitt Romney repeated the win over the Democrats four years later. The district of the former venue, The Dome at America’s Center, on the other hand, has been in the hands of the Democrats for decades.
In 2019, Missouri passed one of the toughest abortion laws in the country, which would also close the last abortion clinic in the state, but was stopped by a federal court.
Now the state is trying again to challenge the Roe v. Wade’s abortion rights established by the Supreme Court almost 50 years ago.
Cincinnati – a Republican stronghold
In 2015, the Rams moved back to Los Angeles, Democratic California. In the liberal state that has been preparing for an influx of women who want abortions in recent years. More difference is almost impossible. Because the NFL team settled in Inglewood, of all places, a neighborhood where almost half of the residents identify as Latino and about 20 percent as black.
Hillary Clinton won the SoFi Stadium district, the state-of-the-art Super Bowl venue, in the 2016 presidential election with 78.4 percent. When Trump attempted re-election in 2020, he did not even get 21 percent of the local votes. Inglewood is represented in the House of Representatives by Democrat Maxine Waters, who made a name for herself as a vocal critic of Trump.
So while the Rams are now once again representing the blue, Democratic camp of the USA, the Bengals come from Cincinnati – a historically Republican stronghold. Ohio, in the midwest, lies in the so-called Bible Belt, where traditionally arch-conservative values are held and citizens fear that their attitudes matter less and less in a rapidly changing world.
Trump vs Kaepernick
In line with Missouri, Ohio is also trying to massively curtail abortion opportunities, so observers attest that the state has taken a step back into the Middle Ages. Even after incest and rape, local abortions will soon no longer be possible.
Of course, the football pros who want to win the Super Bowl at Los Angeles’ SoFi Stadium don’t talk about these ventures – and yet they represent two teams from disparate states. Even when friends and families come together for the most important sports event of the year in the USA: Due to the extreme polarization and division of society, citizens with these different attitudes hardly communicate with each other anymore, no longer have a common basis of knowledge, facts and values.
Trump fueled this phenomenon as US President – also in the world of football. When San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick took a knee before his NFL games during the national anthem against police brutality and racism against people of color and for justice in 2016, a harsh headwind lashed his face.
The majority-white owners of the NFL, the white league commissioner Roger Goodell and the white then-presidential candidate Trump were incensed. Kaepernick’s action has been denounced as disrespectful to the US flag and soldiers who died for it, a betrayal of the fatherland.
Nobody kneels anymore
Trump turned the footballer into a traitor to the country and delivered, well below the belt, “Get that son of a bitch off the field, now!” The inflammatory statements of those in power were particularly dangerous in light of racism and violent attacks against people of color in the United States.
Plenty of NFL fans chimed in, at least verbally. Kaepernick was booed, anti-Kaepernick T-shirts were sold outside the stadiums, some with his face in the crosshairs of a rifle scope. His jerseys were burned nationwide.
Trump’s statements and Kaepernick’s knee still reverberate at this Super Bowl in Los Angeles. Even though the racism issues aren’t resolved and Black Lives Matters protests aren’t over across the country, no one is kneeling in the NFL anymore. It looks like the thing has been lost.
The opponents of the NFL final differ on this topic as well. While more than a dozen Rams players in Democratic California went on their knees at the peak of the demonstrations, nobody did so for the Bengals in Republican Ohio. However, former Cincinnati pros later said that owner Mike Brown had forbidden the team from kneeling, or at least argued against it.
The Super Bowl takes place in the middle of America’s Black History Month. The situation of the former Miami Dolphins coach shows that racism continues to cause problems in the NFL. On February 1, 2022, Brian Flores filed a class action lawsuit against the NFL, New York Giants, Denver Broncos and Dolphins alleging discrimination and racism. The Giants reportedly hired a new head coach before speaking to minority candidates, as required by the rulebook.
The league is “in a way racially separated and run like a plantation,” the indictment said. In a league where 70 percent of players are black, Flores’ sacking meant they were going back to just one non-white coach in 32. Also, the owners of all teams are white.
Heal Super Bowl world
The TV ratings of the NFL have been badly affected in recent years by the controversy surrounding Kaepernick and Co. Now the league is happy about rising numbers again and therefore avoids political statements in the still polarized times. Don’t offend anyone, don’t make mistakes.
Accordingly, advertisers want to do their best to help viewers in front of their TVs put the past behind them – especially the pandemic. After the Super Bowl 2021, which was peppered with admonishing and depressing commercials, more fun spots for beer, snacks and cars should create a special reality: an ideal Super Bowl world. It’s okay to start enjoying life again. As if Corona were already over.
The problems remain. That of the pandemic and that of racism, that of women who want to terminate pregnancies, and that of the divided USA. The different teams from Cincinnati and Los Angeles show: The Super Bowl is always highly political.
David Needy