COLUMN: Trump’s Reelection Campaign Politicizes America's Football Addiction
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. -- There’s a common question you can ask as a journalist that will ultimately make the subject matter uncomfortable, frustrated and pretty much guarantee the interview will be over not long after it is asked.
The question goes as follows: “Do you believe that because you think it is true or do you believe that because it makes you feel better to believe it?”
Here’s the thing: No journalist ever asks that question when the answer is “Yes, I believe what I just said is to be considered factual.” If it is true, and not the recent disingenuous idea of "my truth” that masquerades as honesty or sincerity, history or data will verify. The reason that question is asked is BECAUSE the answer is undoubtedly uncomfortable. The question forces the receiver of it to either A) continue operating on faith of people being good, responsible adults or B) denounce a foundational belief that allows folks to get encouraged to get up in the morning, hope in mankind as a whole.
Just 63 days before the 2020 presidential election, President Donald Trump made restarting Big Ten Conference football a priority in his administration on Tuesday. The president, who would like to be allowed to continue to have his current job for four more years, said Tuesday he wants the Big Ten Conference to start playing football immediately and wants to be “nicely surprised” by having the most profitable Power 5 conference in Division I athletics to be returning to the gridiron before folks go to the polls on Nov. 3. On the same day that both President Trump and the Big Ten described a White House phone call between POTUS and Big Ten commissioner Kevin Warren as “very productive”, I called Trump’s play “a very shrewd political move” on Twitter. Can the president’s lobbying change the minds of those who matter? Probably not, but how is he harmed by trying?
The cynics will suggest President Trump should have more important issues on his agenda than the Big Ten's decision on football. The cynics are wrong. Nothing is more important to President Trump than winning reelection. Want to prove the cynics are wrong? Ask them the uncomfortable question. “Do you believe President Trump has more important items on his agenda than Big Ten football because you think it is true or do you believe that because it makes you feel better to believe it?” I promise you the answer you’ll get will be a lot of head shakes, twitches and um’s before actual words come out.
So, in Ohio (where Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden sit in a likely down-to-the-wire finish for those 18 electoral votes), Trump knows Buckeyes fans will likely look around to see high school football playing on Friday nights and two statewide professional teams play on NFL Sundays but nothing to cheer for on Saturdays this fall. Trump knows Pennsylvania natives will watch high school football on Friday nights, the University of Pittsburgh on Saturdays and the NFL’s Steelers and Eagles on Sunday but no Penn State this fall. Don’t think the loss of football in Happy Valley is a big deal? The town of State College, Pennsylvania, violently rioted for hours on the night Joe Paterno was fired.
Let’s not kid ourselves here. Trump isn’t interested in whether the Pac-12 Conference or Mountain West Conference decide to play football this fall, because none of the states (except for Arizona) poll within anywhere near a margin of error gap in this election cycle.
President Trump, maybe on accident or by suggestion by one of his political advisors, has decided a way to win this 2020 election might be tapping into an addiction. It’s not a legal drug like nicotine, alcohol or marijuana. It’s big-time tackle football—the sports heroin of the American public. Based on studies involving Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy and chronic brain trauma, it’s not a safe activity. But it’s something the public can gamble on and it’s something network television executives would kill their own mother to have the rights to.
All of those elements add up to what “Donald Trump’s America” is about. Do we need football to survive? No, but good luck telling the football junkie that A) he/she doesn’t need it, B) it’s not an essential part of their life and C) his/her desire is a problem. TMG columnist Tony Barnhart argued in a piece for this SI/Maven brand that “College football is essential because to people in the South, it has always been much more than a game. It is an important part of our social fabric. And right now our social fabric needs all the help it can get.”
Barnhart has been a professional reporter longer than I’ve been alive, and he’s saying that football in places like Alabama, Georgia and even in Ohio, Michigan and Nebraska is one of that state’s highest preeminent issues. It’s highly addictive, indisputably dangerous and for the most part, gives those who consume the product a satisfied feeling. President Trump knows all this and wants to observantly use it to win reelection. For the better part of 130 years, folks in presidential battleground states have proved with their money, time and effort that their NEED to support a football program at Ohio State, Penn State or Michigan would poll higher than any gun reform, Roe v. Wade or red meat political issue one could envision. Don’t buy that? Well, let me ask you a question.
“Do you refuse to believe Americans value football as a top priority because you think it is true or do you believe that because it makes you feel better to believe it?”
You fear, deep down, it’s because it makes you feel better, right? Unfortunately, believing something to make yourself feel better is not reality and oftentimes not helpful to you or others around you. In a lot of places in America, football is an addiction and the incumbent president believes supporting this addiction will be one way to help win him the White House for four more years. Think he’s wrong? Well, I have an uncomfortable question to ask.