When It Comes to Political Expression, Does the NFL Have Double Standards?

Following a victory over the Dallas Cowboys on Sunday, San Francisco 49ers defensive end Nick Bosa interrupted several teammates’ postgame interview with NBC’s Melissa Stark to point both index fingers at the front of his white baseball cap. The words “Make America Great Again” were stitched in gold capital letters.

Presumably, the goal was to show support for former president Donald Trump, who used the slogan as a campaign rallying cry. He won in 2016, lost re-election in 2020 and has adopted the message again this year in his bid for a second term.

Bosa has every right to support whomever he chooses. As the saying goes, it’s a free country. But the display — and the intentionality behind it — was curious considering the NFL has gone to great lengths over the last eight years to stop players from making political expressions at games.

In 2018, two years after Colin Kaepernick first protested police brutality against Black and Brown people by silently taking a knee during the national anthem, the league modified its pregame policy. In a vote that received 30 yeas and two abstentions, the owners required players to stand during “The Star-Spangled Banner” or remain in the locker room until its conclusion.

The vote, and news that players could be fined or suspended for noncompliance, prompted an immediate grievance from the NFL Players Association, and the league and union ultimately agreed to a standstill that kept the new rule from taking effect.

Still, it was a surprising vote from the owners, not only because the protests basically diminished with only a handful of players still kneeling, but also because several owners told me the night before the vote that there was no need to reignite the controversy.

When the change was approved, I asked Packers CEO Mark Murphy about it.

“We can’t have Trump weaponizing our league,” he told me.

Trump had been particularly critical of the demonstrators, going so far as referring to them as “sons of bitches” and calling for the termination of their contracts. Never mind that Kaepernick had chosen his ultimate form of protest on the advice of former Green Beret Nate Boyer, who told him taking a knee would be more respectful than sitting during the anthem.

Many could not focus on the message because of the messenger. My hope is that the same mistake is not made with Bosa. His actions are his actions. His personal beliefs are his personal beliefs. But if the goal of the NFL is to keep political expressions off its fields, then Bosa should face some type of discipline.

The NFL’s uniform rules state that players can be fined more than $11,000 for wearing unauthorized logos or branding, which would certainly cover a campaign slogan.

Failure to take some sort of action would suggest the presence of a double standard and raise the question of whether the league is more comfortable with a White player using its national spotlight to endorse a presidential candidate than it is with Black players demonstrating against systemic racism.

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