President Donald Trump has discovered that two of the biggest entities in the American sports world, the National Football League and ESPN, make effective political punching bags.

And he’s unlikely to stop hitting them any time soon.

On Tuesday, Oct. 10, Trump tweeted nine times; three of the tweets were about sports. One congratulated the Pittsburgh Penguins, who visited the White House that day to commemorate their 2017 Stanley Cup win. In the other two, he trashed the NFL (“getting massive tax breaks while at the same time disrespecting our Anthem, Flag and Country”) and ESPN (“tanked so badly it is the talk of the industry!”).

In the 17 days between Sept. 23 and Oct. 11, he tweeted about the NFL 15 times.

Trump discussing the NFL player protests in Huntsville, Alabama, on Sept. 22. (AP) More

And that’s just on Twitter. At a Sept. 22 rally in Alabama, during a three-minute stretch of a longer speech, Trump excoriated NFL team owners: “Wouldn’t you love to see one of these NFL owners, when somebody disrespects our flag, to say, ‘Get that son of a bitch off the field right now. Out! He’s fired. He’s fired!'”; mocked the NFL’s declining TV ratings: “NFL ratings are down massively… The number one reason happens to be that they like watching what’s happening with yours truly”; criticized NFL referees for calling too many penalties: “They’re ruining the game”; and encouraged fans to walk out of games if a player kneels during the anthem: “If you see it, even if it’s one player, leave the stadium. I guarantee things will stop.”

Two weeks later, he’s still at it, and he’s brought his vice president into it. Mike Pence attended an Indianapolis Colts vs. San Francisco 49ers game with his wife on Sunday, and after 23 of the 49ers players kneeled in protest, Pence and his wife left the game, and Pence tweeted, “I will not dignify any event that disrespects our soldiers, our Flag, or our National Anthem.”

I left today's Colts game because @POTUS and I will not dignify any event that disrespects our soldiers, our Flag, or our National Anthem. — Vice President Pence (@VP) October 8, 2017





The rhetoric is arguably working: it’s firing up Trump’s base, and it’s casting a political pall over the current football season. The NFL has quickly become one of the most divisive brands in America.

Overall TV ratings for NFL games have dropped from last year, and although Trump’s crusade may not be the direct cause, behavior in Week 3 suggested that football fans are closely tracking the controversy: Viewership of all of the pre-game shows went way up, while viewership of the actual games dropped.

So, how did Trump land on the NFL and ESPN as his favorite targets of the moment, and what does verbally attacking them accomplish?

Trump’s long-standing animosity toward the NFL

Trump has history with the NFL.

In 1983, Trump bought the New Jersey Generals, a team in the United States Football League (USFL), for a reported $9 million (though Trump has since only paid $5 million). Shortly thereafter, he convinced his fellow USFL owners to sue the NFL. The idea was to move the USFL to the fall in order to compete with the NFL over anti-trust, seeking damages of $1.7 billion. The overt issue was over television rights contracts, but the implicit idea was to force a merger between the USFL and NFL. Trump and the USFL owners won the case — but the jury awarded them $1. (The NFL appealed, and four years later the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the judgment; with interest, the final award came to $3.76.) The costs of the lawsuit, and paltry result, killed the USFL.

In 2014, Trump bid for the Buffalo Bills after owner Ralph Wilson died. Trump didn’t get the team: Terry and Kim Pegula, owners of the Buffalo Sabres hockey team, got the Bills for a reported $1.4 billion.

By 2014, Trump had Twitter (it launched in 2006, he joined in 2009) as an outlet to air his grievances. In a series of tweets in October 2014, he went off on the NFL: Trump questioned its tax exemption status; mocked its TV ratings dip; and said that if he had gotten the Bills, he would have produced a better team than the Pegulas could.