The N.F.L. is a natural cauldron of our culture wars. The league is the most conservative, Republican, and nationalistic of the major American sports associations. More than 83 percent of N.F.L. fans are white, according to a Reuters report citing a 2007 study, and fans are 20 percent more likely to be Republicans than Democrats. Nearly 70 percent of the players, meanwhile, are black, according to data from the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport. N.F.L. owners, with a few exceptions, lean Republican; several of them donated to Donald Trump’s campaign, and some donated $1 million apiece to his inauguration committee. Colin Kaepernick, who led the 49ers to the Super Bowl in 2013, was a mixed-race quarterback who had, at first quietly, insisted on beginning each game by taking a knee during the national anthem. Kaepernick’s status off the field as a protestor grew, it so happened, as his play declined. He lost his starting position to the sub-mediocre Blaine Gabbert, and then went on to become the most conspicuous backup quarterback in N.F.L. history.

Kaepernick was joined in his protests by about a dozen other players around the league, who would either take knees or raise their fists during the anthem. He was photographed kneeling for the cover of Time magazine (“The Perilous Fight”), drew a slew of death threats, and was called all sorts of bad things in the press by anonymous owners and league executives. (“I don’t want him anywhere near my team,” one front-office executive told Bleacher Report’s Mike Freeman. “He’s a traitor.”) Kaepernick was also blamed for a hiccup in the N.F.L.’s TV ratings during 2016—about an 11 percent drop over the first half of the season—though the saturation coverage of the presidential election was cited as a bigger factor.

Neither saga was mutually exclusive; Kaepernick and football, Trump and Hillary Clinton all occupied distinct corners in the seething cultural combat zone. Football had become its own sprawling mess of a cause célèbre, another battleground in the culture wars that seemed to be breaking out everywhere. The game is “the last bastion of hope for toughness in America in men,” said University of Michigan coach Jim Harbaugh (John’s brother), defending football to HBO’s Andrea Kremer, and it was only a matter of seconds before someone looked askance. Studio host Bryant Gumbel called the quote “not exactly a quote for the Age of Enlightenment,” which set off Rush Limbaugh in the predictable direction. (“Gumbel epitomizes the modern-day cultural left.”) Whether or not they represent a silent majority, a vocal and substantial population today will dismiss any criticism of football as an elitist affront to their selfhood. “People that say, ‘I won’t let my son play [football]’ are fools,” former Arizona coach Bruce Arians told venerable N.F.L. reporter Peter King. “We have this fear of concussion—that is real—but not all of those . . . statistics can prove anything.”

The coach’s words carry a whiff of persecution. Not just of the sport, but of the ethic and culture that has grown around it—something conservative and essential to American traditions. “This makes football akin to the Confederate flag, or Christmas decorations in public spaces, or taxpayer-supported art depicting Jesus in a tank of urine,” wrote Chuck Klosterman in his essay “Sudden Death (Over Time).” Football, he continued, “becomes intractable precisely because so many people want to see it eliminated.”

Trump’s campaign was predicated on many of the cultural, generational, and demographic tensions that football had incubated for years. His criticism boiled down to a familiar refrain: football had become over-regulated and sissified. Football’s biggest critics, it seemed, were the same bubble-world liberals in the media, ivory-tower scientists (who overplay the dangers of concussions), and soft coastal suits who never played the game—and never met a Trump voter. It was only a matter of time before Trump served up Kaepernick, the vegan quarterback, as red meat to his base.