Trump’s DOJ investigation of the NFL just the latest chapter in the president’s difficult relationship with football

The Department of Justice has reportedly opened an investigation into the NFL over accusations it engaged in anticompetitive tactics in selling broadcasting rights, the latest installment in President Donald Trump ’s long-running feud with the franchise. The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday that the DOJ will pursue the probe amid growing discontent over the ever-rising cost of watching sports as the marketplace becomes more fragmented, requiring fans to pay for multiple subscriptions to different streaming services just to follow the league. President Donald Trump has a long history of weighing in on the NFL and is said to hold a grudge over his exclusion from the league in the mid-1980s (AP) Trump has a long history of weighing in on the fortunes of football, trashing Colin Kaepernick ’s “take a knee” national anthem protest during his first term and calling for a boycott over a gesture he considered “a total disrespect of our heritage.

” More recently, he has attempted to pressure the Washington Commanders to change their name back to the less politically correct Washington Redskins , even threatening to block them from building a new stadium in the nation’s capital if they do not bow to his demands. But the president’s grievance with the NFL stretches back further , to at least 1984, when he met with the league’s then-commissioner Pete Rozelle in an attempt to bring a new franchise to the league. Writer Jeff Pearlman told Newsweek in 2017 : “I interviewed a guy who was at the meeting, and he was like, Rozelle said to him, ‘You will never be an owner in the NFL.

As long as I’m affiliated with the NFL or my family is affiliated with the NFL, you will never have a team in the NFL. ’ “Because they just saw him as this scumbag huckster. He was this New York, fast-talking, kind of con-man.

You know? He was just a huckster and they didn’t really want that. The NFL never really wanted Trump.