An October 2017 emergency meeting gathered NFL owners, Commissioner Roger Goodell, executives, and players to confront the political threat posed by President Donald Trump. Team owners expressed concern that Trump would use the league as fodder, calling his involvement divisive. Trump's attacks targeted kneeling players and mocked injured athletes, intensifying the league's role in culture wars centered on Colin Kaepernick's national-anthem protest. Television ratings declined during his presidency, fueling debate over the league's political trajectory. The conflict culminated during the virtual 2020 NFL draft when Goodell apologized for not listening to players and said, "Black Lives Matter."
In October 2017, the owners of the 32 NFL teams, along with Commissioner Roger Goodell, various league executives, and even a few players, scrambled the jets for an emergency meeting at NFL headquarters in New York. The focus of the meeting was not CTE, or the league's minority-hiring practices, or any of the other existential threats plaguing football at the time. It was the threat posed by President Donald Trump.
Trump's presidency - the first one - was a true existential crisis for the NFL, during which the league found itself in the middle of every culture-war battle, most notably Colin Kaepernick's national-anthem protest and its aftermath. Trump went right at the NFL, imploring owners to fire "son of a bitch" players who knelt during the anthem and mocking other players for being diagnosed with concussions. The league's television ratings, for the first time in a long time, fell during the Trump era.
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