Trump, headed to Super Bowl LIX, has long and tangled relationship with football

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NEW ORLEANS (Reuters) – Donald Trump on Sunday will become the first sitting U.S. president to attend a Super Bowl – but the former reality television star has a long and complicated history with the sport of football.

During his first term as president, Trump feuded with the National Football League after Black players began kneeling during the national anthem to protest racial injustice.

Perhaps most infamously, Trump bought into the upstart United States Football League in the 1980s and sought to compete directly with the NFL, a move widely seen as helping to doom the nascent league.

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Trump, then a New York real estate developer, purchased the USFL’s New Jersey Generals in 1983.

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