SportsBusiness Journal/Daily Executive Editor Abe Madkour and I visited Chuck Todd’s Washington, D.C., office Jan. 23 to talk about the intersection of sports and politics. The “Meet the Press” host offered his advice to sports leagues, teams and media companies — like the NFL and ESPN — that find themselves the focus of a tweet from President Donald Trump. Here are three of Todd’s quotes about the issue:
“You have to figure out how to ignore it, but I understand that it’s not easy to ignore it. You have to figure out how to get out of this.”
“The NFL’s No. 1 issue right now is its own relationship with its players. Trump was successful in exploiting the divisions that already existed.”
“[Our polling] found that NFL fandom is down across the board — not just with Trump’s base, but also with the young millennial male base, too. The NFL can’t just pin this on [Colin] Kaepernick or older middle American NFL fans. Their problems are across the board. They’re losing suburban America for the injury issue. They’re losing exurban America over the patriotism issue. Both are problems.”
— John Ourand
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