If liberals upset by the Trump Dance craze sweeping through the NFL look to the league to put a stop to the trend, they will not find the help they seek.
According to Front Office Sports (FOS), the NFL has “no issue” with the celebrations and no plans to stop them.
“There’s no issue with a celebratory dance such as what took place yesterday or the previous week with the 49ers on November 10,” league spokesman Brian McCarthy told FOS. As for TV coverage, McCarthy added, “It’s up to the networks to cover them as they see fit.”
In other words, the league will not tell its players to stop doing the dance or tell its broadcast partners not to show it.
What is the difference between the Trump Dance and Joey Bosa crashing an interview in a MAGA hat and getting fined?
The difference is that the NFL allows touchdown celebrations and does not restrict them as long as they are not excessively profane or sexual. However, the league also has a rule prohibiting wearing or displaying hats and clothing that express personal or political opinions. This is how we end up in a place where Bosa can receive a fine for displaying a MAGA hat but not for doing a MAGA Dance, as he did on November 10.
Since then, other NFL players, such as Brock Bowers, Nick Bosa, Za’Darius Smith, Malcolm Rodriguez, and Calvin Ridley, have been “Doing the Donald.”
Had the NFL attempted to restrict the Trump Dance celebrations, not only would they have put themselves in the crosshairs of the President-Elect, who would no doubt have used his platform to blast the league, but the NFL would have had a tough time explaining that action given their near complete inaction over the Kaepernick protests that swept through the league from 2016 to 2018.
Not only is the Trump Dance not disrupting the game or violating any of the other league rules regarding profanity or vulgarity, but there’s also nothing overtly political about it. Meanwhile, the Kaepernick protests were overtly political and were done expressly for political reasons.
The league has gone to lengths to avoid provoking any criticism from Trump. As FOS’s Michael McCarthy notes, “Trump’s NFL-bashing back then may have contributed to the league’s respective 8% and 10% drops in viewers during the 2016 and 2017 seasons.”
