The NFL getting involved in politics never works out well.
The league learned that lesson the hard way yet again.
And that’s because one NFL team went woke and attacked Donald Trump in this unthinkable way.
Arizona Cardinals force fan to dump MAGA to enter the stadium
The Arizona Cardinals are one of the NFL’s historical sad sack franchises.
In a franchise history that dates back to 1920 when the team first began playing in Chicago, the Cardinals won a single championship, the 1947 NFL title.
The Cardinals might have more success if they worried about the play on the field as opposed to censoring their fans’ political opinions.
34-year season ticket holder Susan Rosener watched a lot of bad football in that time.
The Cardinals made only six playoff appearances in that time frame.
But nothing has been more humiliating for Rosener than the scene she described to KPNX-TV.
Rosener told the station that a security guard forced her to throw out her MAGA hat before entering State Farm Stadium prior to the Cardinals 41-10 win over the Los Angeles Rams last Sunday, claiming it violated stadium policy against political signs.
“She’s like, ‘no political hats or shirts.’ And I said I haven’t heard that at all. And I said that doesn’t make sense to me. And she goes, ‘I said, Take your hat off,’” Rosener recounted.
Rosener said she should have pushed back, but she was worried the team would take away her season tickets, which would infuriate her husband.
“In retrospect, I wish I would have stood my ground a little bit, but I wasn’t sure what the repercussions would be, and my husband would kill me if I did something with the season tickets or that jeopardizes them somehow,” Rosener added.
Rosener explained that she doesn’t think the team should cancel anyone for their political opinions, but that the security guard only gave her a hard time because she wore a Trump hat.
“I am super freedom of speech,” Rosener added. “I could care less if someone had a Kamala Harris hat or T-shirt on. I do feel like part of the problem was this security woman definitely had a bias with my hat,” Rosener concluded.
The Arizona Cardinals retreat
Once Rosener went public with her story, the Cardinals released a statement throwing the security guard under the bus and blaming them for misinterpreting stadium policy.
The team claimed it only banned physical signs that could obstruct the view of fans watching the game.
“In an isolated incident at Sunday’s game, a stadium security member misunderstood a policy on prohibited items. Like most venues, signage, posters, flags, or displays that are….political in nature are not permitted. However, that did not apply in this instance. Moving forward we will work to provide clarity to all stadium personnel in these situations. We have also reached out to the individual involved to communicate that their experience was not consistent with our policies and practices and to apologize for that,” the Cardinals statement read.
The last thing the Cardinals and the NFL wants is for Donald Trump to get wind of this incident and turn it into another NFL versus Trump supporter war like the one in 2017 over NFL players kneeling for the national anthem.
