For any NFL fans who have been around for longer than eight years, a weirdly familiar tale played out for them during “Sunday Night Football.”
A San Francisco 49ers star made a sociopolitical statement on national television. Outrage ensued.
No, the Niners didn’t suddenly re-sign controversial former quarterback Colin Kaepernick — but left-leaning fans couldn’t help but bring up the specter of the former quarterback while addressing what happened Sunday.
The Niners held off a late surge from the Dallas Cowboys, clinging to a 30-24 win at Levi’s Stadium (which is technically in Santa Clara, California, not San Francisco) to push the home team’s record to 4-4.
(The Cowboys slipped to 3-4 with the loss.)
Any win — especially one for a team as injury-riddled as the 49ers — in the NFL is sweet, and the Niners were sure to celebrate the victory in the postgame festivities, which included the standard postgame interview.
One standout Niner, however, took that interview to make a quick pitch for his presidential candidate of choice — and some were less than enamored with it.
NBC’s Melissa Stark was set to interview three standout offensive players from the game (Niners quarterback Brock Purdy, running back Isaac Guerendo, and tight end George Kittle), when superstar defensive end Nick Bosa (who finished the game with a sack and three quarterback hits) crashed the set with a simple, non-verbal message.
See if you can spot it for yourself below:
As Stark began to ask Purdy a question, Bosa snuck up behind the crew and pointed to a white and gold hat that — despite not being in its usual red and white — was a pro-Donald Trump, “Make America Great Again” cap.
“Alright, Nick Bosa with a message there,” Stark said before swiftly moving the segment on.
A different viral video showed that the hat does, indeed, declare for MAGA:
Here’s Nick Bosa closer up in his MAGA hat. The left wing sports media is going to lose its mind over this. Love it: pic.twitter.com/K0hlLx8Eik
— Clay Travis (@ClayTravis) October 28, 2024
Conservative sports fans on social media loved the gesture from Bosa.
“Here’s Nick Bosa closer up in his MAGA hat,” OutKick founder Clay Travis wrote on X. “The left wing sports media is going to lose its mind over this. Love it.”
Just as Travis predicted, liberals on social media were less than thrilled that Bosa was mixing politics with sports — arguably the same thing Kaepernick was excoriated for when he began kneeling for “The Star-Spangled Banner” before NFL games as a form of protest.
Noted anti-Trump and race-focused sports journalist Jemele Hill took to social media platform X to blast the conservatives who were seemingly okay with Bosa’s stunt, but hated Kaepernick’s protests.
(It can’t be stressed enough how much Hill has made her disdain for all things Trump public.)
“That stick-to-sports is gonna be tying themselves into knots,” Hill commented on X, while sharing the same above Bosa video.
The implication, obviously, is that what Bosa and Kaepernick did was the same thing, but there are some key differences that Hill is overlooking for the sake of her argument.
Should athletes stay out of politics?
First, and perhaps most importantly, Bosa’s political stunt came after the game was finished. There was no distracting from the mission at hand (NFL players are paid millions to play football first and foremost) before a single snap had been played.
Second, it’s unfair to suggest that a brief moment pointing to a hat that supports a particular presidential candidate is the exact same as a public display that ostensibly protests all of America.
One is an individual endorsement, while the other is a broad denigration.
Additionally, “The Star-Spangled Banner” is the national anthem and is meant to be a moment of unity, not division. Using it to specifically divide is a bit more of a deliberate action than a spontaneous (after all, Bosa would never have had the chance to sport the MAGA hat in a postgame interview if the Niners had lost the game) post-game moment.
(And that’s to say nothing of the fact that whatever distractions that Bosa — a perennial Pro Bowl and All-Pro candidate — may bring are worth it for his prodigious pass rushing talents. Kaepernick, as is often brushed under the rug, was benched in favor of career journeyman Blaine Gabbert before he started kneeling for the anthem.)
Regardless, the next time the Niners play, the team, Bosa and most of America will likely know who the next president of the United States will be.
The 49ers next play on Nov. 10 (the general election is Nov. 5), when the team travels to play the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
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