File this under more signs that Donald Trump doesn’t believe that he’ll ever leave the presidency, after showing up almost unannounced to a Washington Commanders NFL game on Sunday in Washington, only to be uproariously booed into a glaring stupor as he hijacked and politicized a football game, Trump then invited himself onto the Fox television broadcast of the game and discussed the impending new stadium situation in Washington DC – apparently his adopted new home town. According to a report in The Mirror, Trump said:
“They’re going to build a beautiful stadium. That’s what I’m involved in, we’re getting all the approvals and everything else,” he stated. “And you have a wonderful owner, Josh (Harris) and his group. And you’re going to see some very good things.”
Now, Trump didn’t say it on television, but by all reports from those inside the White House, he wants it named after himself. It will not work.
Never mind momentarily that no NFL owner wants a stadium named after any politician, whether it is Barack Obama or George W. Bush, never mind Trump, our politics is so polarizing that why would anyone want to isolate 40-50% of the consumers of any given industry, particularly sports?
And really never mind that no one ever wants to build any monument to someone who wants the monument or title named after themselves! We build airports, bridges, and hospitals, to name after individuals who are either dead or the type that would much rather not have anything named after them. (That is why no one really cried when the GOP moved to name the DCA airport “Reagan National,” that stuff is going to happen from time to time, and don’t be surprised if Chicago “O’Hare” doesn’t someday become “Obama International.”) No one wants to commit to naming anything after Trump right now, and likely not ever, because one gets the sense that none of this is really sustainable and that everyone is simply awaiting having the bubble burst, whether it is the economy, Trump’s impending war with Venezuela, something – it feels as though this moment, one that is all “Trump” in too many ways, is headed for self-immolation, hopefully sooner rather than later.
So no one outside of Trump and his inner circle wants his name on the stadium, but it may not matter in the least because we now live in a dictatorship and dictators have unique ways of getting what they want, as noted by The Guardian.
The route to naming the stadium is a little tricky but Trump has leverage. As president, he oversees the federal agencies responsible for environmental and land-use approvals at the proposed site of the team’s new stadium, so he could speed up, or slow down, the process if he chose to. “He has cards to play,” one source told ESPN. “He can make it very difficult to get this stadium built unless people align with him on the name.”
It should also be noted that the Commanders will not be the ones to name the stadium. The proposed site sits on National Park Service land, and the District of Columbia Council will lease the stadium to the team. Again, Trump can lean on these bodies if he so chooses. “The team doesn’t have the authority. They can’t name the stadium on their own,” a source with direct knowledge of the process told ESPN. “The city would be involved, and the Park Service would be involved.”
To be sure, dictators do tend to get what they want. It is also good to remember that the NFL effectively shut Trump out when he wanted to own a team (Both in NYC and later in Buffalo), and so Trump would surely love to really stick it back at them, the same league that has been admirably pro-DEI and picked Bad Bunny to perform at the Super Bowl Halftime show. So a battle is coming because Trump wants that damned stadium while nearly every other force out there is aligned strongly against it.
This situation is all too typical. The man wants his head on Mount Rushmore. He wants to build some sort of “Arch de Trump” on the other side of the river in Washington, evidently unaware of the fact that Paris’s “Arch” celebrates something immortal, the victories in the French Revolution and Napoleonic wars; Trump’s “Arch” seems intended only to celebrate himself. Now he wants the stadium built at the other end of town.
But we should hope that Trump goes hard at all these monuments to himself, the ballroom, the new “golden office,” the “arch,” and the stadium. For one thing, desperately trying to memorialize and aggrandize oneself is the quickest way to ensure that it never gets built, or at least memorialized as such. But even more importantly, none of this is sustainable, and fairly soon, especially in this economy, Trump’s bubble is going to burst, and the more projects, the more gold, the more gild, the sooner it will happen. The U.S. is living off fumes that are the product of adult leaders, now long gone. It cannot last. The quickest exit is to accelerate all of this “Trump” stuff to the ground. It will happen.
But he damn sure wants that stadium named after him.
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It’s somewhat more complicated. The Washington Commanders ownership owns the naming rights for their current facility, Northwest (Field?) in Landover. When it was approved former team owner Jack Kent Cooke intended to carry HIS name as long as it stood. It was his pet project/personal monument. Or so he thought. It would be fascinating to learn all the fucked up dynamics between him and his son, which probably are much like that between Trump’s dad Fred and Trump. The son never was the father, at least in business knowledge and capability.
Cooke, whether accidently or accidently on purpose created a will that made it extremely difficult for his son to inherit the team and Junior eventually was forced to sell it. Enter Dan Snyder who didn’t give two shits about Cooke’s desire to have the franchise’s stadium named Cooke Stadium. He did what most owners do and sold naming rights and for a long time it was FedEx Field.
Snyder was deservedly forced out by the NFL and the new ownership got a better naming rights deal. But THEY own the right to name/sell the name of both the current location and the new one that will be built. There is however a catch, in that to name if after a person instead of slapping a corporate name on it they’d have to get approval from the DC Council. DC owns the LAND on which RFK Memorial sat and the new stadium will be built. They are LZEASING it to the Commanders ownership group headed by Trump pal Harris.. THEY would have to sign off on naming the stadium after an individual, even a President.
There’s no way in hell the NFL wants that to happen. People in Trump World and journalists covering this talk about the pressures Trump can bring to bear to force his name onto the new stadium. It’s true that he can make life tough for the franchise, as well as the DC Council and other govt. entities that will have to approve varioius parts of the project. What everyone seems to be overlooking is that the NFL can make trouble for the Commanders/Harris long after Trump is dead and gone.
The whole kerfuffle over the halftime entertainment for the Super Bowl indicates to me the NFL still has a bone to pick with trump. I’d never heard of Bad Bunny before he was announced. I couldn’t do a verse of one of his tunes any more than I could Taylor Swift, Katy Perry or Beyonce who all have enormous worldwide audiences. I’m a classis rock and opera lover and there are few artists from the 1980s going forward I listen to. Oh, there’ve been some good songs come out but for me relatively few that compare to the 60s and 70s or the great classical composers.
Anyway Trump has threatened the NFL that they’d better dump Bad Bunny and tried to whip up his MAGAs to demand the same. The NFL stared him in the eye and told him to go fuck himself. They can crunch numbers a whole lot better than Trump or anyone that works for him and much as I hate the whole Super Bowl halftime show the NFL uses it to MAKE MONEY. A LOT of money and that’s how the entertainers get the gig. It’s about drawing in a worldwide audience with a good chunk who will only tune in for the halftime show!
However that is a big reason the NFL can charge those ridiculous rates for ad spots during the three hours or so of the most watched ANNUal (the World Cup is only every four years) sports event.
Fiinally, there’s the cost of the stadium. A billion is coming from DC and the remaining #2.7 billion from the Commanders. They don’t just want, they NEED the hundreds of millions they can calloect in selling the naming rights to a corporate sponsor. I rather doubt ‘Trump Bitcoin Stadium’ in exchange for a TBD amount of Trumpian cryptocurrency will do the trick. And Trump’s made it clear he’s not spending a dime of HIS own money nor does he want any of his pals to. He wants his name on the place FOR FREE.
Not going to happen, but it will be a nice distraction Trump can play up when he needs to which is I think what all this is really about.
The only edifices that could be suitably named after Dementia Donny are public toilets or sewage treatment stations.
As for his head on Mt Rushmore?
I don’t really care if they leave it attached to his body as long as it’s staked down properly and it could be proved it wouldn’t poison the vultures.
The piece shows how stadium naming becomes a convergence of branding, money, and politics—turning a venue into a political statement as much as a sports one. It’s a reminder that sports infrastructure often carries more than just team identity.
What impact do you think naming a stadium after a political figure would have on fan perception, sponsorships, and local support, and should leagues adopt guidelines to avoid political entanglement in venue naming?