Reporter conducts interview – suddenly a player intervenes

A professional football player interrupts his teammates’ interview to get a message across. This causes outrage. The player has not yet been punished.

And what do you do for a living? In the case of Nick Bosa, professional football player for the San Francisco 49ers, you could probably say that his job is to run into people with force. Bosa plays the position of defensive end and is responsible for stopping opposing offensive players by running over them.

Granted, that’s an oversimplified explanation of how Bosa makes his money ($34 million a year), but the NFL pro himself seems to like simple messages. In any case, he presented one on the field on Sunday after his team won 30:24 against the Dallas Cowboys.

The 27-year-old walked straight into an interview that field reporter Melissa Stark was conducting for NBC. Stark was chatting about the game with 49ers playmaker Brock Purdy and his teammates George Kittle and Isaac Guerendo when Bosa suddenly burst in and pointed both index fingers at his headgear. Stark and Purdy looked somewhat pained into the camera and then quickly acted as if nothing had happened. There was definitely something there. Because on Bosa’s baseball cap it read “Make America Great Again,” Donald Trump’s motto, in gold letters.

Now, the fact that Bosa supports Republican Donald Trump is not news. The football professional has expressed admiration for Ronald Reagan and Trump more than once. These are “goats”, i.e. “the biggest [Präsidenten] of all time,” he said.

Back in 2016, when the NFL was being shaken by the Colin Kaepernick protests, Bosa spoke out. African-American Kaepernick caused a stir in the league at the time because he used to kneel before his 49ers’ games while the American national anthem was played. It was a sign of protest against rampant racism in the USA and in the NFL.

At the time, Bosa insulted Kaepernick as a “clown” – and was fully in line with then-presidential candidate Trump, who demanded that Kaepernick and all other football professionals who took a knee should be fired immediately by their employers. In fact, Kaepernicks was released by the 49ers after the end of the 2016 season despite a high-paying six-year contract; After that, he couldn’t find another club that wanted to hire him.

When Bosa was signed by the 49ers in 2019, he deleted various comments from his social media profiles and took back likes on homophobic and racist messages. He also issued a press statement in which he acknowledged the diversity of different lifestyles and promised to continue to grow as a person. The public purification was probably necessary because in a city like San Francisco, diversity is very important and the metropolis is considered one of the most liberal in the USA.

There was a huge outcry among US sports commentators after Bosa’s latest action. Finally, in the wake of the Kaepernick protests, the NFL banned all political statements. NFL professionals are committed to keeping their personal political opinions out of the deal.

But as is often the case, some people in the NFL seem to be more equal than others, as Jim Trotter, columnist for the renowned sports magazine “The Atheltic”, writes. Accordingly, the league maintains a double standard when it comes to sanctioning players and officials. “Someone like Kaepernick is constantly harassed and someone like Bosa gets what exactly?” asks Trotter.