Tag: donald trump patriots

Presidents Day 2023: Taking a look at NFL champions by administration

Check out the NFL champions for each U.S. presidency since the league’s 1920 founding.

February 20 marks Presidents Day, which is much more than a bank holiday where people can get a good deal on a mattress. The third Monday of February is a time in the United States to remember the chief executive officer of the federal government and all of the 46 individuals who have held that duly elected power.

The NFL has been around since 1920, which means the league has carried on through many presidencies. While the only significant change to the office in that span was the ratifying of the 22nd Amendment, which provided for term limits, the NFL has undergone changes in how champions are determined.

First, the playoffs extend well into the next calendar year, and have even gone past the inauguration date of Jan. 20 following a presidential election.

Second, from 1920-32, winning percentage determined the champion, while from 1933-69 an actual championship game was played. Since the 1970 AFL-NFL merger, the Super Bowl has been the definitive contest to crown a new champion, although AFL champions will be recognized here.

For a president to score a league champion on his ledger, he has to have been holding office when the championed was crowned — which will make the champions after the 16-game season format all the more interesting.

Here is a list of each presidency and the NFL champions who reigned during those administrations.

Report: Donald Trump attempted to stop Patriots Spygate scandal investigation

According to a new ESPN report, Donald Trump attempted to stop a Senator’s investigation into the Spygate scandal with the promise of money.

According to a new report from ESPN’s Seth Wickersham and Don Van Natta Jr., Donald Trump tried to intervene on behalf of the New England Patriots when Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter insisted that the NFL’s investigation into the Spygate scandal, which included the NFL destroying all available evidence, was insufficient.

Per the ESPN story:

The NFL tried to combat the Specter inquiry with public statements from teams that were the primary victims of New England’s spying saying the league had done its due diligence. It wasn’t working.

But there was one man, a mutual friend of Specter and Patriots owner Robert Kraft, who believed that he could make the investigation go away. He was a famous businessman and reality television star who routinely threw money at politicians to try to curry favor, whether it worked or not. He had been a generous political patron of Specter’s for two decades.

One day in early 2008, Specter had dinner with the man in Palm Beach at his palatial club, not far from Kraft’s Florida home. A phone call followed. The friend offered Specter what the senator felt was tantamount to a bribe: “If you laid off the Patriots, there’d be a lot of money in Palm Beach.”

Wickersham and Van Natta spoke with the late Specter’s son Shanin, as well as Charles Robbins, Specter’s longtime communications aide and the ghostwriter of two Specter memoirs. Those conversations reportedly revealed that the person who was offering campaign cash in return for a stop to any further investigation into Spygate was Trump. Moreover, according to the report, Trump said that he was acting on behalf of Kraft.

A Patriots spokesman told ESPN that Kraft “never asked Donald Trump to talk to Arlen Specter on his behalf. Mr. Kraft is not aware of any involvement of Trump on this topic and he did not have any other engagement with Specter or his staff.”

“This is completely false,” said Jason Miller, a senior adviser to Trump. “We have no idea what you’re talking about.”

On September 13, 2007, Patriots head coach Bill Belichick was fined $500,000 for the “use of equipment to videotape an opposing team’s offensive or defensive signals.” It was the largest fine ever given to a coach in the NFL’s history, and the maximum fine allowed. The Patriots were fined $250,000, and they lost their 2008 first-round draft pick. But the ways in which the league went about the quick investigation, destroying the evidence along the way, raised the ire of a lot of people — Specter being one of the most prominent.

Senator Specter’s son Shanin said that Arlen Specter Specter “did not report the offer to the authorities or to Senate ethics officials after he concluded that the case law stated the offer wasn’t a bribe solicitation.”