With President Donald Trump slated to attend Saturday’s big Tennessee-Texas game in Knoxville, there has been all kinds of speculation over what else he might be doing other than enjoying the football game. ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith is concerned about one possible plan.
On Thursday’s edition of his radio show on SiriusXM’s Mad Dog Sports Radio, Smith said that it wouldn’t surprise him if President Trump appeared on College GameDay like U.S. Senator Ted Cruz recently did. He believes the President would use the platform to further push the Protect College Sports Act, a bill making its way through Congress that Smith opposes but the President supports.
“It wouldn’t surprise me at all if College Football GameDay, an absolutely fantastic show…it wouldn’t surprise me at all if the president ended up on the show,” Smith said. “Don’t know whether that’s going to be the case or not, but it wouldn’t surprise me at all. Because I definitely believe the president is going to use this moment to try to push forward the Protect College Sports Act.”
Smith believes that if President Trump appears on ESPN for an interview, he’ll “grease the skids” for the NCAA’s push to get the PCSA passed and finds that unfair.
“The president being involved in this in a way where he’s trying to grease the skids on behalf of the NCAA, I believe is not right. It’s not fair,” Smith ranted. “And it’s not thinking about, nor looking out for the marvelous student athletes who bless us with the presence on the court or field of play. The president should play no role in taking sides in that regard.”
Many fans will argue that it’s a positive and not a negative, in the same way that many supporters of the PCSA applauded ESPN having Senator Cruz on the show to discuss it.
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President Trump has made it a habit of attending at least one marquee college football game every year since his first term in office though. And other than getting some photo ops he generally hasn’t used those moments to make big political statements.
It’s certainly possible that Trump is at the Tennessee-Texas game for a different kind of political reason: Meeting with key movers and shakers from Texas and Tennessee ahead of the crucial midterm elections in early-November.
The PCSA will probably reach his desk in the coming weeks as it has cleared the procedural votes with relative ease ahead of a final vote on the floor this coming Monday.
After that, nobody will need to “show support” for the new law of the land.
