Is this how Donald Trump ended up at the LSU-Alabama game on Nov. 9?—after a memo from a White House staffer that went….
“If at any time during the remainder of this term the President wants to see and be seen by a tremendous crowd of enthusiastic Southerners, I suggest we consider sending him to one of the big football rivalry games.
“….football is a religio-social pastime in the South, particularly when you get teams like Alabama and Mississippi playing. That would be a good way to get him into a key Southern state and get to see many people from the two states, without doing anything political.”
Sure enough, there was Trump in Tuscaloosa, Ala., among the 101,821 pigskin faithful.
Wait. The above communication was for Richard Nixon in the fall of 1969. It’s just that these days, with headlines of Trump “Out-Nixoning Nixon” on other matters, the thought occurred that the current occupant of the Oval Office might endeavor to implement a similar Southern Strategy.
LSU was ranked No. 2 in the nation and Alabama No. 3 going into this month’s showdown of unbeaten powers. In 1969, No. 1 Texas was about to play No. 2 Arkansas in early December when Nixon announced he not only would attend the game but would be bringing with him a Presidential plaque to personally declare the winner to be national champion. The Commander-in-Chief as gridiron kingmaker.
In both cases, such a non-political appearance was clearly political. With the Republican Party’s 1960s electoral tactic of picking off Southern white voters reluctant to accept civil rights initiatives, Nixon brought further attention to a game that came to be known as “Dixie’s Last Stand”—the final major American sporting event played between all-white teams.
Trump, after he had been roundly booed at a Washington Nationals World Series game and a mixed martial arts event in New York City, could assume the citizens of the red states of Louisiana (where he got 58 percent of the 2016 vote) and Alabama (62 percent) promised a more comfortable reception.
At the 1969 game in Fayetteville, Ark., Houston Post sports columnist Mickey Herskowitz reported that the capacity crowd “did not include a few dozen [Vietnam] antiwar demonstrators who stood, quiet and reproachful, on a grassy hill overlooking the stadium, holding signs addressed to the President. The largest read: ‘Give peace a chance.'”
Fifty years on, in Tuscaloosa, dissent was likewise minimal—seven students in the stands wearing T-shirts spelling out “impeach” and small groups of protesters outside the stadium. The South’s religio-social pastime again ruled the day.
Anyway, Trump left the game with still eight minutes to play. Not only did he miss three more touchdowns in LSU’s rollicking 46-41 victory, but—unlike the stir caused by Nixon a half-century earlier—Trump’s only post-game comments came in a generic tweet, offering thanks for “a great game.” Nixon wound up wading into a partisan and regional fuss by appearing in the Texas lockerroom minutes after the team’s come-from-behind 15-14 victory, wearing makeup for the television cameras and clapping victorious coach Darrell Royal on the back. With the promised “championship” plaque in hand.
The problem then was that there still were bowl games to be played and Penn State, like Texas, also finished its season unbeaten. (This was 29 years before the NCAA officially designated a single bowl to be the national championship game; prior to that, sportwriters’ and coaches’ polls christened a No. 1 team, and sometimes more than one.) Ninety thousand letters and telegrams came pouring into the White House from outraged Penn State backers. A few of the school’s alums picketed 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. The White House lamely offered to produce a second plaque to acknowledge Penn State’s active 29-game winning streak, longest among the nation’s major colleges. To which Penn State coach Joe Paterno (a Republican), replied, “You tell the President to take that trophy and shove it.”
Four years later, at Penn State’s commencement ceremonies, Paterno told the gathered graduates and dignitaries, “I’d like to know how could the President know so little about Watergate in 1973 and so much about college football in 1969.”
Tricky stuff. And P.S.: Texas officials said that the Nixon plaque, which he had taken back to D.C. to be engraved immediately after the ’69 game, never was seen again. Only this year did the school’s athletic department produce a replica. Out-Nixoning Nixon?