One reason why Trump is fueding with the NFL

http://www.news.com.au/sport/american-sports/donald-trumps-nfl-war-follows-a-history-of-rejection/news-story/e9bf44842790199a81d83f99675bbe25



A story that not many people would know about the president is that he has tried, and failed, many times in the past to join the elusive ranks of NFL owners.
His desire to join the NFL began in the early 1980s with the now defunct United States Football League, a competition that originally ran during the NFL’s off-season.
After initially deciding against joining the venture, Trump brought in when J. Walter Duncan put up the New Jersey Generals for sale and sold them for $10 million.
But the goalposts never shifted for Trump. He wanted to be a part of the NFL owners fraternity and saw the USFL as his way in.
Jeff Pearlman, author of upcoming USFL book The Useless, revealed how Trump put his cards on the table in his first owners meeting with the USFL. “I didn’t enter this league to stay in the spring,” Trump said. “We’re moving to fall.”
A change in seasons would have put the USFL in direct competition with the NFL — and drew the ire of one owner in particular.
John Bassett was the owner of the Tampa Bay Bandits and having had experience with owning sports teams, knew it would be the wrong choice to move in on the NFL’s territory. His patience with Trump eventually wore thin, leading to this scathing letter.


  View image on Twitter



Trump wasn’t exactly being welcomed with open arms, either. As Pearlman explained in an interview with Newsweek, NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle couldn’t have been any more unequivocal in his stance on the high-flying businessman, telling Trump at a meeting in New York in 1984: “You will never be an owner in the NFL. As long as I’m affiliated with the NFL or my family is affiliated with the NFL, you will never have a team in the NFL.”
But Trump still had other opportunities. In 1988, the New England Patriots went on sale after the Sullivan family couldn’t maintain payments for the team. Trump was given the first chance to bid on the team.
Ultimately deciding that the inherited debt was too great of a risk, he passed. Today the Patriots are valued at $2.6 billion, making them the second most valuable team in pro football.
Sixteen years later Trump was back at the bidders desk when he chased the Buffalo Bills in 2014. His low-ball offer of $900 million was surpassed by Terry and Kim Pegula who bid $1.4 billion, a then NFL record.
Given all that history, is it any surprise Trump is happily targeting the NFL, its owners and its players now he’s president?
Is Trump acting out because he simply can’t have the one thing he wants, to be an NFL owner?