Trump took issue with players kneeling during the national anthem to protest social or racial injustice. That movement began in 2016 with then-49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick taking a knee during “The Star-Spangled Banner” during an exhibition game in Denver.

Trump, through social media and other public comments, insisted that players stand for the national anthem and he called on team owners to fire any player who took a knee.

“Wouldn’t you love to see one of these NFL owners, when somebody disrespects our flag, you’d say, ’Get that son of a bitch off the field right now. Out! He’s fired,” Trump said to loud applause at a rally in Hunstville, Alabama, in 2017.

Trump is expected to watch the game from a box in the company of House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., among others. Trump won Missouri and Pennsylvania — the states represented in the game — on his way to a second term in November.

His interest in sports extends beyond football. Trump is an avid golfer who owns multiple golf courses and has hosted tournaments. He sponsored boxing matches at his former casinos in Atlantic City, New Jersey, and attended a UFC match at Madison Square Garden weeks after winning a second term.

Trump was playing golf with Tiger Woods on Sunday morning in Florida, where the president spent the weekend, the White House said.

Some NFL team owners have donated to his campaigns and Trump maintains friendships with Herschel Walker and Doug Flutie, who played for the Generals. Trump endorsed Walker’s unsuccessful bid as the Republican candidate for a U.S. Senate seat from Georgia in 2022, and has tapped him to become ambassador to the Bahamas.

Trump signed an order last week that is intended to block transgender women and girls from competing in women’s sports by targeting federal funding for schools that fail to comply.

Alvin Tillery, a politics professor and diversity expert at Northwestern University, said in an interview that the NFL’s decision to remove “End Racism” slogans was “shameful” given that the league “makes tens of billions of dollars largely on the bodies of Black men.”

He said the NFL should explain who it was aiming to please. The NFL said it was stenciling “Choose Love” in one of the end zones for the Super Bowl to encourage the country after a series of tragedies so far this year, including a New Year’s Day truck attack in the host city of New Orleans that killed 14 people and injured dozens more.

Tillery wasn’t convinced. “I think they removed it because Trump’s coming,” he said.