Super Bowl to end "End Racism"
For the first time since 2021, the NFL will go with another slogan for its end zone messages.
You had a good run, "End Racism," but it's time to move on, at least as far as the NFL is concerned. Since 2021, the end zones for the Super Bowl games have been emblazoned with that slogan as part of the National Football League's "Inspire Change" initiative. But this year, the league has decided to retire the short-lived tradition. Instead, Sunday's game will feature even blander end zone messages, according to USA Today: "Choose Love" and "It Takes All Of Us."
"The Super Bowl is often a snapshot in time and the NFL is in a unique position to capture and lift the imagination of the country," NFL spokesman Brian McCarthy said in a statement. "'Choose Love' is appropriate to use as our country has endured in recent weeks wild fires in southern California, the terrorist attack here in New Orleans, the plane and helicopter crash near our nation’s capital and the plane crash in Philadelphia."
It's unclear in what way choosing love would be an appropriate response to all the crises referenced. (Love is surely important, but a lack of it was not the issue at hand in the fires or crashes.) Nor does it seem that the end zone messages are really that effective in capturing and lifting the imagination of the country. (To where are our imaginations being "lifted"?) But we'll give him this: ending "End Racism" does represent a snapshot of our time, wherein President Donald Trump has made ending Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion initiatives a cornerstone of his second-term strategies. In fact, his administration has even attempted to pin the blame for the DC crash on DEI, which is not, it should be said, a particularly loving thing to do.
As it happens, it was announced on Tuesday that Trump plans to attend the Super Bowl, making him the first sitting president ever to do so—though surely, ending "End Racism" had nothing to do with the attendance of the anti-DEI president! Nevertheless we hope that President Trump finds his imagination lifted by those powerful end zone slogans. It Takes All Of Us, after all.
