NFL has no plans to end DEI practices, commissioner says

(NewsNation) — The National Football League may be changing its on-field messaging for Sunday’s Super Bowl tilt between the Kansas City Chiefs and Philadelphia Eagles, but the league has no plans to abandon its diversity, equity and inclusion practices, its commissioner says.

The NFL said that, for the first time since 2021, the words “End Racism” will not appear in the end zones of its championship game, which will be attended by President Donald Trump. The league began using the phrase as part of its Super Bowl production in response to the murder of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police officers in 2020.

However, the plan does not reflect any change in the NFL’s DEI efforts at a time when many major corporations have ended their programs since Trump took office last month.

The NFL will replace its previous end zone slogans with “Choose love” and “It takes all of us,” the league has announced.

Goodell told reporters this week in New Orleans that he believes that the league’s DEI practices have made the league better and have helped the NFL attract better talent and it has given the league different perspectives from which to consider issues.

“Whether they’re women or men or people of color, we make ourselves stronger and when we make ourselves better when we have that,” Goodell said.

Goodell told reporters that the NFL, which has come under fire at times for its lack of diversity in its hiring practices, did not initiate its DEI practices because it was a trend. Nor will it end them because of what is happening in other places after Trump has pushed to end DEI practices, the Wall Street Journal reported.

However, a former NFL player and current U.S. Rep. Burgess Owens, R-Utah, says that DEI hasn’t made the league better. In an interview with NewsNation’s “The Hill,” Owens says things have changed since his playing days. Owens won a Super Bowl championship with the Oakland Raiders in 1980.

“The league, when I was playing, was always a uniter,” Owens said. “It was a place where people could go and forget their differences and pull for their team.”

Owens said that if Goodell truly believed in the league’s policies, he would force NFL teams to use it in which players make the league’s rosters.

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