The NFL is ending “End Racism.”
The league is ditching the slogan it had emblazoned on a Super Bowl end zone for each of the last three years in favor of “Choose Love,” according to a report in The Athletic.
NFL spokesperson Brian McCarthy confirmed the outlet’s reporting, telling writer Mike Silver that the switch was a salute to recent mass casualty events, including a New Year’s Day terrorist attack in New Orleans and the Los Angeles wildfires.
The obvious connection, though, is to President Donald Trump, who is attending the game Sunday. Trump has made attacks on “wokeness,” affirmative action, and diversity programs a hallmark of his second administration.
On his first day back in office, Trump signed an executive order halting “diversity, equity, and inclusion” programs at the federal level. He recently suggested that DEI programs may have been to blame for the fatal plane crash in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 29.
Corporations are still free to embark on their own diversity efforts, though many have slowly backed away from commitments they made in the wake of George Floyd’s killing by a Minneapolis police officer in the summer of 2020. Later that year, Trump issued an executive order banning federal contractors from doing diversity training, but a judge blocked the order.
The NFL is something of an outlier in big business, as commissioner Roger Goodell has doubled down on diversity. Companies like Target, Amazon, and Walmart have stepped away from their DEI programs.
“We didn’t get into this because it was a trend, and we’re not getting out of it because it’s a trend,” Goodell said at the league meetings in December. “We’re in it because it makes the NFL better.” He expressed the same sentiments at his Super Bowl press conference in New Orleans on Monday.
Trump has not yet shown the same appetite for the all-out assault he waged on the NFL in 2016 and 2017 during the Colin Kaepernick saga. But there are signs his second administration may want to pressure the league on its diversity efforts, which include an expanded Rooney Rule and various front office and coaching accelerator programs for women and people of color.
In February 2024, Stephen Miller filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission over the league’s Rooney Rule, which mandates teams conduct two in-person interviews with minority candidates for head coaching positions. Though several teams made a mockery of the Rooney Rule this offseason as a clear box-checking exercise, there were nine minority head coaches in the NFL this past season. (The rule now also covers GM and offensive coordinator interviews.) Miller’s filing alleged that the rule was discriminatory. He is now in the White House as Trump’s deputy chief of staff for policy.
For the AFC championship game two weeks ago, the Chiefs had “Choose Love” stenciled in its end zone, while the Eagles had “End Racism” when it won the NFC title game.
“We felt it was an appropriate statement for what the country has collectively endured, given recent tragedies, and can serve as an inspiration,” league spokesperson Brian McCarthy told The Athletic of “Choose Love.”
The outlet also reported that “the decision to do away with “End Racism” as a slogan led at least one high-ranking league official to express concern in light of Trump’s public statements on the subject.” McCarthy told Front Office Sports that any suggestion that the decision had to do with Trump was “not true.” He called the Super Bowl “a snapshot in time” and said “the NFL is in a unique position to capture and lift the imagination of the country.”
