San Francisco 49ers star Nick Bosa is getting all sorts of attention for his Donald Trump-supporting stunt after Sunday’s win over the Cowboys, with adoring MAGA fans flooding his Instagram comments and national pundits questioning his lack of explanation. Now, it seems likely the stunt will also attract the attention of the NFL’s rulemakers.
Bosa crashed NBC’s postgame interview Sunday while wearing a “Make America Great Again” hat, showing off his apparent support for the Republican presidential nominee nine days before Election Day. In the five seconds he was on TV, Bosa put himself at risk of a five-figure fine.
Rule 5, Section 4, Article 8 of the NFL rulebook says that the entire time a player is “visible to the stadium and television audience,” including during pregame warmups and in postgame interviews both on the field and in the locker room, they are “prohibited from wearing, displaying, or otherwise conveying personal messages either in writing or illustration, unless such message has been approved in advance by the League office.”
It’s even more direct when it comes to messages with a political point, like Bosa’s: “The League will not grant permission for any club or player to wear, display, or otherwise convey messages, through helmet decals, arm bands, jersey patches, mouthpieces, or other items affixed to game uniforms or equipment, which relate to political activities or causes, other non-football events, causes or campaigns, or charitable causes or campaigns.”
SFGATE reached out to the NFL to ask if the league had received a request for approval from Bosa to wear the MAGA hat during Sunday’s game, and if so, whether or not the league had approved the message. The league did not respond by time of publication.
The league’s operations website reveals how much the MAGA moment could cost Bosa, laying out exactly how much players get fined for various violations. A first-time offender of the “personal messages” uniform policy could be hit with $11,255 fine. NFL Network insider Tom Pelissero reported Steelers wide receiver George Pickens was hit with a $10,231 fine for violating the personal messages policy in Week 5, when he wore eye black with “open f—king always” written across it, although the league did not publicize the penalty.
In the past, the NFL used to fine players quite often for all sorts of mundane or harmless messages. Former Washington quarterback Robert Griffin III was fined multiple times for wearing non-approved shirts in pregame warmups and for wearing Adidas during his postgame press conferences. 49ers quarterback Alex Smith was once threatened with a $15,000 fine for wearing a San Francisco Giants hat during postgame interviews. Several Steelers players were fined in 2015, even when they were supporting charitable efforts; the pushback over those fines led the NFL to create the “My Cause My Cleats” initiative.
The NFL hasn’t been as forthcoming about these fines in recent years, mostly keeping uniform fines private within the league. But the more public a player is with their message, the more likely the public finds out about it. Pelissero reported last season that star Miami wide receiver Tyreek Hill received numerous uniform policy fines after the player posted online about receiving more than $100,000 in fines without specifying what for.
Overall, the rulebook makes clear that the league wants to control what players wear, both on and off the field. That covers everything from simple stuff like players wearing their pants or socks too short to having their shirts untucked to a message on a headband to even memorializing former team stars with a T-shirt under their pads. Bosa’s teammate George Kittle was hit with a heavy fine last year for a “F—k Dallas” shirt he had on under his pads when the Niners played the Cowboys. (He may have even worn it again in this year’s rematch Sunday, though he didn’t show it off this time.)
So when the league hands out its fines for Week 8 next Saturday, it’s likely Bosa’s name will be on the list for that $11,255 amount. But given that a 30-second advertisement for “Sunday Night Football” cost $882,079 last year, according to Ad Age, Bosa’s stunt and the coverage of it likely will make the fine feel worthwhile to one of the highest-paid players in the NFL, especially if it helps his longtime preferred politician land the presidency again.
