Trump attends Alabama-LSU game during Louisiana election. How he, other presidents, use sports for politics

WASHINGTON – A prominent politician shows up at a major sports event. Many in the crowd hoot and boo, some delivering shouted insults about his character. The politician just smiles and waves to the fans who are cheering.

That's right: Bill Clinton at the Southern 500 stock car race in 1992.

And Donald Trump at the World Series just two weeks ago, not to mention a long line of other presidents who have mixed politics and sports.

Clinton, then a presidential candidate, laughed off the bombast he encountered that day at the track in Darlington, S.C., reminding reporters of his days as Arkansas governor: "I was booed at an Arkansas football game after I won two-thirds of the state."

Trump's response to his rough treatment at the baseball park: More sporting events with friendlier crowds.

After an appearance last weekend at an Ultimate Fighting Championship bout in New York City, where he heard cheers as well as scattered catcalls, Trump received a loud ovation and few boos at Saturday's college football game between the Alabama Crimson Tide and the LSU Tigers in Tuscaloosa, Ala.

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"Thank you to LSU and Alabama for a great game!" Trump tweeted after the Tigers defeated the Crimson Tide 46-41.

(Trump later tweeted that the "fake news" would "never show" the cheers he received, though they were widely covered.)

Many presidents have enjoyed going to games and welcoming championship teams to the White House, hoping the glow of success will rub off on them.

Trump, in the view of many analysts, has been a little more political with his forays into sports, from attacking football players who knelt at national anthems to promoting his appearance at the LSU game to Bayou State voters.

"The president has made his political career by getting people to think about politics in the terms of sports fandom: Red versus blue, Trump country versus urban centers, winners versus losers, us versus them," said Erin Tarver, author of "The I in Team: Sports Fandom and the Reproduction of Identity."

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Presidents have used sports as a way to identify with the "common man and woman" for as long as there have been sporting events, analysts said. This is especially true when it comes to large communal extravaganzas like major league baseball or football games.

"Sports – especially college football in the South – is a cultural touchstone," said Robert Mann, a mass communications professor at Louisiana State University. "It's a way for politicians to say, 'Hey, I'm just like you.'"

Michael Butterworth, director of the Center for Sports Communication and Media at the University of Texas at Austin, said, "everybody wants to be associated with a winner and presidents have always wanted to do that."

And there's always been an element of politics involved, whether it's the politics of race or the politics of economics.

"It's an illusion to say sports and politics are separate," Butterworth said, though the mix seems more toxic in the Trump era.

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Two years ago, Trump began attacking National Football League players for kneeling during the national anthem. Players and supporters said they knelt to protest racial injustice, and accused Trump of baiting black players in an appeal to his "America First" political base.

"Trump has mobilized sports fandom and its general ethos in his political life long before this," said Tarver, who is an associate professor of philosophy with the Oxford College at Emory University in Atlanta.

Of course, the politics works two ways, Trump supporters said: People booing the president are making political statements of their own.

In the run-up to Saturday's game, Alabama's student government warned its constituents against "disruptive behavior" toward the president. It later amended its statement to affirm "its belief in free speech and the rights of all students to express their opinions."

Meanwhile, critics of the president floated their "Baby Trump" blimp near Bryant-Denny Stadium, named in part for legendary Crimson Tide coach Paul "Bear" Bryant.

Some football fans in Tuscaloosa seemed to be in the spirit of politics. A member of the crowd who attended ESPN's College GameDay broadcast displayed a sign joking about the impeachment investigation of Trump and LSU's quarterback.

"Joe Burrow is the whistleblower," it said.

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Presidents and sports go way back

In the long relationship between presidents and sports, one president played a key role in making football what it is today: Theodore Roosevelt.

In the days before passing was allowed, football was a game of brutal scrums that produced many deaths. In 1905, Roosevelt warned college administrators they needed to make the game safer or have it face extinction.

That threat led to the creation of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), which still governs college sports, and approval of the forward pass, the innovation that opened up the game and made it increasingly popular.

John J. Miller, author of "The Big Scrum: How Teddy Roosevelt Saved Football," said it's no surprise that many of Roosevelt's successors would want to get in on the LSU-Alabama game and similar spectacles.

"They're great American events, right?" Miller said. "It's an old thing politicians have always done."

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Roosevelt's immediate successor, William Howard Taft, began the tradition of having the president throw out the opening pitch of the major league baseball season (though Trump has yet to perform this ritual).

Over the years, presidents have sought to link sports to old-school verities like loyalty, patriotism, and family.

Loyalty

After winning the presidency in 1992, Clinton often indulged his passion for college basketball. In 1994, he traveled to Charlotte to watch his home-state Arkansas Razorbacks capture the NCAA title with a win over Duke.

Patriotism

George W. Bush, a former manager general partner of the Texas Rangers, stayed true to baseball during his two terms in office – most famously when he threw out the first pitch at a World Series game in New York City less than two months after 9/11.

Later, Bush jokingly recalled the brotherly advice from New York Yankee star Derek Jeter: "Don't bounce it, they'll boo you." (Bush indeed threw a strike.)

Family

President Barack Obama also took in his share of college basketball games, including ones featuring Oregon State when brother-in-law Craig Robinson coached there. In 2010, Obama and Vice President Joe Biden – and an entourage that included son Hunter Biden – sat in the front row as Georgetown upset Duke.

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Presidents and college football

As unbeaten Alabama and LSU prepare to take the field, Trump won't be the first president to attend a big-time college football contest.

In December of 1969, President Richard Nixon traveled to Fayetteville, Arkansas, to watch Texas play Arkansas in a battle of unbeaten powers. Nixon took along a congressional delegation that included Texas congressman and future president George Herbert Walker Bush.

After Texas rallied to nip Arkansas 15-14, Nixon presented a national championship plaque to the Longhorns – much to the annoyance of also-unbeaten Penn State.

In 1973, with Nixon mired in scandal, Penn State Coach Joe Paterno extracted some rhetorical revenge: "I've wondered how President Nixon could know so little about Watergate in 1973 and so much about college football in 1969."

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This also won't be Trump's first highly publicized college football game.

In January of 2018, Trump attended the championship game between Alabama and Georgia. In December of that year, the Commander-in-Chief appeared at the Army-Navy game, an event he also took in as president-elect in 2016.

A prolific golfer, Trump has also appeared at golf tournaments, including the U.S. Women's Open when it was held at his club in Bedminster, N.J.

When Trump announced he would attend Alabama-LSU, critics joked he was just looking for a crowd that would cheer him. Trump carried both states easily in 2016, and is expected to do so again in 2020.

During a rally Wednesday in Monroe, Louisiana, a state in the midst of a governor's race, Trump made the political connection explicit. He told Louisiana residents to go ahead and vote early so that they could enjoy the football game in peace.

"I said that's the game I want to go to," Trump said. "That will be tremendous. Two great teams. Two great teams."

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Trump attends LSU-Alabama football game, blending sports, politics