The NFL has spent decades making sure everyone knows its footage belongs to the NFL. So when the White House this week published a social media video promoting the bombing campaign against Iran that included NFL game footage set to AC/DC’s “Thunderstruck,” the natural question was what the NFL planned to do about it.
According to Pro Football Talk’s Mike Florio, who asked the league for comment Tuesday, the answer so far is nothing. The NFL did not respond to Florio’s inquiry, nor to Robert Klemko, the current Washington Post reporter who will soon join ESPN’s investigative unit, whose write-up included reactions from players who appeared in the clip.
The video, which the White House posted to its official social media accounts, cuts NFL game footage with unclassified footage of missile strikes, set to AC/DC’s “Thunderstruck.” Among the players featured is Ryan Clark, the former Pittsburgh Steelers safety and current ESPN analyst, who addressed his appearance in the video during a forthcoming episode of The Pivot podcast.
“To have ‘Thunderstruck’ and football highlights on a video about war is one of the more insensitive things that I’ve ever seen,” Clark said. “There are families here in our country whose loved ones have decided to give their lives to fight for our rights and our freedoms, who don’t see war as a sport. War doesn’t deserve a highlight film.”
“For our regime to be as unserious, as unprofessional, as laughable, and as illegitimate as our leadership is right now, is embarrassing,” he continued. “And it tells you the difference between a public servant and a reality star. Because the reality star needs everybody to know at all times, ‘Look at me, look at the attention I’m garnering, we’re doing this for me.’ The public servant stands at attention for 45 minutes in a salute because he understands what those soldiers who gave their lives have done for our country.”
Clark was not the only one. Former Nebraska receiver Kenny Bell, whose college footage appears in the video alongside the NFL highlights, told Klemko that seeing his likeness associated with footage of a missile strike made him sick and that the video should be taken down. Former Buccaneers linebacker Mason Foster, whose hit on Chad Johnson appears in the clip, told Klemko he was at a loss for words.
The NFL’s silence is notable for a few reasons. As we wrote in February, the league has shown more willingness than most American institutions to absorb culture-war friction from the current administration, whether it’s standing behind Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl halftime performance despite backlash from the right, watering down its on-field messaging gradually rather than abandoning it outright, and navigating the tension between its federal antitrust exemption and its desire not to bend the knee entirely. Whether that relative independence extends to the White House using its copyrighted footage to sell a war is now the question the league is declining, at least for now, to answer.
