Chances are that at some point in the next few days, a couch in your house will be occupied by someone watching football.

It's America's most popular sport.

The National Football League unites much of the country in a shared passion.

But as Lisa Desartan reports, the league faces a tricky potential threat to that.

Politics.

The National Football League is in the middle of a ratings and profit boom.

At the same time, it is also in the center of something else, notable, the way President

Trump engages with and wants to influence American sports.

Joining me to talk about this is Christine Brennan, a sports columnist for USA Today and friend of the show.

Christine, let's start with the NFL itself. Roger Goodell, the commissioner, is experiencing an all-time,

All-Star era. What is behind it right now? America has really fallen in love with a new national

pastime. It's no longer baseball. It's football. It is about the cadence of the game.

Obviously, we love that versus baseball as our attention spans gets shorter and shorter.

Also, it's a sport, high school, college Americans grow up with. Not only the day of the week,

Sunday, as we all know, but now prime time, and that has been going on.

A public relations man named Pete Roselle was the commissioner who just saw the NFL explode

back in the 70s.

You had Monday night football.

And again, it's the violence.

It's the, it's a very national game.

The violence, the aggressiveness.

Absolutely.

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