Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts has opted to skip his team’s visit to the White House on Monday, bucking a tradition for winners of the Super Bowl dating back to the 1980s.
The White House told NBC News that Hurts and other players not attending the celebration have “scheduling conflicts.”
“The Eagles enthusiastically accepted the invitation from the White House to attend today’s event,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement. “The vast majority of the team is coming, and those who cannot attend had scheduling conflicts.”
Hurts went viral last week for his mysterious nonanswer to a Time magazine reporter’s question about whether he planned to accept the White House invitation.
“Are you planning on visiting the White House next week?” the reporter asked. He responded with an “um” and left it at that.
The Eagles were invited to visit the White House on Monday after Trump invited the Eagles team that won the Super Bowl in 2018, and then subsequently disinvited them after many of the players had already decided against attending. Nick Foles was the quarterback at the time; Hurts was not yet an NFL player.
As Keith Reed wrote for MSNBC Daily on Monday, Hurts has largely avoided wading into political activism:
The most political thing we’ve ever heard from Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts are the compliments he gave former President Barack Obama after he and the former president golfed with Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie in October. Hurts didn’t celebrate Obamacare or the Dodd-Frank Wall Street reforms Obama signed. He just uttered some platitudes, calling Obama an “uncle figure,” an “all-time leader” and “a great presence.”
It’s hard to believe Hurts’ decision to skip the visit won’t be viewed by some, including potentially President Donald Trump, as a political statement.
