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President Donald Trump has been a central figure in the controversy in the NFL surrounding players kneeling during the national anthem.

Trump himself could have been an owner in the league himself, when he bid $1 billion for the Buffalo Bills in 2014, but lost out to Terry Pegula, the team's current owner.

Ameer Hasan Loggins, a Doctoral candidate at UC Berkeley specialising in African American studies, explains why many of the league's owners are supporting the protest.

"What the owners were responding to was 'You are not in a position to tell us how to do this and as a matter of fact we'll exert our power in telling our players that we're kneeling today. We're kneeling to unify against what Donald Trump said.'"

This clip first appeared on 5 live Sport, Wednesday 11 October, 2017.