Skip navigation
Favorites
Sign up to follow your favorites on all your devices.
Sign up

Obama reassures NFL fans: Speech will end before kickoff

Barack Obama, Drew Brees, Rita Benson LeBlanc, Gayle Benson, Tom Benson

President Barack Obama stands with, from left: New Orleans Saints football quarterback Drew Brees, Saints part owner Rita Benson LeBlanc, the owner’s wife Gayle Benson, and team owner Tom Benson, as he welcomes the 2009 NFL Super Bowl NFL Football Champions New Orleans Saints during a ceremony in the East Room of the White House in Washington, Monday, Aug. 9, 2010. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)

AP

With President Obama’s address to Congress set for Thursday, September 8 -- the same night that the NFL season kicks off -- fans were understandably concerned about TV coverage of politics cutting into TV coverage of football.

The White House is promising those fans they have nothing to worry about.

I can assure all you football fans that he will be completed before kickoff,” White House spokesman Jay Carney said.

Obama’s speech will begin at 7 p.m. Eastern, and the Saints-Packers game that night doesn’t begin until 8:30. So there shouldn’t be any trouble getting the speech done in plenty of time.

Carney noted that Obama didn’t want to miss the game, either, saying, “It means he will have the opportunity to watch the game, like millions of other Americans.”